In the future, when I try and describe what a ridiculous thing newspapers were, I guess I’ll mostly say they were good for crossword puzzles and for puppies to pee on while you were housebreaking them.
Years ago, newspapers actually used to be outwardly partisan. You can still see this today in papers that have titles like “Daily Republican” or “Times-Democrat” in them. At some point, Newspapers decided to start selling nearly the same thing as objective news. Except it wasn’t.
I think the reason for the decline of newspapers is fundamental, and not necessarily the result of bias. But I suspect whatever replaces the newspaper will be biased, but will be up front with it. Personally, I think that’s a better way to do news anyway. It’s almost impossible to report news without the reporter’s own biases, experiences and ignorance coming through. Best to be up front about those, I think. It’s why blogs work.
We need someone to generate raw news, but what good is raw news if society can’t have a reasonable conversation about it? Whatever replaces the newspaper, it’ll certainly be better than having that conversation only happen between journalists in editorial board meetings.
‘You can still see this today in papers that have titles like “Daily Republican†or “Times-Democrat†in them. ‘
Then help me out here. What the Hell is a Post Intelligencer?
By guess is marketing gimmick. Read our paper, and we’ll make you more intelligent :)
“The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper.”
“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
Thomas Jefferson
I suspect it Post-Intelligencer was a merging of the Post and Intelligencer…
Or perhaps is was an acknowledgement that the institution in question had entered some sort of “Post-Intelligent” phase of news gathering, after the “Intelligent” phase was over.
Ha! I like Karrde’s explanation better than mine.