Musings —01.15.2014 08:38 AM
—I am male, hear me roar. Or, not.
Interesting survey over on J-Source about gender, age and whatnot of Canadian newspaper columnists. I was one of the ones who responded to their survey, here. Their data sheet is here.
If their point is that media voices should be as diverse as the country they serve, I’d agree with that. And our failure to do that may help to explain some of this.
What thinkest thou, smart wk dot come readers?
This is an interesting and telling bit of research – I am in total agreement that more diversity could lead to more interesting commentary. It is also interesting to note the median age of many of the major news sources – perhaps that can also be an indicator as to why more and younger people are turning to alternate sources for their political/social commentary.
First off, great cartoon. Brilliant!
Couple of things…
Wall to wall advertizing with intermittent bits of “news” jammed amongst it all. As someone observed: They cut down how many trees for this?
People will get the local paper to keep up with what’s going on locally, both in the news and in the stores. National rags can’t offer that.
What national rags increasingly are full of is articles (by assorted hacks) with ideological axes to grind…most of it speculative drivel, hearsay and rumor. What is hard to find any more are articles that intelligently inform without bias, built around actual truths and facts.
Even harder to find are articles by “thinkers”. Two that come to mind immediately are Matt Ridley and, at a little lesser level, Peter Foster.
Frankly, I can’t say that I care much about what happens to the big national papers. My kids, now middle age, care a helluva lot less than I do.
Lastly, welcome to the age of the Internet.
People are hardwired to associate with people like them. Greater diversity in the opinion pages won’t help. People read the sources they agree with. Everyone not like them is a … “conbot” or “lieberal” or “idiot” or “moron”…etc.
Readers will never go back to daily newspapers once they get smartphones. They’re full of ads (you can install ad blockers and anti-tracking plug-in on your web browser or use private search engines like duckduckgo that doesn’t sell your search history.
Between you and me I think there’s a future for very local community newspapers but that’s about it (though some of the most compliant and, yes, idiotic opinion pieces are to be found there.
don’t think that will happen. We now live in a Walmart world. Newspapers are like small town or city cores. they’re dying. Here in Kingston I can see the end. The Indigo store and multiplex both closed last year followed by twenty or so other stores and it looks like net neutrality in the states is on the ropes. soon telcoms will control news and start throttling and squeezing out those who disagree with them. interesting times indeed.