The decline in print journalism is directly related to people getting sick and tired of overt propaganda pretending to be news.

The selling of the "weapons of mass destruction" Iraq war by the NYT being just one of the more recent examples.

Now that people have an alternative, they are fleeing this utter elitist crap and doing their crossword puzzles elsewhere.

I am like so totally bummed by that, mannnn.

Now, if he'd print news people actually wanted to read...and pay for...

The decline in print journalism is directly related to people getting sick and tired of overt propaganda pretending to be news.

I think this thing called the internet was a bigger factor. And it's a vicious cycle: With no money to pay real reporters, all they can do is warm over the press releases. Which in turn alienates intelligent readers, which means less money to pay real reporters.

The internet is making us smarter in some ways, but not in all.

The Times still has real reporters and real news. I would say, based on a good deal of surfing national affairs reporting, that real newspapers are many times more reliable than the net,and The Times has more first-hand reporting than just about anybody.

The Times still has real reporters and real news. I would say, based on a good deal of surfing national affairs reporting, that real newspapers are many times more reliable than the net,and The Times has more first-hand reporting than just about anybody.

This. Not good enough, but better than anything else. Financially precarious, living on borrowed time, and we'll all be diminished when it's gone.

Tennyson wrote a brilliant poem about a blunder that is a metaphor to what's happening at the times.

"The Times still has real reporters and real news. I would say, based on a good deal of surfing national affairs reporting, that real newspapers are many times more reliable than the net,and The Times has more first-hand reporting than just about anybody.

'This. Not good enough, but better than anything else. Financially precarious, living on borrowed time, and we'll all be diminished when it's gone.'"

I have been accused by some as trying to hurry newspapers to their waiting graves, but that's not true. I was 11 when I got my first paid job as a paperboy, and grew up in a two-daily-papers house.

The issue is that their business model -- with every element in it being 100+ years old, and with some elements being 200 years old -- is very badly suited to the environment as it has morphed. The sooner they admit that (as many of the newspaper folks do, when speaking among themselves) the better off they will be.

The buggy whip maker who refuses to admit that horse-drawn buggies aren't coming back has no future and will starve in the present because he won't retool for the new age. That's what newspaper companies are today -- businesses whose model is broken who are desperately lunging at anyone who points this out, and attacking them instead of the problem of figuring out a model that works.

Newspapers don't HAVE to be dinosaurs that disappear -- unless they refuse to adapt, and waste their talent and time on trying to hold back the tide.