Categories: Andrew Coyne, Capital Read

Coyne v. Wells on the sorry, sorry state of the media: All the self-pity, and twice the denial!

by Andrew Coyne on Friday, February 27, 2009 3:41pm - 85 Comments

Tags: CanWest, cbc, denial, Globe and Mail, micropayments, National Post, Plastic Logic eReader, self-pity, Torstar

More by Andrew Coyne

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Decency alone can’t save Parliament

Andrew Coyne on an institution that’s largely irrelevant and increasingly impotent

MT

wow wells really comes off as shallow, self-important and stupid.

I had to stop half way through it was so bad.

I was right about my onanistic comment on previous thread about these totally not ground-breaking webcam postings.
Mulletaur

Coyne has got the right idea with the comparison to Apple and micropayments. I think ‘Le Monde’ is the model for future newspapers, both in terms of focus on opinion and analysis but also in terms of ownership – many of the journos who work for Le Monde also have a financial stake in the newspaper. If we could combine the two, I think we could lead the way here in Canuckistan in providing a new model for media – there doesn’t have to be a print version, only an Internet version, and those who want to read it pay a small subscription fee which is lower than a paper newspaper subscription. In fact, I would argue that there should not be a print version in order to make the enterprise successful. Direct mail techniques could be used to bump up subscriptions. I really don’t care whether it’s left or right in its political orientation, as long as it’s not partisan and intelligently written. Somebody should take the National Post brand off of Canwest for a dollar debt free with this idea in mind. I would be willing to pitch in to make this work. Andrew, Paul ?
cwe

I used to subscribe to the Edmonton Journal, but the subscription lapsed when the credit card expired, and despite their friendly reminders to update my payment information in order to resume delivery, I just…didn’t. Why didn’t I? First and foremost, it was those giant stacks of old newsprint that would build up in the corner of my kitchen, which I probably could more easily have put up with if I actually read more of it than I did, but I didn’t. In the main, that’s due to the fact that it’s slowly but steadily turning into an unreadable piece of crap. The journalism itself is getting progressively softer, the local perspectives are growing more and more marginalized, replaced by bozos from the national chain who are more interested in selling me stuff than they are in producing genuine, insightful writing. And then there’s Lorne.
So, as I was finally getting around to calling that nice customer service lady back to update my credit info, it suddenly occurred to me – I could keep sending them my money, encouraging them to produce a newspaper that I don’t value while breaking my back taking blue bags full of largely unread crap out for the recycling, or not. I put the telephone down.
Gavin MacDonald

Here in Halifax there has been a lot of talk in the media about this issue since our remaining daily (The Chronicle Herald) is laying off 25% of their journalists. I don’t subscribe since I think the Herald (like many of the supposedly local dailies) isn’t very local. Yesterday’s issue that I picked up on the newstand had less than 40% local content – the balance was CP/ AP. Often this outside material is supplemented by reprinted articles and commentary from global sources like the New York Times. As mentioned, the Herald is in trouble but I am a devoted subscriber and reader of AllNovaScotia.com, a business online daily. It provides great coverage of my city in an online format. If I want to see articles or comments from the New York Times, I can read them myself rather than let my local media monopoly choose for me. People will pay for online content if it is valuable to them. Most local newspapers are not.
http://politigrok.blogspot.com/ Mark

I really enjoyed listening to this.

Having gradated from a journalism program last year, it’s interesting that while there, I heard very little debate on this. Of course, that was a different time, and this was definitely still an issue on the table. The teachers, journalists all, certainly had opinions on what to do, but there was very little debate on the issue.

To me, that seems to be part of the problem. There has been some discussion on this, especially in the last few months, but maybe journalists, be they print or broadcast or web, need to get together and start having this discussion, with the aim in mind of finding a solution, because there isn’t one yet, and if we don’t find one we’re going to have a lot less media outlets running around. And that could be a serious problem if you think of media as a watchdog that has an important role in society, which is what I think.

I wish micropayments would work. But that won’t support the way I read articles, which is to open twenty or thirty of them from a whole bunch of different websites, skim the opening to decide if there’s anything worth reading, and then only read it if I feel there’s something worth reading. I don’t think I’m the only person who does that, but if I had to pay to open up each of those articles, with only the off chance that I might read them, well, I probably wouldn’t. And that makes me doubt the micropayment option.

I think we might have a lot more effort with the subscription model, but only when we get those Kindle-type readers into the market in mass numbers, cheaply. And that relies on people actually buying them.
Dan

I enjoyed the vlog thoroughly. An innovative idea.
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