41 Comments

1. NahnCee:

WHile the rest of America has been reading about 13 slaughtered immigrants in New York (and whether or not their death is a greater disaster than 3,000 slaughtered Americans in the same state), I’ve been following a crime in Los Angeles.

Two college students were walking home at 3:00 in the morning. While crossing the street on a green light they were struck by a car running a red light. One of them was thrown to one side and killed, the other was embedded in the car’s windshield while it continued on for another 400-500 feet. The car then stopped, a passenger got out and removed the injured pedestrian from the windshield, threw him to the ground, and the car continued on its merry murderous way.

For the first time ever, I find myself wondering how we will know about or track stories like this once the LA Times dies and goes away. Granted the LAT doesn’t do a very good job of investigating these sorts of stories any more, who the perps were, eye-witness interviews, and like that. But at least they serve as a conduit for the police to release information like there was a $235,000 reward, what the car looked like, and now the perp’s names and what the missing passenger looks like.

Really, I get all my news from the internet any more, so will not miss the demise of the lying LA Times. But how will we keep track of these sorts of stories which are so over the top that they pique interest and curiosity and you want to know more. I don’t suppose the police will step into the void and start putting out a daily newsletter to let citizens know which of their neighbors have been misbehaving and what we can do about it.

The tree-huggers will probably say we don’t NEED to know about drivers with Hispanic names and suspended driver’s licenses driving around at 3:00 in the morning with college students impaled in their windshield — that it’s just base curiosity and it would be better for everyone if we went blithely about our business while tithing all our money to various charities and churches to help out those very same poor people who don’t understand that what they’re doing is wrong and desperately need our help … and free gas and to pay their mortgages.

Apr 4, 2009 - 5:05 pm 2. bob:

I thought Mexican Slim had ridden to the rescue of the NYT?

Apr 4, 2009 - 5:05 pm 3. Doug:

NahnCee,
One of the advantages of electronic media is that overlooked embarassing details, or those eliciting threats of all kinds, can be quickly scrubbed.

Apr 4, 2009 - 5:24 pm 4. Doug:

desert rat said…
“Here’s a true story first reported by my Fox News colleague Andrew Napolitano (with the names and some details obscured to prevent retaliation). Under the Bush team a prominent and profitable bank, under threat of a damaging public audit, was forced to accept less than $1 billion of TARP money. The government insisted on buying a new class of preferred stock which gave it a tiny, minority position. The money flowed to the bank. Arguably, back then, the Bush administration was acting for purely economic reasons. It wanted to recapitalize the banks to halt a financial panic.

Fast forward to today, and that same bank is begging to give the money back. The chairman offers to write a check, now, with interest. He’s been sitting on the cash for months and has felt the dead hand of government threatening to run his business and dictate pay scales. He sees the writing on the wall and he wants out. But the Obama team says no, since unlike the smaller banks that gave their TARP money back, this bank is far more prominent. The bank has also been threatened with “adverse” consequences if its chairman persists. That’s politics talking, not economics.“

Apr 4, 2009 - 5:24 pm 5. Alexis:

Presently, the Omaha World-Herald is the largest employee-owned newspaper in the United States. Perhaps the Boston Globe or even the Gray Lady can become owned by its employees. Why not? It’s not as if the Sulzberger family would be doing a better job running those newspapers. Employee ownership would also be a better alternative than letting the New York Times get run by Uncle Sam. (Don’t laugh; it might just happen.)

For that matter, why shouldn’t at least some spinoffs of General Motors get sold to the unions in exchange for wage and pension concessions? If the unions can become responsible for the well being of an auto manufacturer, perhaps the unions can be held responsible by employees (and customers) for delivering a quality product. That may be a better alternative than letting Barack Obama continue being the de facto CEO of General Motors.

Apr 4, 2009 - 5:25 pm 6. Lifeofthemind:

Slim is a raider not a newspaperman, he saw a fish and got the Vig up front, they had to sell the building.

San Francisco is great old fashioned movie making. The power of a tableaux and the sense that whatever their private beliefs or morals the people in the industry then understood who the audience was and that they respected their basic belief in this country and its promise.

Apr 4, 2009 - 5:28 pm 7. Doug:

Last time I checked, Chief Bratton was being sued by the Police Union for his new policy requiring no helmets being worn in Crowd Control (mob) situations.
This after a score of Police in Swat gear were sent to the hospital with injuries sustained at the hands of a mob of illegal demonstrators.
Followed by Bratton and Tony Villar marching with the illegals to protest police brutality.
Followed, inevitably by a payment in the Millions to the aggrieved, anonymous illegals and their legal teams.

Apr 4, 2009 - 5:36 pm 8. Lifeofthemind:

Rudy Giuliani ran Bratton out of NYC. He gets credit for improving beat patrol patterns but he was a shameless publicity hound and disloyal in the way that no elected official should tolerate.

Apr 4, 2009 - 5:58 pm 9. Roy Lofquist:

My grandfather, Lester Jones, was an aide to General Pershing. He awakened the general with news of the earthquake. I was too young to appreciate his stories about the quake.

Apr 4, 2009 - 6:01 pm 10. wretchard:

#6

“San Francisco” was apparently made in 1936. Jeanette MacDonald starred in the 1941 equivalent of Ghost, Smilin’ Through in a story set in an old man’s memories, which revolves around the theme of salvation through forgiveness. It’s the kind of story that might never get produced today, but you never know. Anyhoo, Jeannette does a stemwinding version of “Land of Hope and Glory” in it.

Apr 4, 2009 - 6:01 pm 11. Lifeofthemind:

Tonight’s PBS movies are Inherit the Wind and Hotel Rwanda.

Apr 4, 2009 - 6:02 pm 12. E. Nigma:

I personally think that reality has been taking a beating for some time, between the newspapers, cable news and the internet.

Commentary and opinion have become a commodity to be marketed, and now everyone has one. Just like the quote “We will all be famous for 15 minutes”, it’s now “We will all have important opinions for 15 minutes” seems to apply to everyone, in or out of the media. There seems to be no ability of the majority of the people to discern when someone may have something intelligent to say (maybe on C-Span) and the relentless idiocy that occurs on MSNBC, CNN and elsewhere. The repetitive nature of the same themes eventually bleeds into the heads of everyone that continues to watch.

ESPN is almost a living parody of this stuff, where so-called sports experts
regurgitate a just shown sporting event to explain what happened, because the fans couldn’t quite figure out who just won or lost, or what it meant. Create the need, then fill it.
So the newpapers have, to a large extent, let “opinion” dicate the form of the way the present news (and which news gets reported), they have lost a goodly amount of the readership, as even we unwashed in fly over country can smell the inherent dishonesty in the form and nature of even news reporting. And the rise of the internet gave a place where advertisers could go directly to the people, and bypass the printed page.

I think I crossed the Rubicon in the ’80’s during the Iran-Contra hearings, or the Ollie North Inquisistion. I had a day job, but my VCR recorded the hearings being televised on C-SPAN during the day. And weirdly enough, I would watch some of this at night (fast forward!). The gap between what I saw with my own lyin’ eyes and the way the hearing were summarized by Dan “Courage” Rather on CBS, brought me to a new level of awareness. It’s not that I lionize Ollie North, but the cupidity and vacuousness of the hearings, and the trivial nature of the questioning to illuminate obscure points brought home just what a circus it all was.
Then the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.

Then the way the Gulf War was covered in 1990-91.

The overall lack of integrity, disohonesty and naked partisan nature of the networks and major daily papers has dug a hole from which the will not recover. And cable news is not far behind.

The alternative? It may be born on the ashes of the this bonfire of the inanities, when and where these major papers die. Need and market may spur the revival of local papers’ dedicated to do local reporting, and rebuilding the old-fashioned business model of how papers were supposed to work.

Apr 4, 2009 - 6:17 pm 13. JMH:

For the first time ever, I find myself wondering how we will know about or track stories like this once the LA Times dies and goes away.

Our local weekly has a pretty good police blotter. Most of the micropapers I’ve seen do as well. And the Police Department could always, y’know, post crime reports on a website or something. If setting up their own website is out of the budget, they could start a group blog for free.

Apr 4, 2009 - 6:20 pm 14. betsybounds:

I understand NahnCee’s reservations. Looks to me like an opportunity for an enterprising individual to commit to disseminating local news. Of course, enterprising individuals have an increasing number of start-up disincentives these days, don’t they? Furthermore, if the MSM publications hadn’t dedicated themselves to what has turned out to be suicide, and sacrificed nearly all their credibility in the process, they wouldn’t be dying.

But never fear. Congress is on the case: http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/04/are_newspapers_vital.php

So-newspapers might be resurrected as non-profits, by act of Congress. THAT would be good.

Oh yeah.

Apr 4, 2009 - 6:28 pm 15. Doug:

The Great Quake 1906-2006

Apr 4, 2009 - 6:28 pm 16. Doug:

EARTHQUAKE ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL

Apr 4, 2009 - 6:31 pm 17. buddy larsen:

IF you have ANY remaining fondness for the UN, do NOT watch Hotel Rwanda.

Apr 4, 2009 - 6:35 pm 18. betsybounds:

buddy larsen:

I disagree. I think that, if you have any remaining fondness for the UN, Hotel Rwanda is exactly what you SHOULD watch.

The sooner that worse-than-worthless outfit on the Hudson dies, the better off we will all be.

Apr 4, 2009 - 6:41 pm 19. Lifeofthemind:

Inherit the Wind is a wonderful study in the revealed prejudices of the intelligentsia.
Lady I had a nice clean place to stay and I left it to come here.

Apr 4, 2009 - 6:50 pm 20. Doug:

“Clean and Articulate“

Apr 4, 2009 - 6:54 pm 21. Fat Man:

“why shouldn’t at least some spinoffs of General Motors get sold to the unions in exchange for wage and pension concessions?”

Because the union bosses want cash.

Apr 4, 2009 - 6:58 pm 22. E. Nigma:

“Inherent the Wind” was largely based on H.L. Mencken’s perceptions and writings of the famous “Scopes Monkey Trial”, of course. Mencken himself (the grubby little neo-Nazi) made up a lot of what he wrote, whole cloth, to support his ideas, thus creating his own meme, before memes were cool. The reality of the trial was somewhat different than portrayed, as the locals were not quite the rude barbarians portrayed. But the national columnist Mencken created the myth, and it has stuck, largely. We got your media bias, right here.
The textbook in question also supported the proposition of eugenics (as did Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.), which those silly religious rubes in Dayton, Tennessee apparently thought was a bad idea. It took WWII for the rest of the world to catch up with those dummies.

Apr 4, 2009 - 6:59 pm 23. 11B40:

Greetings:

Is it just me, or does 13 seem to be an inordinately large number of unions to put out a newspaper?

Apr 4, 2009 - 7:04 pm 24. buddy larsen:

doug, rat’s story about the gov’t refusal to release TARP banks, it’s up on Drudge now, top of left colyum. Watch, as soon as someone takes it to court, Treasury will consent decree to abide legislative relief –the banks will need a law passed, years will go by, meanwhile this sort of stuff will grind away at the goose, who must have confidence to start laying the golden eggs again. This is all going quite insane –wait’ll you hear about the Merril Lynch bonuses. Which by the way are going to point back to some of the tinhat stuff, mark my words. BTW, Andrew Napolitano should be in office, and up high. WAY high.

Worst of all, IMHO, i mean of all, so far: An oil crisis exists, right now, as we speak, new tech ain’t gonna fix squat in time. 0’s ‘doubling of renewable energy’ means from 1 or 2% to 3 or 4% –IF he can do even that, at ANY cost.

Of the big three militaries, two of the political classes are on it –they understand it’s existential –we’re going to be in a military/political oil crisis of terrible dimensions, and we COULD’ve replaced half or more of what we import had we started drilling our own reserves a few years ago –and here we are now financially busted (and last month we bought 18 billion bucks worth of oil) and we still can’t drill, and on top of that, 0 has added a 40% total tax increase on the domestic industry –little outfits, very critical, are as wwe speak folding it up all over the place. I know of several personally, planning to quit, because of DC, and what DC might yet do that’s not even thought of yet.

HOWEVER, meanwhile –we go berserk, we go balls out, on CLIMATE CHANGE, which we CANNOT CHANGE even if ewe all drown ourselves, and AGW, which does not even EXIST.

Apr 4, 2009 - 7:05 pm 25. buddy larsen:

betsybounds, i hear ya –

Apr 4, 2009 - 7:13 pm 26. twobyfour:

“why shouldn’t at least some spinoffs of General Motors get sold to the unions in exchange for wage and pension concessions?”

And what, they’d go on strike against themselves?
They’d have to manage. With the class warfare gone, their lives would become empty and unfulfilled.

/s

Apr 4, 2009 - 7:16 pm 27. buddy larsen:

twoby, you laugh, but giganto power union SEIU (the card-check pressure union) has several employee lawsuits against it, for treating its employees badly.

Apr 4, 2009 - 7:29 pm 28. elby:

A week or so ago 4 police officers were shot dead by a recently released violent black criminal. There was minimal media coverage.

Just today, in Pittsburgh, 3 police officers were shot dead. From what I am already hearing on the news, their killer was a young white male who is the lefts caricature of a right winger. Lots of guns, tried to join the military but couldn’t hack it. Railed against the “zionist government.” Let’s see how much coverage this gets.

If the facts hurt leftist memes, bury the story. If they support leftist memes, trumpet the story endlessly.

Say a prayer for those fallen officers and their families.

Apr 4, 2009 - 8:06 pm 29. Leo Linbeck III:

Newspapers and urban Catholic schools are in a similar position. They are each collapsing under the weight of an outdated business model.

Newspapers get revenue from ads and subscriptions. Ads are going away, particularly the cash-cow category of want ads, which have all be left for Craigslist and eBay. And subscriptions are falling as people move to free sources of news, primarily on the internet.

Catholic schools get revenue from tuition. But low-income families can’t afford the tuition, and are moving to free sources of high-quality education like magnet and charter schools.

Newspapers rely on high quality reporting to get and keep their readers. This reporting is compromised as costs must be reduced to match the drop in revenues. Reporters are now very poorly paid, which has resulted in a drop in quality as good writers seek other outlets for their talent. Most of the folks left in the profession are those trapped in a romantic dream of “making a difference” and able to survive with sub-standard wages.

Catholic schools rely on high quality teaching to get and keep their students. This teaching is compromised as costs must be reduced to match the drop in revenues. This problem is made worse by the fact that in the past 50 years, the percentage of religious staff (i.e. nuns, priests, and brothers) – those who used to make the system work financially because they worked for free – has fallen from 90% to 7%. Most of the folks left in the schools are those trapped in a romantic dream of “making a difference” and able to survive with sub-standard wages (Catholic schools pay 30% less than public schools).

Newspapers have played an important role in our culture, providing a service to the community by informing the masses and some kind of check on the power-hungry government.

Catholic schools have played an important role in our culture, providing educational choice to the poor and some kind of check on the monopoly school district.

One big difference, however, is what comes after their demise. In the case of Catholic schools, we know the answer: public schools, particularly charter schools. But in the case of newspapers, who knows?

One thing is certain: there will still be a demand for both high-quality news and schools. Left to its own devices, entrepreneurs will find a solution – where there is demand, supply is soon created.

The biggest threat to both is that our betters in government will use this opportunity to return to a monopolized system, controlled by them. And here’s what we know about monopolies in the long run:

1. They produce crap.
2. They exploit their workers, thus necessitating a union.
3. They develop a symbiotic relationship with the union, thus driving up prices and restricting supply, with the union and the monopoly protecting and enriching each other at the expense of the consumer.
4. They co-opt the government (aka regulatory capture).
5. They stifle innovation.

A future in which the government effectively controls both the education of children and the informing of adults is a sad and frightening prospect.

Almost as sad and frightening as the New York Times.

L3

Apr 4, 2009 - 8:15 pm 30. In the Industry:

I won’t miss the NYTimes and I used to read the Times.

The bias wasn’t it. I will read well-written, genuinely informative items with a bias even if the bias is not my bias.

Even Jayson Blair wasn’t it.

More it was an accumulated sense that the NYTimes was a club writing articles for each other. Many of their news articles were process articles about what so-and-so said about so-and-so in the behind the scenes negotiations that had no effect on anything. Many articles were about some conveniently chosen person whose victimizations showed the obvious villainy of one policy or another. In all of these cases you had to get to the 13th paragraph before you actually found out about a real world event. Burying the lede was policy.

God forbid you should wander out of the A section and read a “lifestyle” piece.

The rise of Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd were typical of the mindset. The policies were secondary to how well the policy-maker would fit in at their cocktail parties. Again, a club to entertain themselves. They are free to do so. But I don’t want to pay for it.

Apr 4, 2009 - 9:16 pm 31. NahnCee:

Bratton’s an interesting Chief of Police in LA. He seems to play the celebrity game well, but he won’t provide protection against the paparrazzi. Local cops on the beat ran the last two or three Chiefs out of town, literally tracking them down and then publicizing their piccadillo’s. I haven’t seen that happening with Bratton, so I’m assuming that regular cops more or less like him. He refuses to believe that Mexicans are practicing genocide against blacks or to do anything about it, but since it’s people of color killing other people of color, no one seems to care too much. And he marches with the Mexicans and allows them to have parades during business hours downtown, resulting in ginormous traffic congestion, so I guess we can’t call him racist, can we? I guess bottom-line is he’s a pretty good canoe-ist, paddling along tentatively and so far managing not to swamp anything. I wonder how he’ll react when and if there are riots in the streets and liberals and conservatives start shooting at each other.

Apr 4, 2009 - 11:02 pm 32. Doug:

Call Daryl Gates?

Apr 4, 2009 - 11:57 pm 33. Doug:

I think I’d rather read Mo Dowd than David Brooks.
Hell, lately I’d rather read Krugman (for the first time) than Noonan.
F….. Sellouts.

Apr 5, 2009 - 12:02 am 34. Doug:

“Almost as sad and frightening as the New York Times.”
—
I’d say moreso, L 3.
One thing we were thankful for in California and Hawaii was a pretty laissez-faire situation wrt Homeschooling.
Not one day spent in the indoctrination camps.

Apr 5, 2009 - 12:10 am 35. Doug:

2 by:
I heard GM was struck 15 times during the 90s!

Apr 5, 2009 - 12:13 am 36. Doug:

“and we COULD’ve replaced half or more of what we import”

Buddy:
And that half could be stretched, in extremis, to make do.
Can’t do much stretchin of nothin.
I agree it’s disaster waiting to happen.
…and Barry Crows that we won’t be ripping off other people’s resources like the Bad Old Days.
Odd logic that.
But then, we haven’t mastered running on hot air.

Apr 5, 2009 - 12:21 am 37. Doug:

JunkScience.com — Steven Milloy, Publisher

Apr 5, 2009 - 12:25 am 38. buddy larsen:

http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speeches.html

Apr 5, 2009 - 1:34 am 39. Doug:

23. 11B40:
Greetings,
It’s New York, only Trump and a few others fathom the depths.
Limbaugh moved out back in the 90’s, and he’s been audited every year since.
He works there during Hurricanes and such a couple of weeks a year.
With Patterson’s latest hikes, he’s really moving out now, studio and all.
Patterson said if he’d known that would be the result, he’d have raised taxes earlier!

Apr 5, 2009 - 4:31 am 40. Ben Franklin:

I have wondered where we will get our news from once the papers go under as well but they have shrunken to the point that the local newscast covers just as much. As it is now they don’t do any investigative reporting anyway. They take the government news releases and report them verbatim. Oh, someone will call them up if they have an axe to grind and information will see the light of day that way but not because of any great effort on their part. It would be just as easy for the government to post the info on the web. Frankly, having watched how a lot of things are reported that I have witnessed for myself I think we would be better off for it to have the source material. These guys lie out their asses all day long and expect us to be grateful for it.

I think indolence explains much their bias in favor of large government. It is simply easier to ask a functionary what is going on than to go out and find a story on their own. They get to be buddies with these guys and don’t want to lose their “source” even though everything they are reporting is wrong.

Apr 5, 2009 - 5:37 pm 41. Doug:

Frankly, Ben Franklin, I would add Sloth, and Decadence to your Indolence.

Apr 5, 2009 - 6:39 pm

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