This is utterly mind-boggling. I have often labored under the impression that newspapers-being the amalgamators, analyzers, and distributors of pertinent information-would be some of the first industries to notice potential trends. Or complete and utter up-endings of reality.
Apparently not.
Not even close.
You would think that any industry whose primary job was to keep people informed and cast a critical eye on the surrounding world might notice the gigantic double-decker freight train hurtling out of control towards them at warp 11.
Apparently not.
Not even close.
A Google search using the term “newspaper articles about the failure of the us auto industry” yielded 2,200,000 results. Not at all surprising. I am certain that a fair number of those articles were opinion pieces excoriating the past and present leaders in Detroit for not only willful blindness, but incompetence and well, moronity.
A Google search using the term “newspaper articles about the failure of the us NEWSPAPER industry” yielded over 15,000,000 results. Apparently no one in the newspaper industry reads newspapers. Either that or they do and scoff at what a ‘rags’ are being printed these days and go back to reading the Weekly World News.
Perhaps now I should explain myself. And my attitude. Which is probably only going to get more foul with each passing line of this post. An hour or so ago I read a tweet from renowned science-fiction author William Gibson (@greatdismal) with a link to this
story . My initial response was, “wow, it only took 10 years to come up with a solution to a problem of that magnitude?”.
(insert sarcasm emoticon here)
A brief amount of research later I discovered that my sarcasm was misplaced so I replaced it with utter disbelief and contempt. My quick Internet search informed me that the problem wasn’t 10 years old. It was 31 years old.
The first 11 newspapers to go online were in July, 1981. Yes 1981. So all of this controversy and exultations of tragedy at the loss of a great American tradition with the sudden onslaught of free Internet news in the last few years is not a new problem. Not even close. Not even in the same star system . I have sat and watched, listened, or read countless stories in the last few years about how all the newspapers are just dying off. Stories about how they were-as an entire industry-caught with their pants down and crushed beneath the sudden Goliath of free. Stories about how thousands have lost their jobs. About how towns and cities across the land have suddenly been stripped of their primary sources of local information and a opinion-and part of their identity. Tragic? Absolutely. The loss of jobs and a portion of the social fabric of a community -even a whole country is a sad thing to see. But it goes a little further than that. Newspapers large and small, our Free Press, are a fundamental function of our nation and our liberty. The fact that they are being swept away en-masse is not only sad, but dangerous.
And it seems like they had a bit of time to prepare.
And didn’t.
I guess the Fat Cats in Detroit aren’t the only multi-generational organization of dipshits screwing up this country and it’s economy.
