New circulation figures by the Audit Bureau of Circulations show that in just the last six months, daily circulation at 379 U.S. snoozepapers fell an astounding 10.6%. In SIX MONTHS!
Snoozepapers are bleeding ... badly. The major snoozepaper in the city I live around, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has been hit even harder. Its daily circulation plummeted 23.4% to just 214,303 -- in a region with more than 5 million residents! It's pathetic. Part of the AJC's falling numbers are attributed to its elimination of circulation in outlying counties, but even after that, it's numbers are worse than other places around the country. Atlanta is in one of the top 10 population regions in the country, and its major snoozepaper has now dropped out of the top 25 in circulation!
In what I think is related news, CNN's viewership is now the worst of all the major snooze channels. (it's also based in Atlanta)
So, why is this happening -- not just in Atlanta, but around the country? It's complex. Well, OK, it's not. The snooze media are borrrring and Leftist. To make my point, the top newspaper (yes "news," not "snooze" in this case) is the Wall Street Journal, whose readership has been going up during the last two years while the rest of the industry free-falls. Also, Fox News has seen the same thing on an even grander scale. It is now smoking the other channels. Both of the latter media are much more objective than their counterparts, much more free-market oriented, much more interesting, and much more insightful.
I have to admit to a little schadenfreude here. I love the well-deserved misery. It's justice on a grand scale that I could not have thought possible two years ago. The newspapers have been printing the worst kind of vitriol against free markets, individual rights and businesses for years, and the businesses, like beaten puppies, continue to advertise there because it's the only monopoly game in town.
CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and the rest of their ilk have adamantly supported the Leftist agenda (and their new puppet king in the White House) for years, and now consumers are treating them like they do the latest liberal Hollywoodite "theme" film -- with a smirk and a "no thanks."
And many snoozepapers, like the AJC, are actually doing what they do best in these hard times: making horrible business decisions while instigating ludicrous price hikes. The bill for the AJC just went up considerably for me, and so I will soon end my subscription as well, and I'll simply peruse it online when I must.
I feel sorry for the very few journalists friends I have, including Dan Puckett in San Antonio. They got into journalism, I think, for the same reason I did: to bring real news, objective news, creative news to the public and to make money with the beloved written word. They are now faced with the decision to hang on and glean a little bit of satisfaction from their own professionalism in a rotten industry or to start looking elsewhere for better pastures.
I wish them luck as I hope for the ultimate demise of jaundiced journalism.
No comments:
Post a Comment