Tag Archives: Media

Interesting Game Of Who Does The Least

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This bugs me.

The GOP/T-Baggers have been crying about the “radical” agenda of the evil Obama/Pelosi Kommunist Kabal, and have been doing everything in their power to stop it, ie. filibustering everything in sight.

The Dems, for their part, have made their frustration with the obstructionist Repubican’ts palpable, yet at the same time boast how much they’ve accomplished.  Truly, by historic terms this current Congress and the first half of the first term of the Obama administration must qualify as “transformational.”  Although we’re still in trouble economically, blame for which has not (yet) stuck to this president, the new direction we are heading cements his place in history.

Health care.  That alone would do the trick.  But we also have a student loan overhaul and a boost to Pell Grants, a flawed but first in a generation restructuring of financial regulation, much needed infrastructure investment, shoring up of Medicare, and a new nuclear arms agreement with Russia that would have had Ronald Reagan fans swooning. 

And tax cuts!  Don’t forget tax cuts.  $288 Billion in tax cuts! For the middle class this time.  The Economic Recovery Act (fondly known in Blogtopistan as Stimzilla) really did have something for everyone – except 99% of the Republicans in Congress even though roughly half of the thing was right in line with their supply-side agenda.

So just what are the Republicans running against this year in the midterms?  (They have yet to articulate anything they are “for” in a coherent manner, but they’ve been bitching up a storm about both the status quo and the what the Dems want – what those commies are “for.”) 

Dems: “Can’t get nothing done cuz those damn Republicans won’t let us – but … but … but … Lookie all the crap we got done! Please send cash and reward our accomplishments even though we can’t get anything done cuz we did so much!”

Reps: “Those damn Democrats are screwing everything up and we can’t stop them – even though we’ve filibustered everything we are … FAIL. Please send cash to reward us for doing nothing except trying to stop the Obama/Pelosi agenda, which we can totally do and completely reverse if we gain more seats in the Senate than are up for grabs and get a supermajority to impeach the President which we totally can’t do!”

Progressives: “You guys totally sold us out!”

T-Baggers: “You guys are total sell-outs!”

Media: “If you look closely, you can totally see that the fuzz in my belly-button is more blue than gray, even though my shirt was mauve and …. Look! Shiny!”

Average voter: “Yawn.”

Steve Jobs on the future of newspapers

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In a on-stage interview at the All Things Digital conference, Apple CEO Steve Jobs points out the obvious:

[He was asked] whether the iPad can save journalism. “We have a lot of goals for it, but one of my beliefs very strongly is that any democracy depends on a free, healthy press,” he said.

He acknowledged that major newspapers are in trouble, but he doesn’t want to “see us descend into a nation of bloggers.”

“I think we need editorial now more than ever,” he said. One way to overcome the economic hurdle is for people to pay for content, he added, and the iPad offers a way to have applications rather than just static web pages. He advised publishers to “price aggressively and go for volume.”

No argument with anything here…but I’d question his assumptions. He seems to put “bloggers” and “editorial” on opposite sides of the field. But the fact is, editorial has already left the field. What passes for newspaper reporting today is simply stenography. Reporters appear to provide “balance” by reporting that one side says the earth is flat and the other side disagrees.

“We report, you decide” is not what you expect from journalism.

Also: people do expect to pay for content — good content. Content they can’t get anywhere else — for a lower price. On the other hand, if I can get the news I need — free (or nearly so) and fast — why would I settle for a bunch of extraneous filler that costs me a dollar a day — late?

And more to the point: if print journalism can’t compete profitably with digital media — with its inherently lower cost structure — who’s fault is that?

Jobs caught my eye with one other comment:

Will tablets replace the trusty PC? “When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that’s what you needed on the farms.” Cars came along as cities flourished. “PCs are going to be like trucks,” Jobs predicted, as other form factors, like the tablet, become the “cars.”

Enh. Mobile phones are the “cars.” The tablet is the “Escalade.”

Is Print Media Doomed Worldwide or Just In The US? The Answer May Surprise You

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Sarah Lacy visits Jawa Pos, the flagship newspaper of one of southeast Asia’s largest print media empires:

[W]hen I asked how the paper was responding to the digital age, I was disappointed in the answer: We’re protecting print revenues as long as we can. Wow, I thought. Have you learned nothing from the West? Web revenues will never equal print revenues, per ad. But guess what? Future competitors don’t care. They are happy to build a business off of ads that are 20% of what you charge, because they are building a digital business without printing presses from the ground up.

Sounds short-sighted…so far. But wait — there’s more (and if you’re a union member, it’s not good):

The company’s network of more than 150 publications and television stations is designed to avoid the exact problem that plagues old-school media: An overpaid preponderance of senior staff that doesn’t do much.

The Jawa Pos will only hire someone if they are under 25 and you must retire when you hit 50—no matter what your seniority. .. The logic here, simply put, is that news is a young person’s business. It’s like American Idol for journalists.

So Jawa Pos is not going quietly into the tarpit for newspaper dinosaurs. And the weirdest part of all? Their strategy isn’t even all that original.

Here’s the thing: this is already happening — unofficially — in the US in almost any business sector, at any corporation you can name.

Fact is, young people are considered more desirable because they are cheaper to employ by almost any objective measure you can think of. The expense of hiring — and maintaining — a younger employee is almost always lower: salary, health care, even the expectation that they will work longer hours without any recognition of their sacrifice, etc. Young people generally don’t have the same sort of family obligations as middle-aged workers. They are at the beginning of their careers, so they are motivated to work harder to prove themselves. So it goes.

The result is that by the time you hit 45-50, you have crossed over into dangerous territory: you are simply not as highly valued as you once were, or as much as your experience should warrant. You are simply more expensive to maintain on the payroll than a newer, younger version of yourself.

Does experience and seniority have advantages in the work place? Of course. That’s why the Jawa Pos lets you work there until you are fifty.

Given how many other countries err on the side of being too protective of workers, the somewhat draconian, Logan’s Run approach was a surprise to me.

Protective of workers? Maybe if you’re a member of a union; but that’s not the reality in the US.

Lesson learned: there are never any guarantees, but if you are middle-aged, it might help to find a job where everyone is your age…or older.