Newspapers are dying for a few reasons
1) as Bruce states, all the news is available online easily, right
away and for free (the last part may change)
2) the news reading public gets smaller all the time. Just as Michael
Greenwood mentioned in his post a few minutes ago, younger people are
not interested. This is for a variety of reasons, the main one being
they aren't really interested in reading which they see as "boring".
Anna brings her son into work a couple times a week and he can truly
be a pain in the ass. She wants him to read for just a 1/2 hour and
every 5 minutes he walks in to look at the clock to see if 30 minutes
has passed. It pisses me off until I finally tell him to do what his
mother says or I'll pull the plug on his internet - which is what he
wants to do, play games on the internet, and his retention for what
he read is zero anyway.. 5 minutes after he finishes he can't answer
the question about when Columbus came to America. He is sooo
representative of today's younger generations. Same goes to B&W
movies, which is why at IMDB the "Top 250 Films" hardly match in any
way what we as film historians would have listed just 10 or even just
5 years ago. How can Fight Club be the 17th best movie of all time
while Ben Hur is #136 (for my money it's the best film of all time).
I could go on endlessly about films on the IMDB list that shouldn't
be there (in my opinion)
3) newspapers and magazines were slow on the uptake in the digital
revolution. 15 years ago I was the first person to make available
golden age comic books in digital format (www.electro-comics.com) I
said at the time that this is where we are headed and that a good
digital publication would contain animation, sound and even video
games. I went to both Marvel and DC with the idea.. I'm telling you
that even though I knew people high up in both companies - they
literally laughed at me. Look at them now. Both companies are looking
at seriously declining readership numbers. All comics by all
companies published this month will not reach the 2million copies a
month that Captain Marvel sold during WW2, or especially the 4million
copies a month that Walt Disney's Comics and Stories sold until
almost 1950 when they started to decline to 2million. So during WW2
one comic title sold more copies than the some 500 comics titles
printed today combined..
4) today, people expect everything to be free as a result of the
internet and they for the most part feel copyright is not to be paid
attention to. They think that anything on the internet is public
domain and can be hijacked to their own websites. The biographies of
comic artists that I wrote for my www.comic-art.com encyclopedia in
1994/95 etc have been stolen for a variety of other websites by
a-holes who feel no compunction about stealing my stuff (I wonder how
they feel when someone steals their stuff?)
Newspaper publishers are all trying to figure out how to start
charging for "Premium content".. but they're too late. The horses are
already out of the barn. It has become clear that overall, the only
companies really benefiting from "internet advertising revenue" are
those selling the ads.. aka: Google.. as internet advertising clearly
does not create the same revenue as print advertising. Look at the
Nifty Nickel (or whatever it is in your city). Classified ads are on
Craigslist and fleaBay listings.. so the NN is reduced to a few sheets now..
we have gotten smarter.. maybe.. More boring.. most definitely
Rich
At 12:35 PM 12/12/2009, Bruce Hershenson wrote:
Nothing in the "newspapers" is every really "news" in this Internet
world. It has circulated the globe countless times by the time they
finally print their paper.
Maybe that is part of the reason newspapers are deader than doornails.
Anyone know when the last time a major newspaper printed a "special
EXTRA edition"? Or when was the last time you heard a newsboy (in
real life) yelling "Extra, extra, read all about it"?
Bruce
On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Dave Rosen
<<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
Good to see his obit in the Times but they're a little slow off the
mark. He died almost two weeks ago...
Dave
----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Halegua Comic Art"
<<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]>
To: <<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, December 12, 2009 3:12 PM
Subject: [MOPO] Paul Naschy, Spain's High Priest of Horror Movies, Dies at 75
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/movies/12naschy.html?hpw>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/movies/12naschy.html?hpw
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