Sequester Hysteria in Washington, DC — It’s All To Show You

The sequester explained, a cut is not a cut as normal cut as you think about.

It’s baseline budgeting, a government trick. Time for a review …

Every so often you find examples of real journalism. Here are some powerful, well-done stories from local TV stations.

1. Exposing the plethora of benefits available to those who want government-subsidized idleness.
2. Exposing how eminent domain laws are used to screw poor people out of their property.
3. Exposing local government officials engaged in a witch hunt against an innocent man.

Newspapers also sometimes speak truth to power.

1. A Michigan newspaper exposing how motorists were getting ripped off by illegal speed limits.
2. A Pennsylvania newspaper exposing how a local bureaucrat  union tried to stop a boy scout from improving a local park.
3. A New York newspaper exposing the education establishment for giving teachers $100,000-plus salaries for doing nothing.

I Have Fallen And Can’t Get up … WHY?

I wonder what the lamestream media’s problem is? Can you say it’s of no use to the public to just repeat drivel?

IBIS World named the newspaper industry as one of those most likely to become extinct in America, and for good reason it seems. According to the Newspaper Association of America, advertising revenue for newspapers continues to be in free fall hitting its lowest point since 1950.

And note that this isn’t just attributable to the switch from print to digital news. Notice, per Professor Mark Perry, that the trend is almost straight down even with online revenues included:

Straight down!!!

Part of the newspaper industry’s problem is, undeniably, one of medium. Printing the news on dead trees and distributing it to the public a day or so after it happened just isn’t a practical business model in this modern age.

But if that were the only problem, we should see the newspaper industry’s collapse mitigated by online revenue. Which means the problem isn’t just papers versus websites. The problem is the way newspapers report the news.

Or don’t report.

WallStreet Comes To Florida

‘Wall St.’ flees NY for tax-free FL…

Stocks still a sucker’s bet?

No State taxes, and better weather year round in Florida.

Fleeing NY’s and Bloomberg’s high tax panacea??? Do trading floors even matter anymore? Or is all trading done electronically anyway???

And just for fun it’s hard to find another industry going out of business quicker than printed liberal newspapers. My wife was a newspaper woman … At a one time conservative newspaper.

Decline In Printed Newspaper Leads To Puppy Poop Problems…

And now even birdcage liners and puppy crappers are threatned. In our area the Newspaper moved their publishing and distribution to the illegals part of our county, to cut costs. Noone but tourists are seen reading the newspapers anymore. It’s all pads for the rest of us.

NY Post: ‘Abuse of Power’ For Marathon’s Media Tent To Get Electricity

This is the local newspaper. Does this make any sense, with the advent of the coming cold.

Couldn’t the generators be deployed to other needy areas, other than a media tent for the press to cover the marathon.

Commnon sense something Mayor Doomberg doesn’t understand.

Not to worry your Big Government supplied, and controlled health care will be fine.

NYT’s Slimmed Down Profit

The common stock of the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) plunged from $10.87 last week to a close of $8.19 on Friday after the liberal mouthpiece announced that its 3rd quarter net income dropped 85 percent.

While analysts are blaming soft advertising revenues, I think something more ominous is happening at America’s national, bleeding-heart newspaper.

For sure, advertising revenues are dropping nationally as economic conditions have deteriorated over the last two quarters.

Newspapers in general are struggling still as advertisers turn more money over to digital. Unlike newspaper display ads, which are just dead print on a page, digital ads can measured. Advertisers like that, a lot.

But still advertising revenues for the NYT are plunging in industries where we have been told by no less an authority than –gasp!- the New York Times: “Hurray! The recovery is finally on its way!”

Slimming down….

Newspaper Ad Revenue Tanks!!!

Over the past decade, lots of big newspaper companies have gone bust.

Newspapers- Hope-less

But when you take a look at what’s happened to newspaper advertising over that period, it’s a wonder they all haven’t.

Above, is a chart via Mark J. Perry and Bill Gross. It shows inflation-adjusted newspaper advertising revenue over the past 60 years.

Thanks to the precipitous decline in the last ~7 years, the industry is now back to where we it was in 1950. And it’s only slightly better off when you factor in online revenue.

Journalism professor Jay Rosen of NYU observes that the peak year was the one in which blogging software first appeared.

OK, Pardon My Laughing: The New York Times Co. Posts a Loss

Maybe if they had anything worth reading … Instead of leftists drivel.

The New York Times Company reported a second-quarter loss on Thursday because of a write-down in the value of About.com and continuing declines in print and digital advertising revenue.

The net loss was $88.1 million, or 60 cents a share, compared with a net loss of $119.7 million, or 79 cents a share, in the period a year earlier, when the company wrote down the value of its regional newspapers, which it later sold.

OK, now laugh … Does anyb0opdy care. They didn’t create the business anyway.

Another One Bites The Dust: Times-Picayune lays off more than 200 employees (Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™)

Well maybe they didn’t bite, but nibble. But it’s a good thing when any news source takes it in the shorts. Hey they are just cutting newspaper to three days a week. And for time sensitive stuff, they just ignore? Methinks the old print press is this centuries buggy whip.

NOLA.com reports:

Managers at The Times-Picayune informed more than 200 members of the newspaper staff Tuesday that their last day at the company will be Sept. 30. The Times-Picayune, according to company executives, is shrinking its overall staff – including news, advertising, circulation and other departments – by 32 percent, or 201 employees.

Employees who were not laid off were offered new jobs beginning this fall with Nola Media Group or Advance Central Services Louisiana, two new companies that will oversee news coverage and production and distribution, respectively, for The Times-Picayune and its affiliated website nola.com.

The layoffs come as part of a plan to reduce publication of the daily newspaper to three days a week this fall. When the four publication days are cut, the news operation will shift its focus online to NOLA.com, and both the newspaper and website will be overseen by the newly created Nola Media Group. Ricky Mathews, who will replace Ashton Phelps as the paper’s publisher, will be its president. The decision was made in response to a digital shift in the newspaper industry that makes more digitally focused content-gathering necessary, according to an announcement posted to NOLA.com May 24.

Nola Media Group, which will include news, advertising sales and marketing, will employ 271 individuals, 189 of whom received employment offers on Tuesday. Another 82 positions will be filled before the company launches this fall, 52 of them in the news operation.

ACS, which includes the finance, accounting, production and information technology departments will employ 245 people. Offers were made to 211 people Tuesday for that company, with 34 people yet to be hired.

In The Times-Picayune newsroom, 84 employees — nearly half of the 175 people employed in the newsroom — were notified Tuesday that they will lose their jobs and were offered severance packages.

Yet another “summer of recovery” event. Don’t worry, the private sector is doing fine.

I hope the former employees will be OK. The newspaper business is moving on, to electronic publishing.

Analysis: In Scare for Newspapers, Digital ad Growth Stalls

As more newspapers cut back on print to reduce costs and focus on their websites, a troubling trend has emerged: online advertising sales are stalling.

Is the public just becoming ad averse? What’s the value proposition in wasting people’s time?

In the first quarter, digital advertising revenue at newspapers rose just 1 percent from a year ago, the fifth consecutive quarter that growth has declined, according to the Newspaper Association of America, a trade organization.

A flood of excess advertising space, the rise of electronic advertising exchanges that sell ads at cut-rate prices, and the weak U.S. economy are all contributing to the slowdown, publishing executives and observers say.

For an industry savaged by the erosion of print advertising dollars, significantly boosting digital revenue is necessary for survival. But the double-digit online growth rates that many newspapers used to enjoy — and on which their hopes for a prosperous future rest — could be a thing of the past.

Seems so …

It’s surly not in just reprinting what the AP prints.

Newspapers, Deep, Deep Do Do

“A growing number of executives predict that in five years many newspapers will offer a print home-delivered newspaper only on Sunday,” Pew’s report said.

“They’re continuing to lose ground to tech intermediaries,” such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. as well as to Apple Inc. and Internet retailer Amazon.com Inc., said Tom Rosenstiel

US Newspapers Post Deeper Ad Losses Amid Increased Competition

Newsmax reports:

U.S. newspapers lost $10 in print advertising revenue last year for every $1 they gained online, a deeper loss than in 2010, as competition from Internet companies increases, a study by Pew Research Center found.

Newspaper revenues declined more sharply last year than in 2010 when publishers lost $7 in print advertising for every $1 generated from online outlets, according to Pew’s study entitled “State of the News Media,” which is published today.

The industry, suffering declines in print advertising, hasn’t been able to make up for those losses with digital revenue. Washington-based Pew’s study follows last week’s report from the Newspaper Association of America that revealed total newspaper ad revenue dropped 7.3 percent to $23.9 billion in 2011 from the previous year.

While online advertising among news groups increased by about $207 million, print advertising revenue declined by around $2.1 billion, Pew said.

So when do we get the going out of business sale. I gave up on the local daily years ago. A bunch of Democrat rags, been following the Democrat TV broadcasts for too long. Whose news divisions have been money losers, supported only by thier show line ups.