Is Print Media Failing The Public?
Ken Hughes
November 14, 2005
Or is the public failing the print media? Either way print media is in trouble. The wheels are falling off the newspaper business. It’s more likely than not because the publics reading habits are changing. There was a time when a second cup of coffee and the morning newspaper were a tradition. These days the first cup of coffee comes from a drive up window. It’s hard to drink coffee, talk on a cell phone, read a newspaper and drive all at the same tine. The newspaper’s the first to go.
Nearly every news organization has adapted to the internet in only a halfway manor. They only offer a few stories and then only a portion of what would normally appear in print. News Editors are reluctant to admit there’s an Internet audience out there. They can’t abide those neophyte pontificators who’re so presumptuous to believe they should share a voice in presenting opinions to the public. After all that’s what news reporting has become, presenting opinions. Facts fall at the wayside some where between the incident and the editor’s red / blue pencil. They call this the New Age Media.
Google News has recently dropped many of the independent op-ed web_sites. Their claim is these sites aren’t news, tell that to Howard Dean, John Kerry, and Dan Rather. Bloggers brought them down by presenting facts the mainstream media refused to report. The Media’s at war they’re in a war between themselves, their fighting for direction without recognizing it when it’s before them. Continually reporters are exposed for misrepresenting and fabricating facts. The press has ceased to be the fourth estate. They’ve joined the third estate to become an adversary. They report what_ifs and speculate on future events leaving the facts smothering in their dust.
The lack of management of time by the public has driven the print media nearly to the point of distinction. The public is in a frenzy to get some place, their not sure where. We’re living in a time of instant gratification, There’s no time for the second cup of coffee and to read a newspaper. We must get to that place we’re not sure where it is or what will be there but we must get there at top speed.
Surely if Thomas Edison is looking down on us he must be amused to know it only took one_hundred or so years to drive men as insane as he was thought to be in his day. I can image Edison and Franklin enjoying a cup of coffee watching electricity drive men to the brink of mental incompetence. What if Edison knows the exact time electrically powered computerized robots will make man extinct on this planet?
Back to the ailing print media, they’ll survive not as they are, nor as they plan to be. Something will come along as it always does to reconfigure news reporting. There has always been the reporting of events, that won’t change. What will change is how it’s reported and by whom. The internet has a multitude of Op-eds, Bloggers, Columnists call us what you like, we’re here to stay. Cable News, Talk Radio, the Internet, all have a place in reporting new_age news. Print news, that’s questionable.
One Mans Opinion
Nearly every news organization has adapted to the internet in only a halfway manor. They only offer a few stories and then only a portion of what would normally appear in print. News Editors are reluctant to admit there’s an Internet audience out there. They can’t abide those neophyte pontificators who’re so presumptuous to believe they should share a voice in presenting opinions to the public. After all that’s what news reporting has become, presenting opinions. Facts fall at the wayside some where between the incident and the editor’s red / blue pencil. They call this the New Age Media.
Google News has recently dropped many of the independent op-ed web_sites. Their claim is these sites aren’t news, tell that to Howard Dean, John Kerry, and Dan Rather. Bloggers brought them down by presenting facts the mainstream media refused to report. The Media’s at war they’re in a war between themselves, their fighting for direction without recognizing it when it’s before them. Continually reporters are exposed for misrepresenting and fabricating facts. The press has ceased to be the fourth estate. They’ve joined the third estate to become an adversary. They report what_ifs and speculate on future events leaving the facts smothering in their dust.
The lack of management of time by the public has driven the print media nearly to the point of distinction. The public is in a frenzy to get some place, their not sure where. We’re living in a time of instant gratification, There’s no time for the second cup of coffee and to read a newspaper. We must get to that place we’re not sure where it is or what will be there but we must get there at top speed.
Surely if Thomas Edison is looking down on us he must be amused to know it only took one_hundred or so years to drive men as insane as he was thought to be in his day. I can image Edison and Franklin enjoying a cup of coffee watching electricity drive men to the brink of mental incompetence. What if Edison knows the exact time electrically powered computerized robots will make man extinct on this planet?
Back to the ailing print media, they’ll survive not as they are, nor as they plan to be. Something will come along as it always does to reconfigure news reporting. There has always been the reporting of events, that won’t change. What will change is how it’s reported and by whom. The internet has a multitude of Op-eds, Bloggers, Columnists call us what you like, we’re here to stay. Cable News, Talk Radio, the Internet, all have a place in reporting new_age news. Print news, that’s questionable.
One Mans Opinion
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