The Death of Old Media

The front page story headlined at the top of the fold in the Denver Post yesterday was by Associated Press writers Phillip Elliot and Julie Hirschfeld Davis. It was about the "multi-billion dollar bailout of Detroit's Big Three automakers." It contained eighteen paragraphs. Not a single word about the role of the autoworkers union! Not a word about paying workers not to produce anything. Not a word about the benefit plans far exceeding plans of workers producing Toyotas and Hondas. Who do you folks at the Associated Press think you are kidding?

Next to that story was one about the Tribune Company hiring "bankruptcy advisors." The Tribune Company owns the L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, cable t.v. superstation WGN, and the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field, along with t.v. stations and newspapers all across America. The Cubs and Wrigley Field have been put up for sale.

I understand that sharply dropping advertising revenues account for the main reasons why the old media corporations are failing. However, articles like the one about the "bailout of the Big Three," with the glaring ommission of any responsibility on the part of the union, surely must account for part of the reason so many people no longer get their news from local newspapers and t.v.