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Post by jdredd on Jun 27, 2018 14:44:29 GMT -5
I am following the decline of newspapers closely. Well, as closely as I can, which isn't very close. But I am one of the old geezers who still buys them, for lots of reasons too boring to mention. Anyway, the LA Times (and thus the UT) are under new management. I am hoping that a change they do is get out of the MOR "Can't we all get along?" rut that made me stop buying it a while back. Hey, take a side in the Culture War or else. The NY times, meanwhile, the symbol of lib press in righty mythology, has hired a couple of Fox types to try to sell more papers to the Deplorables, I guess. Good luck with that. At least the WSJ leaves no doubt what side of the fence it's on, daily celebrating the triumph of avarice. Hopefully I will be dead before newspapers die completely, if they are not the walking dead already.
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Post by jdredd on Jun 28, 2018 16:42:07 GMT -5
Here in San Diego, the LA Times made an attempt a decade or so ago to displace the UT as the region's dominant newspaper. It failed, and now it's hard to find the Times here. Eventually the company that owned the Times bought the UT. I was hoping for an upgrade in quality for the UT, but it didn't happen. Instead, the Times itself fell on hard times, reducing it's reporting staff to skeleton levels. While the new owner of the Times claims he will revive journalism in the paper, I've heard THAT before. But frankly I wouldn't cry if the UT was scuttled. It would make me laugh at the whining of San Diegans that we had become LA South. Might improve things in this cultural and political backwater.
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Post by jdredd on Jun 29, 2018 13:08:00 GMT -5
So this morning's UT had an editorial praising the Supremely Stupid Court's decision on Union dues. Whatever. Looks like it's going to be business as usual at the UT and probably the LAT.
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Post by jdredd on Jul 21, 2018 13:00:46 GMT -5
Maybe it is just me, but usually when I read a newspaper I come away thinking "Wow, there was nothing enlightening." But when I read a book, there seems to be enlightenment in every page (depending on the book, of course. There is nothing to learn in a book by Mark Levine, for instance). Why the difference? Is it because just plain news tells you almost nothing? Or is it because newspaper writers are taught to write "objectively"? Or maybe it's because they are under corporate control. I don't know.
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Post by jdredd on Jul 24, 2018 18:38:38 GMT -5
Bought one of the hard-to-find LA Times today to see if anything has changed under the new management. I suspected nothing, as nothing has changed in the UT which is owned by the same billionaire. And sure enough, same old MOR editorial page, with even the same old dufus Jonah Goldberg having a column. Yawn. No reason to make the effort to find the Times as yet.
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Post by jdredd on Aug 1, 2018 3:41:36 GMT -5
Still mulling over why newspapers suck so much compared to books. It might have something to do with the roles journalists and historians see for themselves. By the way, I think I might have finally broken the habit of buying our local rag, which has reporting as pathetic as local TV news.
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Post by jdredd on Aug 2, 2018 5:13:52 GMT -5
One whole day without buying a newspaper. IT HURTS!!!!
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Post by jdredd on Aug 29, 2018 2:56:51 GMT -5
Found a LA Times today (hard to find). I have to buy it occasionally to see if the new owner might be changing direction. Looks like the same old bland MOR opinion page, including that National Review hack Jonah Goldberg. Lots of coverage of climate change for what it's worth. Environmental issues never elected anyone. It's almost like climate change is a "safe" thing to talk about for MOR news outlets.
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Post by jdredd on Sept 21, 2018 2:49:40 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/movies/fahrenheit-11-9-review-michael-moore.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=Movies"“Fahrenheit 11/9” has a structure of peaks and valleys. There is an abundance of “America is screwed” material. The sections on the Flint water scandal are infuriating. The “he was robbed” threnody for Bernie Sanders is considerably less compelling, but it raises valid points. Relief arrives with “but there’s hope!” scenes, which depict insurgent Democrats like the congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and young activists like the Parkland school shooting survivors Emma González and David Hogg. They’re Mr. Moore’s idea of The Solution. Democratic Party elites like Bill and Hillary Clinton and this newspaper, which Mr. Moore considers an epitome of gutless centrism, are, among others, part of The Problem. The version of the movie I saw had no end credits, and according to a publicist at the screening, Mr. Moore is tinkering with the movie still. The cut screened for me and other critics ended with a contrived but emotionally effective coup de théâtre that dares the viewer to call it cheap. But the more I flirted with the dare, the more plausible Mr. Moore’s dramatic speculation felt. He’s still got it in the showmanship department." Well, Mr. Moore hit the nail on the head with this. The NYT is all about gutless centrism.
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Post by jdredd on Sept 21, 2018 17:29:00 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/opinion/sunday/resistance-kavanaugh-trump-protest.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfrontThis is Michelle Alexander’s debut column. "The resistance has once again sprung to action, this time around Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Even before we learned of the allegation that he sexually assaulted a teenage girl during high school, progressive and liberal forces mobilized to resist his elevation to the highest court in the land, asking people to call their members of Congress, to register their opposition. Since the beginning of the Trump administration, it seems there has been a new crisis roiling our nation nearly every day — a new jaw-dropping allegation of corruption, a new wave of repression at the border, another nod to white nationalism or blatant misogyny, another attack on basic civil rights, freedom of the press or truth itself. Invariably, these disturbing events are punctuated by Trump’s predictable yet repugnant Twitter rants." After hiring a couple of right-of-center columnists from Murdochland, to pander to the you-know-whos, the NYT has a new columnist who hopefully will pander to us on the left-of-center. Isn't it interesting the the two new right-of-center columnists are white males, but the left-of-center one is a black female? Works for me.
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Post by jdredd on Oct 23, 2018 0:59:26 GMT -5
Poor UT. UT journalist are moving over to the LAT, owned by the same guy. The UT itself is getting thinner and thinner. Soon it will about 5 pages. Advertisers are abandoning it. What could happen at any time is something that would cause great angst in backwater San Diego: The closing of our paper. Personally, considering its history (until recently) of right-wing lunacy, it would be no great loss. Like losing the Chargers.
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Post by jdredd on Nov 18, 2018 20:00:48 GMT -5
The earth is moving under the local papers. For the first time I can remember, I was able to buy a rare Los Angeles Times at Starbucks, which formerly only sold the UT, the NYT, and Murdoch's creepy WSJ. And my local 7/11 had a slot labeled LAT, but no paper. Stayed tuned. Not that anyone but old geezers even care.
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Post by jdredd on Dec 5, 2018 15:28:31 GMT -5
Time for another uninteresting update on our zombie newspapers. Bought the local fishwrap yesterday, and boy was it thin. Not a good sign if you actually cared if it survives. Meanwhile, was going to buy the LAT because I was at Barnes and Noble, which is one of the few places you can get it, but the line was long and it had some old women in it so you know it was going to be slow. Oh well.
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Post by jdredd on Dec 31, 2018 14:54:44 GMT -5
WHAT??? This is the second day in a row our local zombie paper has had no weather page! Which was about the only useful thing left in it. What's the deal? Are they now to cheap to buy the weather page from whomever they buy it from? Are they slowly letting the air out of the local rag so no one will notice when it disappears, and you have to buy the still barely available LAT? Is it that malware attack on newspapers? I don't know.
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Post by jdredd on Jan 29, 2019 12:15:31 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/01/29/opinion/trump-doctrine-venezuela-afghanistan.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage"Two years into his presidency Donald Trump has no clear legislative strategy, no policy agenda, no plan for remedying his persistent unpopularity and a path to re-election sufficiently bleak that he’s trying to bait a political naïf, the Starbucks billionaire Howard Sltz, into running as a third-party spoiler. Also, he might be impeached. Yet at the same time, amid all the domestic chaos and incompetence and political malpractice, this administration continues to act in foreign policy — not tweet obnoxiously, not rage behind the scenes, but act — as though it’s following a serious grand strategy, one sufficiently coherent and plausible and forward-looking that future presidents might reasonably imitate it." Here is one of the NYT recently hired new columnists trying to put lipstick on the Trump pig. But my point is that right after Trumpty won in 2016, the NYT hired two new columnists that could appeal to the Fox mps. But now, with a new fresh breeze of the Democrats moving ever so slightly to the left, this year the NYT hired two new columnists that are now the usual dull MOR lib types, but come with a more left viewpoint. I love that their opinion page now has a little more edge. "Can't we all get along?" is really boring. Sorry, Dave Brooks.
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