I despair for the future of American newspapers.
The local paper, The Oregonian, is fading fast, but at least it isn’t owned by a corrupt gambling mogul. Yet.
What future?
I haven’t opened a newspaper in 10 years.
That picture is the new go to for the phrase “piggy eyed”. Also for just “piggy”.
These guys woouldn’t be so secretive if they were proud of what they’re doing.
The Oregonian has been a worthless rag for the past 20 years, at least, so it’s pretty depressing to hear that it’s getting even worse lately.
Never a great paper, but when I moved up here (2002) The Oregonian still had travel and science sections, and was a proper sized newspaper. There was varied mix of editorial contributors, and interesting columns.
Now it’s a . . . tabloid? Maybe just a bit bigger. And three days a week there’s not physical paper at all. The editorials are all “let’s make Oregon business friendly!” which often sorts out into attacks on anyone who wants to limit carbon emissions or keep coal and oil trucks from slogging through.
I’ve been reading a newspaper every day since the late 70s, but I suspect that it would be better to break that tradition than continue with The Oregonian.
“… I would be focusing on the positive, not the negative”
Has Michael Reed, CEO of New Media Investment Corp, ever seen the out put of any media orifice?
The Kochs gave been doing this for years.
I want Steve Duin to die in the lamest fire, evar.
In some countries, mostly in Europe, transparency for the ownership of newspapers is mandatory. How efficiently it’s enforced and whether it can be worked around are both worth debating, but it’s there.
I would go farther–I would say that news media can only be owned by individual investors or by like non-competing media. (Thus a newspaper can buy a newspaper in another city, but not one in it’s own city.) Mutual funds and ETFs can invest in newspapers but shares in their hands do not get to vote.
The house always wins.
Try it down here, where if it’s not owned by Murdochs, it’s Packers or Farifax. 
There’s a reason my primary print news sources–the ones I pick up on the way to the bus and read on the ride home–are the local alt-weeklies and LGBT papers.
At least with those there are a ton of ads that give me some idea who’s paying the piper.
A few billion buys a pretty serious megaphone for one’s free speech
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
