Murdoch to media: You dug yourself a huge hole | Coop's Corner - CNET News:
"'The complacency stems from having enjoyed a monopoly--and now finding they have to compete for an audience they once took for granted. The condescension that many show their readers is an even bigger problem. It takes no special genius to point out that if you are contemptuous of your customers, you are going to have a hard time getting them to buy your product. Newspapers are no exception.'" - Robert Murdock
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The newspapers deliberately use low-level, bland language that has low readability levels on any readabily check of text. This practice shows contempt for customers.
The reporting on local goverment is shallow and timid. Never does an editorial hit something like the the school administration's framing and punishing teachers by way of the Professional Standards Gulag and its behind-the-scenes terror committee to keep them cowed and mute about the schools' problems from teachers' and students' standpoint.
The board and administration won't give teachers or students a place on the board agenda so that they can sound off on things that concern them. The board and administration runs everything through the Public Affairs Laundromat to make it sparkle so that the public won't know what's going on.
I heard Andrew Barnes, former SPT publisher, say about 15 years ago in a speech at the ACLU that in effect the lack of purity of the Web products as compared to newspapers would have a dreadful effect on news.
Now that big dailies across the country are tanking daily as people abandon them for online news and blogs, I haven't heard any of this arrogant talk from the papers. They are too busy checking out their ad income, which is going down, down, down.
I wouldn't be surprised to see Tampa the next big city without a daily newspaper. Recollect the two recent staff downsizings. Media General may soon be on the block along with the parent company of the San Fransisco Chronicle.
What the media and public education have in common is the abuse of language, one to dummy it down, the other to tell palatable lies about unpalatable truths. lee drury de cesare
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