Rest In Peace, old media. The Los Angeles Times reported this weekend that Conservative Talk Radio is failing in California as evidenced by the demise of some local talk show radio programs. More responsible reporting from the Times.... not.All the while rubbing their ink-stained hands with glee, the Times does mention that lack of advertising budget is causing some of these programs to fail... This is not a rejection of conservatism fellas... its the free market working.
Inasmuch as the Times has to accept when it is time to take handouts from foreign nationals to stay afloat, or sell their corporate jet in order to get by, the radio market in California for Conservative talk show hosts has tightened. The weaker programs die off to make way for stronger of the herd.
The Times has declared this as a rejection of Conservatism. Ha. I think not.
To the Times corporation: look to your own. When you have to sell your corporate headquarters and get it leased back to yourself, perhaps it is time to look to your own. People do not go to your publication anymore to get the news about our world. For some real reporting, hear this: your circulation is down (and it can't get up). The LA Times has lost 8% of its circulation in the last six months.
How sad that even in its death throes, the Times cannot stop flailing about. Perhaps if they just reported the news, there wouldn't be a wholesale rejection of your product. I know that's a hard pill to swallow for die hard liberals who were used to making stuff up or reading stuff that was made up. I know. I know. There, there now.
The demise of your paper wasn't orchestrated by anyone but yourselves. For all of you socialists at the Times, this is how it works; you have a shitty product and the free market has rejected your shitty product. The same could be said of the conservative talk shows in California. That is OK. That, (once again) is called capitalism. Let's not pretend that this is a trend of wholesale rejection of conservatism any more than your paper wasting away is a wholesale rejection of your shopworn liberalism.
Rest in peace, old media. Have some dignity and die reporting the news. I guess there is something to be said for dying in a manner in which you lived. I guess there is something to be said for not going quietly into the night.
Dylan Thomas:
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the
light.
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… Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.
ReplyDeleteWith the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for industrial production have to be replaced with structures optimized for digital data. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem.