Southwestmap Member Username: Southwestmap
Post Number: 1135 Registered: 01-2005
| Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 3:25 pm: | |
I am rooting for the Freep to winn a Pulitzer for the contribution that the paper made to exposure of Kilpatrick public corruption. It was brilliant and monumental. Just when I am congratulating the Freep they go and do something humiliating like this: http://www.freep.com/article/2 0081118/FEATURES/81118050 "Shoppers, tell us metro Detroit’s cleanest restrooms" The editors even make a little potty joke. Soon, to follow the pattern, the editors will be giving us a little list of "tips" for using public restrooms, as one Saturday they admonished readers to make a family breakfast that week-end and told us all how to fry bacon!!!! Please, dear Free Press editors - get some shame. |
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd
Post Number: 3684 Registered: 07-2004
| Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 3:29 pm: | |
See, Southwest: This is the FUTURE of journalism. No expensive investigatory journalism, no hard-hitting exposés of the abuses of power. The Free Press is going to do a bit of that, maybe, but they're going to focus on LIFESTYLE stories! You're not a CITIZEN; you're a SHOPPER! C'mon, don't you want to know how other people feel about restroom hygiene? Or how about what people do to get their cups and bowls to stack up neatly in their cupboards? Or how they felt when they first started going bald? That's the important public purpose our newspapers are going to fulfill. (Then they wonder why fewer and fewer people read them anymore. It's because their focus-group fantasies of what readers want are fictions.) |
Focusonthed Member Username: Focusonthed
Post Number: 2091 Registered: 02-2006
| Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 3:33 pm: | |
The Chicago Sun-Times had a feature story this summer about whether the Sox or the Cubs had the "hottest fans." |
Detmsp Member Username: Detmsp
Post Number: 35 Registered: 08-2008
| Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 3:35 pm: | |
Oh Detroitnerd, you have solved the newspaper industry's problems!!!! Someone stop the presses, we need to print this! The newspaper industry is saved! Declining readership has nothing to do with young people preferring other (free) mediums for their news, such as internet, TV, etc. It's all about a couple of lifestyle stories! Phew, that was close! And here the entire industry thought it was going to go under |
Bigb23 Member Username: Bigb23
Post Number: 2877 Registered: 11-2007
| Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 3:38 pm: | |
Everything is mostly fluff now. Give us a daily consumer activist column like the old "Contact 10" in the Free Press/News. Upscale restaurant and boutique reviews are no help to me when I struggle with the basic cost of existing. |
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd
Post Number: 3686 Registered: 07-2004
| Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 3:40 pm: | |
Detmsp: I must have touched quite a painful nerve for you to release that flood of sarcasm. Oh, sure, people are reading more online and on television because they don't want to read a newspaper. Whatever. I'm sure newspapers trying to lure them with bland, short stories about lifestyle are going to save the day. Trust me, you try to get readers to buy your newspaper by dumbing it down, you'll fail. Would producing a bombshell newspaper filled with true investigative journalism work? Would it win the respect of even a jaded readership in metro Detroit? First it would have to be tried, Detmsp. That hasn't been done since the JOA. |
Daddeeo Member Username: Daddeeo
Post Number: 303 Registered: 09-2008
| Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 3:41 pm: | |
Whatever sells papers is the golden rule these days. Old fashioned journalism and other high falutin' stuff takes a back seat. Let's face it, there's a lot of competition from TV, radio and the net for consumers to chose from. I prefer to moosy through a paper and get in depth coverage of a story but others like a quick wrap up. |
Professorscott Member Username: Professorscott
Post Number: 1701 Registered: 12-2006
| Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 3:45 pm: | |
The journalism business is going the way of the music business, and for the same reason: their product has been devalued. It's a little worse, though: music is only "free" because so many people are willing to steal it; newspapers are free because the papers themselves choose to put all their stories on their free web sites. I like to read newspapers, and unlike Sarah Palin I can name a great many of them, in lots of cities. There are still a few really good ones. But why would I go to a newsstand and pay $4.00 for a pile of local and out-of-town papers when I can read all the same stories at home without paying a cent? OK, granted, newspapers get most of their revenue from advertising, but I doubt advertisers are willing to pay as much for on-line advertisements as for those in the actual, physical newspaper. Nonsense such as the kind of fluff story referred to in the first post on this thread only make things worse, and things are bad enough already. The internet per se is an interesting substitute. On the one hand, there is a lot more information about current events online than you could hope to stuff into a newspaper; on the other hand there is a lot of unedited crap which would never make it into a credible news source but which takes on a life of its own in cyberspace. (See, for instance, Phillip Berg's crusade to "prove" P-E Obama isn't a citizen.) And the online journalists, with few exceptions, aren't paid well at all. So the journalism business is "living in interesting times", as the old curse goes. The kind of journalism that produced Kwamegate, I fear, we will see less and less of in the future. |
Thecarl Member Username: Thecarl
Post Number: 1439 Registered: 04-2005
| Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 4:57 pm: | |
here's the freeps' plan: 1) find out where cleanest bathrooms are, then 2) target the areas for additional newspaper sales. since readership of the printed version is flagging, the freep can make up for it by providing increased sales to a known bastion for privacy and reflection - the commode - where people love to read the paper. and while iphones and other wireless devices can be used to access the internet in crowded spaces, it's just not the same as taking a wide stance and opening the paper. then, with the added revenue, the freep will 3) hire some of the most savvy and tenacious investigative journalists out there. that's the plan. |
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd
Post Number: 3691 Registered: 07-2004
| Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 5:01 pm: | |
Haha. Nice to see a little humor. I get angry about today's newspapers. |
Servite76 Member Username: Servite76
Post Number: 111 Registered: 02-2008
| Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 5:09 pm: | |
Easy guy's, your starting to depress me. I need the News and Freep to be around at least 10 more years so I can retire. I've got 33 years in now. |
Sludgedaddy Member Username: Sludgedaddy
Post Number: 223 Registered: 01-2008
| Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 6:42 pm: | |
....and let's not forget to gripe about the proliferation of cellular phones....pity that Clark Kent guy and his inability to find a phone booth now-a-days. |
Chuckjav Member Username: Chuckjav
Post Number: 1119 Registered: 09-2007
| Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 6:51 pm: | |
Servite76....I met someone from your school a few weeks ago; she is the assistant principal at Duffield Elementary School. |
Lefty2 Member Username: Lefty2
Post Number: 2909 Registered: 07-2007
| Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 7:49 pm: | |
How about a story on how nice the old Freep building downtown is... a little fist with a twist of humor to jab with the group. |
Gplimpton Member Username: Gplimpton
Post Number: 260 Registered: 05-2007
| Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 9:22 pm: | |
If they win a Pulitzer, it should go straight to Mike Stefani. |
Ct_alum Member Username: Ct_alum
Post Number: 25 Registered: 10-2008
| Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 10:22 pm: | |
Ever try to line the bottom of a birdcage with the internet? Doesn't work too well. Unfortunately that is all the News and Freep are good for these days with the likes of Rochelle Riley and Nolan Finley polluting the pages. |
Threecardmonte Member Username: Threecardmonte
Post Number: 2 Registered: 11-2008
| Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - 10:39 pm: | |
Actually, the Freep is doing a standup job of both -- Pulitzer-caliber journalism and celebrity rag gossip -- sometimes in the same story! How else to explain Elrick's scoop last week that Kwame Kilpatrick eats oranges in jail? |
Reddog289 Member Username: Reddog289
Post Number: 707 Registered: 08-2007
| Posted on Wednesday, November 19, 2008 - 2:08 am: | |
I hope for Servite76,s as well as the other printers sake they stay in print, But like many folks who still get the paper I ask myself why? do I even bother.I signed up to get Fri,Sat,Sun, with Thurs thrown in for Free. I pretty much got it for the ads&coupons but I found that I might only use 5 coupons a month at max, and shop at pretty much Meijer,Kroger and HomeDepot or a few local stores.Being formerly employed in the printing industry, I,d hate to see papers go by the wayside, yet anymore when I pick up the paper from the yard I have read this site or seen it on TV. |
Sumas Member Username: Sumas
Post Number: 361 Registered: 01-2008
| Posted on Wednesday, November 19, 2008 - 2:44 am: | |
I like to read my morning paper while enjoying my cup of coffee. Yesterday, wasn't so great though since I had to get dressed to crawl through my shrubs to retrieve my paper. This is not the first time. How hard can it be to get the paper on the porch? Old habits die hard but I might have to rethink my life style. Most news I read I have already seen on the internet or the TV news. |
Smogboy Member Username: Smogboy
Post Number: 9304 Registered: 11-2004
| Posted on Wednesday, November 19, 2008 - 3:12 am: | |
I used to really cherish the days when the News and the Freep had some guts in hard hitting news. Lord that seems like so long ago now. Between the JOA, the strike (which didn't do either side any good), Mitch Albom (losing all credibility AND the Freep keeping him on), the lack of content, and the price- I've stepped further away from actual print journalism now. When I was a kid I delivered the News and thought newspapers were the bastions of integrity. If it hit print, it was the truth. And since then, I see that it isn't the case. Some of today's papers report on wild speculation, chase celebs, and beyond the weather and sports scores- there hasn't been much for an avid reader to dig one's teeth into anymore. In this day & age of immediate gratification, if it wasn't for their websites- I probably wouldn't even be reading either one of the local "papers" and even then with a huge dose of skepticism at times. |
Detroitrise Member Username: Detroitrise
Post Number: 3936 Registered: 09-2007
| Posted on Wednesday, November 19, 2008 - 11:37 am: | |
The only investigation you see in journalism now is a sports report, and I don't give a damn about that. |