The Post & Courier –
Less news, higher price
The monthly price for daily home
delivery of The Post & Courier
(Charleston, S.C.) is rising to $20 from $17.50 effective May 1, 2012.
At the same time the paper has
fewer pages per day than a year ago or even two years ago. It is going to cost
more to have less news delivered. Example: the kid’s page in the tabloid
section published on Thursdays is gone. The paper does not carry reviews of local theater and other performing arts. National and international news have been cut back gradually and it is difficult to remember when we use to get more.
According to the paper, some of
the $2.50 price hike will go to the carriers, but we don’t know how much. It is
a good bet most of it will go to burnish the bottom line and keep the owners eating
regularly.
Circulation of the paper is
about 82,300, according to Mondo Times
(worldwide news media directory.) The on-line Wall Street 24/7, reported readership rates for print newspapers
are falling across the board, and the country’s younger generation has
abandoned the medium the most.
As of 2010, only 7% of 18- to 24-year-olds
reported having read a print newspaper the day before, according to the Pew Research Center for the People & the
Press.
About two years ago a young man
startled me with some off the wall views on a then current event. I asked him
where he got his information. “The Jon
Stewart” shows, he replied.
The May 2012 Harper's Index reported $23.9 billion in ad revenue for the U.S. newspaper industry in 2011, while Google earned $36.5 billion.
Newspapers are not the only part
of the news media losing customers and revenue. The daily network television news
broadcasts, local and national, are suffering the same fate.
The late George Carlin said the
news media was “a sort of bulletin board and public relations firm for the
ruling class – the people who run things.” He was not a big fan of
television news outlets.
“On the ‘Five O’Clock News,’ they
tell you about the ‘Six O’Clock News’; at six O’Clock, they tell you about
eleven; at eleven, they plug the morning news; the morning man promos the
noontime lady, and, sure enough a little after noon, here comes that
empty-headed (expletive deleted) from the ‘Five O’Clock News’ to tell you what
he’s going to do …on the Five O’clock News.”
Maybe the 18-24 year olds know
something the rest of us don’t. Meanwhile, it is going to cost more to have the
comics and obituaries delivered to your door each day. Tune in The Jon Stewart shows for the rest of
the news.
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