A pivotal scene in Orson Welles’ film classic Citizen
Kane depicts New York Inquirer publisher Charles Foster Kane penning a
Declaration of Principles by which the paper will operate. Kane declares: “I’ll
provide the people of this city with a daily paper that will tell all the news
honestly.”
Of course both the New York Inquirer and that philosophy
of journalism are fictional, as illustrated by the latest real-life validation
of President Trump’s campaign against so-called Fake News.
The Boston Globe—emulating those mastodons which once got
trapped in the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles but struggled for several months
before finally sinking—this week is engaging in a pathetic bid to pretend it is
still relevant by mounting a publicity stunt that would be comical if it were
not so sad.
The Globe—once owned by the New York Times which
purchased it for $1.1 billion but offloaded it in 2013 for only $70-million due
to its plummeting circulation and revenue—is “coordinating” an effort to get
all newspapers from coast-to-coast to publish editorials attacking President Trump
on Thursday, August 16th. The focus: to “fight” the president’s charges
of Fake News............To Read More.....
My Take - This is kind of like that rhetorical ethical conundrum question: "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it still make a sound?"
Well, how about this: If no one reads the newspapers did they say anything?
My answer to both is - does it matter? And the answer is NO!
In Cleveland the Cleveland Plain Dealer is...or I should say was....the big dog in town and the largest newspaper in Ohio. They were so successful that a few years ago they built a seperate building just to do the printing and then rebuilt their building on 18th and Superior turning it into a beautiful sturcture to accomodate the advertising, editorial and promotion and business staff.....which as far as I can tell they no longer occupy.....because they no longer have the staff, they no longer have the money, they no longer have the subscription base and they no longer have much readership, and they're down to delivering four days a week, which isn't much of a burden any longer. As one friend told me there's no one on his street that gets the PD delivered.
If they're still in business in five years I'll be surprised since their subscription base is largely among the very old. Time isn't on their side. They may survive as an online news outlet, but that will actually make them pretty much a blog.
That's a far cry from once being Ohio's largest newspaper, and truthfully, I doubt anything this little cabal does will matter any more than does the Plain Dealer.
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