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David Simon's lament in Esquire: "A newspaper can't love you back."

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Double Down, Jan 15, 2008.

  1. Moderator1

    Moderator1 Moderator Staff Member

    I just bought season three today.

    Hell of a piece. Hell of a piece.
     
  2. Chi City 81

    Chi City 81 Guest

    You've taken The Wire plunge, Moddy?
     
  3. Moderator1

    Moderator1 Moderator Staff Member

    Am taking. The EE at the Times-Dispatch was out recovering from surgery recently and he told me he filled the time he was out watching the series on DVD.
    "Great fucking show, great fucking show," he said. Several times.

    So I'm giving it a whirl.
     
  4. That's a decent analogy.

    What has pissed me off about phone companies is they wouldn't let you have internet access without forcing you to pay for a phone line. AT&T just now changed that policy. I don't know if it's because they're righting the ship or if it's because other providers don't require the extra cost.
     
  5. FishHack76

    FishHack76 Active Member

    And unlike soda machines, the industry never figured out a way to accept dollar bills on a newspaper box and give back change. Not everyone has 50 cents - or 75 cents - on them at that moment. And unlike the post office where you can pay to mail a package using your debit card, the industry never figured out how to utilize that technology either.
    Newspapers need careful investment in their products and people, and this may be pie in the sky ... but they need to pull themselves off the Wall Street teat -- as do most businesses -- if they want to give themselves a puncher's chance.
    All that money is great, but it's promising your soul to the Devil. Pretty soon, he's going to come to collect, or at least loudly demand that you cut staff, stop giving employees health insurance, make changes to the board of directors, reach a 33 percent profit margin or sell the company.
     
  6. Simon_Cowbell

    Simon_Cowbell Active Member

    I'm not buying that one.
     
  7. PHINJ

    PHINJ Active Member

    I'll never have a land line again. In fact, when I recently moved, the local cable/interwebs/phone company offered a deal where I could get high-speed interwebs and cable for $99 a month...or interwebs/cable/phone for $99.

    I turned down the "free" phone.
     
  8. JayFarrar

    JayFarrar Well-Known Member

    In the question about the boxes.
    Newspapers have figured out ways to sell just one. They also figured out ways to have people pay for them with debit cards.
    The problem is that those boxes are very expensive and they don't always work.
    I've actually seen the spring-loaded box that shoots one paper out. It works great Monday through Saturday. When the Sunday paper rolls around, it doesn't work so great because that paper is so much thicker. The preferred method of selling papers isn't through a rack anyway, since they tend to get stolen, most papers like to have them sold at the conv. store where the clerk can keep an eye on them and people can pay for them however they want. Plus it increases foot traffic inside the store and then someone might buy coffee or a coke or something with the paper.

    And land line use is down dramatically. AT&T has roughly 65.7 million wireless customers, now the bulk of their business, but land line or what the phone companies call wireline business has been roughly cut in half since 1997. The numbers stabilized a bit once Internet offerings became more popular and they added more high-speed internet exchanges.
    In a random survey of people I know, only three had landlines, and it was all to have home internet and or satellite. Two of them didn't know their numbers, since they never actually used the phone. One used their landline on a regular basis and that's my brother, the SID, who gets pestered at home by nagging reporters.
     
  9. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    I'll always have a land line. I don't wanna be screwed if my cell has run out of juice. Plus there are certain people who are more comfortable calling you on a land line, where constant good reception is more of a given. A cell is not an unmitigated good vis a vis landline.
     
  10. Jar of Flies

    Jar of Flies Member

    Just read the piece in the hard copy of Esquire.

    My immediate thought?

    I need to watch "The Wire" ASAP.

    Great piece. That's one of the reasons why I subscribe to Esquire right there.
     
  11. Watch The Wire!

    Nobody has ever been disappointed watching The Wire.

    But start at season 1.
     
  12. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    Started renting the episodes, starting with Season 1, and just finished the second season tonight. Awesome is all I can say. Makes watching network shows feel like reading comic books compared to novels. Purposely avoiding Season 5, currently airing, until we're caught up, even though it's in my newspaper wheelhouse.
     
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