Earnings: Nation's newspapers face margin's squeeze

Editors like to blame the internet.

The real problem lies with the newsrooms. They're not responsive.

What the newspapers could do.Signs the Media is in trouble

Have you dared read a newspaper lately? Take a look at the number of web-links they list in an article. Ask yourself, "Why are they using paper and wasting space to list things that could be listed elsewhere?

The idea behind computers was that this would be a far more efficient use of resources, we'd use less paper, and information would be made more accessible electronically. Some book publishers have saved paper by letting authors list the notes on-line. White House lawyers know nobody reads the fine print.

Discussion

Listing many web-links in a single article is unnecessarily repetitive. As opposed to necessary repetitions in advertising.

The links could easily be placed on a single web-page for future reference.

Your arsenal to fight the media-analcyst non-sense

Here is a list of likely arguments you will here from the analcysts. Analysts have already been given the guidance. Their goal is to distract attention from the initial forecasts.

Other uses: "The space could be used for advertising, but the media wants to serve the public."

Don't be fooled. The media's number one loyalty in America is to the corporate machine, advertisers, and the people who pay the bills. The reader is simply the consumer, to be tricked to buy information and make them believe they cannot live without something they were otherwise not aware existed.

Because the advertising space is sold in advance, they have alot of "empty space" to fill every day. Other than the press releases they have no other content to hold the ads together.

This is another way of saying, "There are not enough buyers of advertising space to justify the excessive supply of white space, but the editors are not making enough money to create content.

The easiest way to hide the "we don't have enough content to fill up the white space"-problem is to simply list information that could otherwise be listed elsewhere.

Discrimination: "The readers need to know what the links are so they can look them up. If you don't provide the links to non-web-users, you're discriminating against those who cannot access a computer"

This argument is a diversion from "whether the editors have enough content" to the illusory argument about fairness.

Those links that they have to look up, can only be looked up if there is a computer. If they have a computer, they can look up a single web page far easier than they could read a newspaper.

The problem is that the editors have no other content; and cannot afford to hire reporters to write stories. They're in so much trouble, they can't even afford quality copy from blind writing pools.

Fairness: "It's not fair to those who can't access the web to be denied the links."

Uh, "if they can't access the web, then whether they have the link or not is irrelevant. They have an access issue, not a content-issue.