Science Forums 2

[HydrogenBond]

Newspapers are declining because of loss of advertising revenue. This might be due to more people using alternate media for information and advertising dollars shifting to reflect the change in demographics.

In the old days, there was more journalistic integrity. One depended on the newspaper to give the unbiased truth. Maybe with the rise of alternate media, there was more of a push to compete. Newspapers needed a gimmick. For example, many of the big papers are biased toward the democratic party. What you read is slanted in favor of one point of view. This is more emotional compelling, than unbiased information. Unbiased is more bland, since it stokes bias and then puts out the fire. This emotional slant was the gimmick to compete with the entertainment value of audio and visual media.

Maybe the modern thinking is, if entertainment is being provided by the newspapers, one can get more of that by adding other forms of media to the diet. Maybe in the old days, if you trusted the unbiased opinion of a particular journalist, who would do all the research for you, and present the data in a well written way for assimilation, reading his column would actually be a time saver. But if emotional bias is the goal, alternate media provides more angles for that type of entertainment. One can quadruple the entertainment value using a simple random internet search.

A simple guideline that could help the newspapers, is to make biased journalism for one political party, considered a campaign contribution. This would be tough love that would require the journalist get back to the basics of providing unbiased information. It would be novel, in this day and age and increase circulation. Instead of a niche, it will expand their demographics. But I also realize, National Enquirer journalism sells, so they would also lose some of that demographics.