Democratic-Socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says he’ll stop greedy fat cats from buying, merging, and closing news outlets. The Columbia Journalism Review gives spaces to this “Bernie saves journalism” plan. Would the truth get out more under President Bernie Sanders, or is he merely disturbed that the Democratic party’s PR firm shrinks as the Internet continues killing newspapers?
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Bernie Saves Journalism: Will He Stop Greedy Fat Cats from Killing Newspapers?
Democratic-Socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says he’ll stop greedy fat cats from buying, merging, and closing news outlets. The Columbia Journalism Review gives spaces to this “Bernie saves journalism” plan. Would the truth get out more under President Bernie Sanders, or is he merely disturbed that the Democratic party’s PR firm shrinks as the Internet continues killing newspapers?
8 replies on “Bernie Saves Journalism: Will He Stop Greedy Fat Cats from Killing Newspapers?”
The description intro to this video says it all. “. . . or is he (Bernie) merely disturbed(?)”. You can stop right there; one word that says it all.
Bernie is quite the complex guy. One day he will be warning us that cutting down all the trees it takes to make paper to produce all the newspapers is ruining the habitat for animals, causing entire species to go extinct, causing pollution and causing global warming, then the next he wants more newspapers. Sounds like government creating an issues that government needs to solve.
Wonder if he realizes that the news was at least 24 hours old by the time you pick the paper up off your doorstep and read it. Many of us were more comfortable in the old world of paper and things moving a lot slower, at least partially because we always had paper to line the bird cage or light the fireplace. However, like it or not, the world information flow has sped up significantly and 24 hour old news is getting close to ancient history.
When companies are bought and merged, often it is admin staff, the accountants, secretaries, HR and such that are cut and not the actual production workers (though some times yes). That should mean that as papers reduce in number they still have the same number of reporters creating content. If not, that is more a signal than the raw number of papers.
If the newspaper companies want to farm out ad hosting, they can lose the profits. If they bring the advertising back in house they won’t lose as much to Google.
Sanders Wants a Tax to Fund Journalism. Whatever shall we call it?
‘Pravda’s USA Today’?
‘New Pravda Times’?
I wonder if the people who are doing the internet thing, as you guys and many others are doing, were included in the number of “journalists” if that number would not have actually grown over the last 25 years. Just because the big boys are smaller doesn’t mean the total number is.
Scott is definitely still a journalist.
Reposted from youtube
The main reason local “newspapers” are failing has a lot less to do with “competition” than it does with a combination of extortion from the copyright mafia and progressivism in the workplace. Local papers have to pay for the paper and ink and all that as you know. But they also have to “Rent” the software they use to print. They also have to “subscribe” to all the major new outlets (abc, nbc, ap, fox, etc) they don’t let you rewrite their stories for free after all. They even have to “Rent” the typeface they use in the printing. Rent the stock images and photo’s shown in the paper. (You don’t think they can afford full time photographers to go out and get their own images did you) THEN they have to pay for all those WOKE programs that they force their employees to endure. With all that overhead you wonder why the price of paper fluctuating can wipe out a papers profits in a matter of months. The reason they are suffering and not the internet sites “as much”… Is due to the copyright chasers find it easier to go after “brick and mortar” businesses than they do going after a blogger in his efficiency apartment. (which is also technically against the laws to have a home business in so many places)
I was a Newspaper pressman for 23+ years, working for multiple companies, and saw the writing on the wall. It’s all about $$, I went through press cut-downs (paper resizing) with every paper I worked for.
The last paper that I worked for in southern Cal. had 48 pressmen when I started, and had 16 at last count. When I moved to Tucson in 04 I eventually got in at the local paper which was actually 2 different ones printed at the same facility. This year the pressroom shut down totally, and all production was moved to Phoenix.
I still print.. but now on golf tees, divot tools and ball markers. 😉
I have a machine shop and one of my customers, that I sometimes make parts for, is Scripp’s newspapers. I have been there numerous times and have seen the presses. They have many smaller presses for printing specialty little papers, flyers, and magazines. But the two main newspaper presses are enormous. Each is two stories tall and maybe 150 feet long. When you go into the control room it is just a fairly small office with a few computers. The room faces the presses and a huge plate glass window faces the press. The main presses are controlled by just those small computers. It is fascinating.