[lbo-talk] Circulation Plunges at Major US Newspapers

[ravi]

At around 1/11/06 9:07 am, Doug Henwood wrote:
> On Nov 1, 2006, at 8:30 AM, ravi wrote:
> 
>> What is the target audience? I agree that if you want large circulation
>> and attract a general audience you would need to at the least provide
>> news coverage. Or are you rallying the base? Doug mentioned a New York
>> tabloid... news with polemics?
> 
> The politics of the NY Post suck, and are at odds with a lot of New
> Yorkers' politics, but people read it anyway because it's so damned
> entertaining. We could do that too, if we could find enough talented
> people, and about $1 billion in venture capital!
> 

I have never read the NY Post but from what you write I assume it is
right-wing, sort of the Fox Network of print? I think the right has a
natural advantage when it comes to being funny while delivering news:
you mock what you do not understand and most things are incomprehensible
these days for the regular guy (or even to the leftist: we have
succumbed to using their terms such as "politically correct"). Add to
that the gratuitous insults of the stuff that the regular guy believes
in. A friend of mine once claimed that all humour is at the cost of
somebody (I gave him a joke that I thought was not so: "1+1=2 even for
large values of 1", but he responded that that is a joke about
mathematical terminology and therefore mathematicians). And we on the
left do not like to mock and ridicule people (*). We are left with the
option of mocking the powerful among the right -- which I guess is what
Jon Stewart et al do, and they are roaringly successful. I think it
takes a lot of talent. Perhaps a few of you on this list are capable of
it (Dennis seems to do a good job of it, and Woj can compete with Carrol
for the Rooney spot, but you -- Doug -- are too much of a Chomsky type I
am afraid ;-) ... not to forget the recent discussion on the
implications of the Turkish March in Beethoven's compositions or
whatever the hell that was all about ;-)).

(*) It is also a natural advantage of the right that even when they mock
a large group the listener perceives himself to be the mocker, not the
mocked, though the majority of them (the listeners) belong in the latter
group. Additionally, society has conditioned people to accept certain
forms of mockery (women are self-mocking or tolerant of jokes about
make-up or some such and men about not asking for directions, etc) which
play into right style polemics. On the other hand, even when the left
carefully targets those it mocks (say the Pope rather than Christianity,
or something even more clearly distinguishable) the listener perceives
it as a personal insult.

CB points out that if mainstream media is in decline then a mainstream
format seems the wrong way to go. The question then is: what attracts
and retains eyeballs/ears? Right-wing talk radio dominates the air waves
perhaps because of the lack of choice and the captive audience in cars?
Websites do not have such lock-ins or advantages, but they have the
viral propagation and adoption that is becoming the most abiding feature
of the Internet. Julio Huato asked about The Onion -- do they still have
the sort of mass popularity they enjoyed a few years ago? I stopped
reding them a while ago since they stopped being funny (Joanna thinks
otherwise). How is their print publication doing?

	--ravi