Tuesday, September 15, 2009

A new Moore's law...

Michael Moore's rant (a coherent one too) on newspapers, capitalism and loyalties...

“Two main things I want to say: Why aren’t the newspapers in Europe going under? It’s not that newspapers in Europe are having an easy time—again, we’re in an economic recession that’s worldwide, but why aren’t they going under? The American newspapers, oh they say ‘It’s the Internet. Papers are getting killed by the Internet.’ Last I’ve heard they’ve got the Internet in Europe. And they’ve got the Internet in Japan. So why aren’t their papers folding like ours are going under? European, Japanese, other countries many, most, of their newspapers, the primary source of their funding is circulation. Advertising is second. In our country, advertising is the primary source of funding, circulation is second. Anything you say that the people who read your newspaper are secondary to the business community you’ve lost, eventually you’re not going to survive at that point when you’re primary concern is the advertiser. In Europe, they know in order to keep circulation up they better put out a damn good newspaper. They better put out something that people read, and they better not cut too many reporters because if certain beats aren’t being covered, people aren’t going to read the paper.

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