You said:

"...it's horrible...Richmond-Times Dispatch...a commentator who's byline is "Whatever!" All she talks about is what kind of shoes she wears with her favorite miniskirt, her family's crazy Thanksgiving, me me me me me."

-- cosmicmojo

Now we know where Ayelet Waldman has been these last few weeks. Glad she found work! Maybe the rest of the staff at Salon can get her to put in a good word for them, too.

I remember the R-TD from when I lived in the Richmond area. What a rag. Try the Harrisonburg Daily News Record if you really want a paper written for people who swim in the shallow end of the Gene Pool. You can't beat the "weddings/engagements" page for sheer entertainment value.

Is that the loss of "print" papers will lead to even less rigor and reality in journalism, until only online sites, and TV programs, remain.

As we've seen with Salon, the fall into irrelevant mediocrity can occur quickly.

Salon is not even featuring the story about the continuing Cartoon riots, and the 1 million dollar bounty that was placed, today, on the head of the cartoonist. They aren't featuring the 10000 person riot that is being fought in Pakistan, today, to prevent the torching of the Danish embassy over the Cartoon publications.

This story is being carried in the remaining 'Print' papers (USATODAY, Wash Post, NYTimes) and their websites, but no mention of it on Salon unless you already know about it and dig for it.

Personally, I'll pay to read real information, written by real journalists, working for real news organizations. I'll no longer pay for Salon, currently the electronic equivalent of fish wrapping.

>>a commentator who's byline is "Whatever!" All she talks about is what kind of shoes she wears with her favorite miniskirt, her family's crazy Thanksgiving, me me me me me."-- cosmicmojo

Now we know where Ayelet Waldman has been these last few weeks. Glad she found work! Maybe the rest of the staff at Salon can get her to put in a good word for them, too.>>\\

hahahahahahahaha!!!!

thanks, needed that.

But, you think you remember a bad paper from when you lived in Richmond, let me assure you it has been severely DUMBED DOWN from when you were here. Graphicall it looks like Highlights magazine with big boxes surrounding each brief story to lead your confused eye to the 3 sentences. It's horrible, really.

I am a 25 year old male; the demographic featured in this article. While I have friends who are accurately represented by the article's caricatures, I'm not in there at all, and I feel I should explain why I've abandoned newsprint.

I grew up in a NY Times house in the mid-atlantic region, the child of educated chemist/artists. My experience with the Times did lead me to subscribe later in life. Then came Bush's theft of the 2000 election, and the NY Times whitewash. Then came 9/11, again, the NY Times failed to produce useful reporting. On and on, since 2000 I've felt the U.S. has had nothing that rises to the level of a 'paper of record.' I'm not going to tick off the list, but you know it. I mean ... Iraq? Smart reporting and sometimes even in-depth reporting still make it into the Times; just not on meaningful or contentious domestic topics. They gloss over things and ignore obvious, essential questions that I'm then left with when I'm finished with the article, robbing me of fact-based satisfaction.

And that's when the papers are being honest. More and more I get the impression they're lying to us (repeating politicians' lies w/o fact-checking/analysis, lies of omission, etc.), and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for that 'privilege.'

What little truth it's possible for a member of the public to obtain can only be found on the Internet at this point, and this is the downfall of the newspapers. Given the vacuum of real national/international reporting in newsprint, I've set my sites solely on local newspapers. I end up reading papers like RedEye to stay informed on local events, and for current affairs I look to the web (lord knows TV is still much worse than the NY Times).

The newspaper industry is in decline for the same reason the major record labels and TV news organizations are; they're trying to peddle us, at best, overpriced, meaningless fluff, and, at worst, harmful, manipulative disinformation.

Of course, as they become less profitable (while the demands for profitability continue to mount thanks to megacorporations such as Walmart), the papers become less able to turn out a reasonably priced, exceptional product. To the credit of those who work hard for these companies in a vain effort to produce quality work, the current political/corporate climate is completely at odds with their goals. The government is waging war against the media's credibility, and the controlling interests of the media groups act as little more than a fifth column, undermining professionalism in favor of the bottom line every chance they get.

I feel like I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum from the imagined young people in the article. I think the problem is that neither group trusts the papers at all at this point. Of course the articles seem boring. They're bullshit masquerading as fact, and if that's what I wanted, I'd pick up a tabloid.

This problem is more complex than I can really go into with a thousand words, suffice it to say that I feel there's more going on here than the article really covers.

This 29-year-old doesn't read newspapers, either. This is even after working for one. I do read Salon daily and The Atlantic, Harpers, The New Yorker and The Nation on a regular basis. I also live in Chicago and read the Red Eye every day on the train ride to work (which, by the way, does have a lot fluff, but also a lot of substance).

Am I young and dumb? I know more about current events than my 53-year-old mother. Maybe it's newspapers and not young readers...