December 13, 2005

Barbra Streisand cancels her subscription to the L.A. Times due to the paper's firing of liberal columnist Robert Scheer. Laugh all you want, but Babs is probably onto something when she posits that Scheer's dismissal is "part of a larger trend toward the corporatization of our media." Indeed, the New Yorker recently published an article detailing the gutting of the L.A. Times by the suits at Chicago's Tribune Co., which owns the Times.

There's no doubt that old-school journalism is under fire these days. The Bush administration and the right wing are notably hostile to journalism. The old journalistic business model has been abandoned; a lack of resources (and possibly slippage in attention to quality among today's journalistic corps) means that journalists are more likely than ever to parrot press releases rather than do actual reporting. And the pressure to be make money in the face of shrinking profit margins means the truth gets short shrift in other ways. This, despite the possibility that investing in quality journalism "correlates over time with superior circulation performance and advertising revenues". So what's to do? Some people think the non-profit sector will come to the rescue. And then there's citizen journalism -- though that's been shown to have its own problems. May you live in interesting times, indeed.

posted by HawthorneWingo 18 years ago
  • "May you live in interesting times" is not a Chinese proverb. So the threat is internal, not external.
  • The Chicago Tribune is perhaps the nations most august conservative newspaper, perhaps challenged only by the Wall Street Journal and I am not sure that the Journal is really that conservative except in the editorials whereas the Tribune seems conservative to its core. (I am a few years out of date on regular Tribune readership,so if it has tilted left as of late . . .)
  • Sorry to say, but anything that Steisand hates can't be all bad...
  • Well put together FPP, H Wingo! (((! Unfortunately for those of us McLuhan / Chomsky fans, we're waaayyyyy past it. Listen to this 5 minute interview here for the state of the media in Noam's world. His point is that reporters are so deeply indoctrinated, that they think they're doing the right thing (even before they get out of school), but they're just feeding the advertising-driven system they've been told to all along. Look for the "TV Turnoff Week" thread in April. It's always a hootenanny.
  • that said, i'd like examples of actual investigative journalism. y'know just to fend off the constant malaise that we're sooooo fucked as a nation/democratic experiment, because the free press is not.
  • Look for the "TV Turnoff Week" thread in April. It's always a hootenanny. Ooh, can we start now??? Feel free to turn off the TV if you choose, but dont think not watching tv somehow makes you smarter or better than anyone else, any more than not reading books or the internet would. FIN
  • more on topic: FitzSimons does not envision a shift from print “in our lifetime,” although media companies seem almost desperate to claim a piece of Internet real estate. seriously, is there a reason to have paper newspapers anymore? I cancelled my LA Times subscription b/c I could read everything online and not have to haul the damn things down 4 stories to the recycling. Kind of playing devil's advocate here, but if you want to cut costs, why not phase out the whole printing infrastructure, and charge people 10 cents or so a day to view the paper online?
  • the daily commute. dont think not watching tv somehow makes you smarter or better than anyone else yeah, that's pretty much it in a nutshell. The debate I mean. Which isn't the point.
  • Can you tell me what is the point? Not being a smart-ass, I just honestly am not sure. I suppose it's based on a belief that TV is somehow "controlling" our thoughts and the way we act and process information, and we should resist that? I can see that, although personally I believe people have more free will than that, and if the person can't process TV critically, his odds of processing any other kind of information is pretty long too...
  • I suppose it's based on a belief that TV is somehow "controlling" our thoughts and the way we act and process information, and we should resist that? Well, yes and no. The debate tends to go off the reals very quickly because the literalness of that "'controlling' our thoughts" gets everybody going. The point, at least as I see it - YMMV -, is that 1) to some degree (great or small), all media affects us in a profoundly different way than that other stimulus, such as interpersonal communications or sunlight or the taste of beer. (<--this is a great point to discuss in itself) 2) Because we're highly conceptual animals, most of that effect is translated by the way we think (although some things, like the subsonic boom of a subwoofer, or the scary part of a movie, affect us on a physical level directly, without any help of a conscious process). 3) If society is based in part (large or small) on the way we think, then media does affect society. That's pretty much it. But we never seem to get there, because it devolves into a "nobody tells me what to think / Stupid people are morons" discussion, and that's just beside the point.
  • Sorry to say, but anything that Steisand hates can't be all bad... Pointless much?
  • The point is, using "Bargra Streisand said..." or did as a illistrating a point automatically makes me consider that perhaps whoever or whatever it was that pissed her off was probably right because in my lifetime I haven't heard her say or do anything that I 1)cared about or 2)agreed with. Any mocking or ridiculing of the most self-absorbed and self-important person in the world cannot be passed up.
  • Barbra Streisand is a fucking idiot.
  • But she can sing tho.
  • She's not a bad singer. Voice great. Just a shit brain.
  • She's a crap singer. Too nasal.
  • My wife adores her. Try saying anything bad about Babs' singing around her & you get a smack. She doesn't disagree about the woman's personality, though. To be honest, Streisand has a lot of feel. You don't have to be technically good, if you have feel.
  • She does have feel. Also, I do not want to be smacked by Mrs. Chy.
  • even our piano in the parlour father bought for ten cents on the dollar secondhand pearls I'm sick of secondhand curls I never get a single thing that's new even Jake, the plumber (he's the man I adore) had the nerve to tell me he's been married before everyone knows that I'm just secondhand Rose from second avenue! from second avenue! nu!
  • "The Times keeps its promises to sources" Should the Los Angeles Times Reveal the Khalidi Videotape? And I should believe that McCain is all about change, because??
  • Damn't! Another gem from bees... with a plumber to boot!