[RememberMee]

Ah, common, printed media, radio & TV stations, "local" media are dead all around the states. Most of newspapers (with thousands of different names) are owned by a few (transnational) entities. All "local" papers reprint news fed to them by a couple of transnational news agencies via mother corporations (without even paraphrasing). On top of generic news there are plenty poorly written banalities about nothing, diluted with nationally syndicated columnists, trivial health, nutrition etc. advice and tonnes of school sports. Local media has no teeth or uses, it feels like sterilized good for nothing, it actually depressing reminder what USA become. Flipping 3 local TN TV stations stuck in my mind, all 3 dispatched a crew to a HS after a HS football player broke his finger during a game (I don't make this up, swear). Neither of 3 would cover (not speaking of challenging) anything that matters in a big sense.

[detwahDJ]

Originally Posted by RememberMee

Ah, common, printed media, radio & TV stations, "local" media are dead all around the states. Most of newspapers (with thousands of different names) are owned by a few (transnational) entities. All "local" papers reprint news fed to them by a couple of transnational news agencies via mother corporations (without even paraphrasing). On top of generic news there are plenty poorly written banalities about nothing, diluted with nationally syndicated columnists, trivial health, nutrition etc. advice and tonnes of school sports. Local media has no teeth or uses, it feels like sterilized good for nothing, it actually depressing reminder what USA become. Flipping 3 local TN TV stations stuck in my mind, all 3 dispatched a crew to a HS after a HS football player broke his finger during a game (I don't make this up, swear). Neither of 3 would cover (not speaking of challenging) anything that matters in a big sense.

Good points - media increasingly centralized. Deregulation allowing mergers.
News-for-profit gets you "entertainment" because it's more profitable. People who want hard news are a minority apparently (or maybe not as easily manipulated). PBS news, which has some citizen input and increasingly dependent upon corporate support, always on the right-wing chopping block.

[us66]

Here's what's wrong with the newspaper...the articles are usually rubbish and the paper costs too darn much now. My local papers are as follows and here's what's wrong with them:

-Detroit News and Free Press: Can't tell a difference between them. Definitely not worth the buck for a single daily edition. Freep has Pearls Before Swine, News has Family Circus. I used to read the car ads, but I don't qualify for any employee discounts, so the ads are useless to me.
-Macomb Daily: Complete rubbish. I'll pick one out of a trash can and do the crossword; that's all the paper's worth to me. Have purchased two all year; both editions had articles concerning my wife's store. The website's article comments sections are hilarious; you'd think the entire county belonged to the Ku Klux Klan.
-Oakland Press: Used to be the best paper in the entire metro; now affiliated with the same folks who own the Macomb Daily and Daily Tribune. Paper isn't worth the paper it's printed on now. I did buy one when the store was in there, too. (Same exact business section as the Daily and Tribune, actually.)
-Grosse Pointe News: Pretty entertaining for the buck. Comes out one a week. My fav paper in all Michigan. Even comes with a few manufacturer's coupons. Crime section is great...if they catch someone spitting on the sidewalk it might make the paper.
There's others too but I don't see enough of them to comment.

As for journalistic bias, I don't see it. I think they all feed us trash, Fox included. They all lie like dogs. RT (Russia Today) is pretty interesting, but not every cable system has it.

News is readily available from the internet nowadays, with any bias you want to see. I get much of mine from Alex Jones (a yellow journalist if there ever was one, but still interesting) and Matt Drudge, as well as various newspapers and talk radio stations in my Facebook news feed. Strangely, I don't have any from Michigan- they're all from Nevada, Ohio, Illinois, and Ontario. I know more about what's going on in Toronto and Las Vegas than what's going on in Detroit.

[merit1sje]

or it could be from the fact that most news agencies cull their news stories FROM the Associated press.

[merit1sje]

The days of printed media are fast coming to an end. It is the world that we live in; It is the world that we have created.....

[VM1138]

Originally Posted by Retroit

I have a hard time believing that people today spend as much time reading news on the internet as people used to spend reading the paper. I think it has more to do with the dumbing-down of America. We're becoming more illiterate, less educated, shorter attention spans, more interest in sleaze than substance. Just look how the political debate as degenerated to sound bites, blunders, and trivial issues.

I have to disagree. People get way more news from the Internet than print. Have you read any newspapers lately? Local ones are complete garbage, and even the heralded New York Times ran a front page story on Mitt Romney's hair of all things.

I agree that our attention spans are getting shorter, but blame TV for that. TV news is what's screwing up the country, not Internet news.

EDIT: I still don't understand why a company would have both the Detroit News and Freep. They run the exact same stories every day. Wouldn't it make sense to consolidate into one, or start actually offering a difference in coverage?

[detwahDJ]

Originally Posted by VM1138

I have to disagree. People get way more news from the Internet than print. Have you read any newspapers lately? Local ones are complete garbage, and even the heralded New York Times ran a front page story on Mitt Romney's hair of all things.

I agree that our attention spans are getting shorter, but blame TV for that. TV news is what's screwing up the country, not Internet news.

EDIT: I still don't understand why a company would have both the Detroit News and Freep. They run the exact same stories every day. Wouldn't it make sense to consolidate into one, or start actually offering a difference in coverage?

The News used to be the conservative paper vs the more liberal Free Press. The ownership class vs the worker class. The FP, out of economic necessity, has moved to the right in order to accommodate the suburban right-wing readership, thus making the two papers less distinguishable.
It's not just the articles they run (most come from the wire services) - it was the editorial perspectives that made them different. Detroit still needs those two viewpoints.

[michigan83]

The News used to be the conservative paper vs the more liberal Free Press. The ownership class vs the worker class. The FP, out of economic necessity, has moved to the right in order to accommodate the suburban right-wing readership, thus making the two papers less distinguishable.
It's not just the articles they run (most come from the wire services) - it was the editorial perspectives that made them different. Detroit still needs those two viewpoints.

I disagree that the liberal viewpoint represents the "working class." A liberal publication would better represent the intellectual, highly-educated elite. The views of the working class would be more well-served by a conservative publication.

[detwahDJ]

Originally Posted by michigan83

I disagree that the liberal viewpoint represents the "working class." A liberal publication would better represent the intellectual, highly-educated elite. The views of the working class would be more well-served by a conservative publication.

FoxSpeak!

[stanman13]

Don't forget this is/was a union town. I don't remember the last time a conservative (especially the Fox news type) expressed support for the worker's right to organize.

It's a moot point since the JOA anyway.