You Know Things are Bad When the LAT Sells an A-1 Ad -- and Not a Wrap

Anyone may feel free to call me on the following . . . but (a) last time I checked, the Chandlers were never eligible for sainthood, and (b) hasn't the LAT always been
relatively (to put it mildly) soft on movie-industry pecadilloes?

 

Ever since thousands of people started losing their jobs and papers started folding and cutting back to non-daily status, I don't have quite the deathgrip on advertising/editorial ethics that I once did.

If that's a problem for you, so be it.

I'm living in the real world, and it's not a happy place these days.

 

"This" also is a generation that doesn't subscribe to or give a rat's ass, really, about newspapers.

And continuing to move the line -- no ads on page 1 --> wraparound ads for page 1 --> ads that at least look like ads for page 1 --> ads that masquerade as editorial content on page 1 -- is no solution, either. All those fixes have gotten absorbed into the horrible economics and the waters keep rising. They'll be letting NBC fill the news holes soon, and that won't save things either.

 

What will, Joe?
For three years I've read post after post telling me what will NOT work. I've been in every innovation meeting and seminar from Jon Carroll to Eric Schmidt to Craig Newmark. Everyone tells me what isn't working.
I'm tired. I'm tired of watching friend and coworker leave with a shove and/or push.
Bullshit. Fuck that.
There's got to be journalism -- whatever the form -- at the end of this. If I'm part of it fine, if I'm teaching fine, if I'm flacking fine. But, this country needs a trusted voice.
Here's the temporary solution: A three-year ISP tax. Do I agree with it? Probably not. But, if you want to give the profession a chance, it's the only viable solution out there now.
That's all I got.

 

No, there doesn't. Sorry.

 

Nothing to be sorry about.
But, I also happen to think you're wrong.

 

Well, I'm pretty sorry regardless I wish it wasn't so.

But "journalism" as we know it is not even a century old, there was a whole world before it and there will be a whole world after it.

 

Why a "tax"? Why don't ISPs have to pay the Web sites whose content they carry just as cable companies have to pay the networks they carry into homes. I guess the "tax" is a way to grab revenue without differentiating between the thousands or millions of Web sites that might claim some sliver of the dough. Not sure how that would be resolved. But if newspapers banded together -- 100 of them, 200, 500 -- they might enough critical mass to demand a slice of the money, just like ESPN or CNN or other networks get from the cable companies.

 

Wikipedia disagrees with you. Newspapers are a bit older:

[quote author=Wikipedia]
The first newspaper to fit the modern definition as a newspaper was the New York Herald, founded in 1835 and published by James Gordon Bennett. It was the first newspaper to have city staff covering regular beats and spot news, along with regular business and Wall Street coverage. In 1838 Bennett also organized the first foreign correspondent staff of six men in Europe and assigned domestic correspondents to key cities, including the first reporter to regularly cover Congress.[/quote]

Even when a few colonies dotted the Northeast, before this country became united, there were newspapers. (Ben Franklin was the editor of a newspaper.)

So, was there a world before newspapers? Yeah, but I'm not looking forward to being as informed about my government's daily goings-on as a 1592 peasant.

 

The newspapers you are talking about wouldn't have been recognizable as "journalism," especially in a thread complaining about our integrity

 

Those colonial newspapers resemble community rags with reports of who had dinner with whom. But modern news and a sense of ethics didn't develop until after the Spanish-American War at the earliest. Remember the Maine?

 

Sounds like . . . wait for it . . . BLOGS!