Buffalo State College Journalism Professor Michael Niman highlighted the decline of US dailies at a time of economic crisis. Some have shut down. Most have downsized, while others are going virtual over print. However, "the collapse of journalism is old news. Newspapers have been dead for quite a while." We're just now seeing their corpses, but the concentration of media monopolies, the proliferation of one-newspaper towns (in 98% of US cities), and the destruction of media diversity made it predictable.Read full article »»
Content is heavily censored by conglomerates controlling media empires for profit, "not to inform, educate, and agitate...." With no competition, they cut staff, use wire services over their own reporting, and lost "significance as sources of (real) news." Avoiding controversy and pleasing advertisers counts most, and on political issues they "suck up to power and don't ask (hard) questions...."
The relevant one for consumers is "why the hell should we pay for their misinformation?" In increasing numbers, they've stopped, preferring instead to get reliable information from independent print and online sources.
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