Last edited Wed Oct 22, 2025, 03:16 AM - Edit history (1)
On many social media sites that have a political bent -- including this one ‐- you'll find post after post after post criticing "the media" (Newspapers? TV news? News magazines? What?) for not covering issues the posters think should be covered or not writing them as they think they should be written.
There's nothing the least bit new about this. Customers on my paper route more than 50 years ago complained to me about the paper, as if they thought I could do something about it. And 50 years ago the complaints were already very old and tired.
Editors and reporters get it: Everybody wants a newspaper tailored for them. Thry all think it 's an easy job that they could do better, or just as well.snd they want a lot fewer ads.
These complaints were par for the course before political social media multiplied the fuck out of them. Circulation dropped significantly, and when that happens, publishers panic and do exactly the wrong things: lay off news saff, making coverage skimpier; raise subscription and newsstand prices; raise ad rates while telling ad reps to bring in more customers. And, when none of that works, sell out to a cobglomerate that turns, say, five formerly local papers in a 50-mile radius into "McNews," ach with two or three local stories in each issue and the rest of them carbon copies of one another. In short, they save "the product" by destroying it. (They always referred to the paper as "the product" because they were no longer newspaper people, but garden-variety CEOs.)
I was one of the editors who got fired, then watched helplessly as the rest of it happened. It happened because you were never satisfied with what we offered, and the suits couldn't think of another remedy for their losses than to offer you less.
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