The Decline of Journalism by Thomas D WIlliams

[truedelphi]

t r u t h o u t | Report

Monday 20 November 2006

If some doomsday industry analysts are to be believed, newspapers are laid out and stacked neatly inside their own future death warehouses, not only in the United States, but worldwide.

"October was a pretty depressing month for national newspapers. While circulations slide, the industry news has been dominated by job cuts and staff unrest, particularly among journalists," England's Guardian Unlimited reported in November. A month earlier, Der Spiegel, the intellectual German news magazine, disclosed that more and more, German journalists are leaving the print media to get safer and more lucrative jobs with corporate public relations agencies.

But some concerned and dedicated journalistic observers both inside and outside the US news business believe the demise or baggage-seat status of newspapers is a farfetched theory. It is promoted, say news insiders, by corporate executives operating large newspaper chains. They are engrossed in making news collection as cheap as possible, while forcing a larger advertising layout in newspapers at the expense of the formerly generous pages of a variety of local, national and international news. And as they do, publishers and editors claim to be inventing a new, easy-to-read, streamlined form of tabloid attractive to all ages, particularly the younger set.

Threat of Extinction

Published explanations of fiscal threats to newspapers from so-called industry communications experts and corporate news executives sound so logical. Their mantra is: the news business is under constant threat of extinction from fierce Internet advertising competition, extraordinary increases in newsprint costs and declining newspaper profit margins.

Link is here: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112006Z.shtml

[Royal Sloan 09]

1. Yes, this is true

and is wide spread and growing everyday in the news/media corporations. Sadly, they justify everything with profits before people.