> [WS:] It's bad, Joanna, pretty bad, because it signifies further dumbing
> down of the US society. The trend is only among more respectable
> newspapers, while tabloids are on the rise. I do not know about you, but
> I'd rather have a serious, respectable newspaper expressing views that I
> find disagreeable than a "politically correct" tabloid. Tabloids (and
> pictorial media in general) tend to appeal mainly to ignorant and indolent
> people who are easily manipulated by sensationalism and demagoguery.
Woj: I have to admit that there have been days lately where I've been thinking the same way about American culture. There is nothing like sitting with a boxes of books in an empty radical bookstore wondering if people are ever going to read some of these books again.
I was thinking that American society was heading into some kind of post-literate phase. Then I got to thinking about Wikipedia and the Trivial Pursuit nature of the Internet and it struck me that the problem is that Americans are literate and have access to information, but that America is becoming a post-knowledge society.
Knowledge != information
Knowledge is the sum of one's experience, studying, reading and research. In a world of instant "facts" and mass entertainment, how many of us have the time--or the quiet--to nurture knowledge?
On the other hand, I think you are jumping to the wrong conclusions about newspapers. Newspapers have had significant tabloid content for years. Even the NY Times has huge sections devoted to style, fashion, pop culture, and content that has nothing to do with serious news analysis.
Newspapers and magazines are losing readers for a variety of reasons. The most important factor is the Internet. People not only get their news from the Internet, they spend lots of time on the Internet. Another factor is gaming and other entertainment. Overall, newspapers and magazines are declining because people have other things to do with the time they used to spend reading the newspaper.
I got to see firsthand the beginning of this trend when I worked for Science magazine 5 years ago. We were trying desperately to figure out why our subscriber base was falling. In Science's case, the main reason was obvious. People were dropping their subscriptions to the magazine because they could read it for free through their university or lab. Most Science subscribers loved getting the print version of the paper, but there was a significant number wo, for a variety of reasons, were satisfied with access to the online version.
These numbers were small, but when you start talking about 5-10,000 members who stop paying $110/year for a magazine, that's a serious loss in revenue. In Science's case, there was something even scarier that everybody was worried about. When the circulation of the magazine drops below a certain rate base, advertisers can demand lower rates. Not only are you losing money from the drop in subscription money, but you face losing huge sums from a drop in advertising revenue.
At Science, this turnaround was quite sudden. In the late 90s, Science was flush with money from advertising. I even got a substantial Christmas bonus one year--as did ALL AAAS employees--because Science was making so much money from advertising. Most of that money came from biotech ads. This cash cow even prompted Science to gear more of their editorial content towards biotechnology content. They started up new services that focused on biotech content. This is interesting because Science has always been a multi-disciplinary journal.
I think that Woj is wrong about people going from newspapers to tabloids. People are getting more of their hard news from the Internet and they get news from a larger variety of sources, which I see as a good thing. But all of us are interested in tabloid news content. Even lefties. That's why the Huffingtonpost probably runs tabloid content (in addition to competing with Drudge). I've found at Infoshop News that whenever we run an "offbeat" news item, it gets more hits than serious news. Controversial opinion pieces get more hits than hard investigative news. We ran a new orginal piece yesterday about farm workers. The pieces we run by investigative journalist Kari Lydersen almost always get fewer hits than other types of news and opinion.
And it's not just our website. Look at the difficulties the New Standard has had in raising money to support their news service, which is exclusively investigative reporting. American Leftists like to pretend that they aren't into tabloid news and that they support hard-hitting news and analysis. I just don't buy it. We are more like average Americans than we like to admit.
So let's talk about the Madonna baby adoption situation. ;-)
Chuck