Too many American newspapers have shut down or shriveled to irrelevance, but, luckily, we still have such bastions of local journalism as the Chicago Chronicle and New York News Daily.
We can blame at least part of the problem on RWR (Ronald Wilson Reagan). Isn't he the one who gave billionaire Rupert Murdoch preferential treatment so he could become a citizen of the United States?
Reagan also killed the Fairness Doctrine, which required at least a modicum of honesty in our news sources.
And now we have very few major corporations that control about 90% of the newsprint /TV ads etc. that we see on a daily basis.
Thank you Cherry Road for saving our small town upstate NY paper, which has documented local history for 150 years as no other resource has. Not just for today, but for future reference.
I live in the small town in the Finger Lakes region of New York State and our local paper was bought out by a newspaper conglomerate. They went under after they pared down the staff at the local. So we were out a paper for about 6 months, but thanks to the editor and local folks finding Cherry Road Media and having them underwrite our local paper. It is much smaller but we get the local news ,school sports obituaries and other news which I am so grateful for.
Thank you for returning to this essential to our democracy issue! I love my local hometown newspaper, a weekly. I know the people who own, report on local events and edit it. I trust them, though I certainly don't always agree with every editorial position they take. I worry who/what will replace them when the current staff/owner etc must retire.
We lost our local newspaper decades ago. The old banner is still there, but most of the news is either about issues in a neighboring city or the same stuff I see on the television news. Gannett is everywhere.
People today are too busy getting their news from their phones. The days of reading a good book from the public library are numbered as well as local papers. It's amazing that people will actually believe what they've seen/read on the internet and then pass it on as the truth without ever questioning its veracity.
We love newspapers. And of course it makes us sad to witness the decline of unbiased, fact based reporting - local, national and global. But let's face it, we are partly responsible for this - by embracing every new technology, buying into all the hype that it spreads, and, worst of all, buying tablets and smartphones for our kids and grandkids without establishing guardrails. Yes, we can shift some of the blame to Reagan, Murdoch et al., but they could not have succeeded without our compliance. We may not like what we see when we look in the mirror, but we have to be honest with ourselves. What can we do? Well, we can support local news and honest journalism by subscribing to our hometown papers, writing letters of encouragement to the editors, letting them know what we appreciate (though complaining is much easier), and maybe subscribe to a few progressive magazines (like Mother Jones and The New Republic). And of course, we can help Jim and his team spread the word! Thanks to all of them for what they do!
If we were a smart democracy we should fund the check and balance of muckrakers at the local level and defund the Pentagon at the national level. Get rid of the 535+in Washington DC and give out I Pads for a direct democracy like Taiwan
I hate to say it, but newspapers did this to themselves. I finally ditched the LA Times when they ran international stories above the fold for months on end. Those stories are important but not near as important as local news.
One shining light isn't in print; it's on the air. TPR (Texas Public Radio headquartered in San Antonio) and many other NPR Affiliates nation wide are reporting the local new objectively and fully the way journalists used to do.
I hope Jim Hightower has some evidence in the claim that the Chicago Chronicle and New York News Daily are connected to Russian propaganda. I highly doubt it. For one, the Russians have learned for more than a century that US Presidents have very little relation to government policy towards Russia; thus, it scarcely matters to the Russians who wins the Presidency as both Democrats and Republicans share the same Russophobia. In fact, Vladimir Putin recently stated that of the two candidates, he preferred Biden over Trump. The fact is that every aspect of Russiagate was a manufactured lie. It is time to end this nonsense.
Many years ago I delivered many newspapers every night Large & small publications. I am currently in Las Vegas, a city of 3 million people, and no "real" newspaper Years ago I delivered a local, then that was taken over & closed. Now there is no way to connect, to know what is going on, no local events advertised. I also live in a small town just north of the Cape Cod canal-every town has a small free paper that reports mostly submitted items, and reports on events after they are over. There is no way to know what is going on in the towns 10 miles down the road. Great way to keep everyone in their silos!
I sent a Letter to the Editor of my local paper yesterday in the hopes that it will be published and be effective before the Mountain Valley Pipeline begins to transport Fracked gas to International markets. No Doonesbury in the Charleston Gazette color comics again for this weekend's newspaper.
We often spend to much time surfing the internet, or watching the news on TV. There are a number of magazines that cover the news with out bowing to corporations . The print media is often neglected, remember not to long ago Lowdown was in print.
I looked up the Chicago Chronicle, and it seems kind of Mickey Mouse (lightweight, amateurish) but I'm not seeing any Russian propaganda. Can you point me to some tainted articles?
Searching for New York News Daily only turns up the old-line Daily News. The domain name http://nynewsdaily.com/ has expired.
Trump and co. like to call all democrats communists. And you cannot deny that the D party has a long infatuation with communism. The NY times was praising Stalin to the skies when he was murdering people by the millions. I sometime think the D party's hostility to an armed citizenry, to small business, and often to free speech is a holdover from communism.
But all the same i often wish that Biden & Co. would channel their inner Lenin and have some plutocrats, kleptocrats, Fascists, and money-grubbing religious phonies "liquidated", as the reds used to say. "you can't talk law to a rat. you kill it or leave it alone" as Rooster Cogburn said.
You know what's funny? Liberals always want to ban guns. They say they want to ban self loading rifles, which they always call "assault weapons" because it sound scarier. (And if you think they'd STOP with AR's, you don't know any history; True Believers never stop.) But it seems to me that kleptocrats or fascist "evangelists" with millions or billions of dollars , are FAR more dangerous to the US than scary looking rifles. Rifles can be used by good people OR bad people, and even a very bad man can only kill a few people by himself. But a bad man with billions of dollars can put another Hitler in power. Like the German rich men put Hitler in and the evil evangelists did so much to put Trump in.
Thanks for this heads up--I will alert my friends of the existence of these fake Russian propaganda vehicles. We are lucky in Atlanta to have Cox News' Atlanta Journal/Constitution, which still has some top-notch investigative reporters keeping us (and our elected officials) on their toes.
We can blame at least part of the problem on RWR (Ronald Wilson Reagan). Isn't he the one who gave billionaire Rupert Murdoch preferential treatment so he could become a citizen of the United States?
Reagan also killed the Fairness Doctrine, which required at least a modicum of honesty in our news sources.
And now we have very few major corporations that control about 90% of the newsprint /TV ads etc. that we see on a daily basis.
Plus, Reagan was no friend of our unions, either.
I thought it was Bill Clinton who did it in.? But I think you are right. As soon as it was gone we were cursed with Fox news and Rush
Thank you Cherry Road for saving our small town upstate NY paper, which has documented local history for 150 years as no other resource has. Not just for today, but for future reference.
I live in the small town in the Finger Lakes region of New York State and our local paper was bought out by a newspaper conglomerate. They went under after they pared down the staff at the local. So we were out a paper for about 6 months, but thanks to the editor and local folks finding Cherry Road Media and having them underwrite our local paper. It is much smaller but we get the local news ,school sports obituaries and other news which I am so grateful for.
Thank you for returning to this essential to our democracy issue! I love my local hometown newspaper, a weekly. I know the people who own, report on local events and edit it. I trust them, though I certainly don't always agree with every editorial position they take. I worry who/what will replace them when the current staff/owner etc must retire.
We lost our local newspaper decades ago. The old banner is still there, but most of the news is either about issues in a neighboring city or the same stuff I see on the television news. Gannett is everywhere.
People today are too busy getting their news from their phones. The days of reading a good book from the public library are numbered as well as local papers. It's amazing that people will actually believe what they've seen/read on the internet and then pass it on as the truth without ever questioning its veracity.
We love newspapers. And of course it makes us sad to witness the decline of unbiased, fact based reporting - local, national and global. But let's face it, we are partly responsible for this - by embracing every new technology, buying into all the hype that it spreads, and, worst of all, buying tablets and smartphones for our kids and grandkids without establishing guardrails. Yes, we can shift some of the blame to Reagan, Murdoch et al., but they could not have succeeded without our compliance. We may not like what we see when we look in the mirror, but we have to be honest with ourselves. What can we do? Well, we can support local news and honest journalism by subscribing to our hometown papers, writing letters of encouragement to the editors, letting them know what we appreciate (though complaining is much easier), and maybe subscribe to a few progressive magazines (like Mother Jones and The New Republic). And of course, we can help Jim and his team spread the word! Thanks to all of them for what they do!
If we were a smart democracy we should fund the check and balance of muckrakers at the local level and defund the Pentagon at the national level. Get rid of the 535+in Washington DC and give out I Pads for a direct democracy like Taiwan
I hate to say it, but newspapers did this to themselves. I finally ditched the LA Times when they ran international stories above the fold for months on end. Those stories are important but not near as important as local news.
One shining light isn't in print; it's on the air. TPR (Texas Public Radio headquartered in San Antonio) and many other NPR Affiliates nation wide are reporting the local new objectively and fully the way journalists used to do.
I hope Jim Hightower has some evidence in the claim that the Chicago Chronicle and New York News Daily are connected to Russian propaganda. I highly doubt it. For one, the Russians have learned for more than a century that US Presidents have very little relation to government policy towards Russia; thus, it scarcely matters to the Russians who wins the Presidency as both Democrats and Republicans share the same Russophobia. In fact, Vladimir Putin recently stated that of the two candidates, he preferred Biden over Trump. The fact is that every aspect of Russiagate was a manufactured lie. It is time to end this nonsense.
There was a link missing in the original post, apologies. It's there now, and here: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/business/media/russia-us-news-sites.html
Sorry, the link is paywalled!
Many years ago I delivered many newspapers every night Large & small publications. I am currently in Las Vegas, a city of 3 million people, and no "real" newspaper Years ago I delivered a local, then that was taken over & closed. Now there is no way to connect, to know what is going on, no local events advertised. I also live in a small town just north of the Cape Cod canal-every town has a small free paper that reports mostly submitted items, and reports on events after they are over. There is no way to know what is going on in the towns 10 miles down the road. Great way to keep everyone in their silos!
I sent a Letter to the Editor of my local paper yesterday in the hopes that it will be published and be effective before the Mountain Valley Pipeline begins to transport Fracked gas to International markets. No Doonesbury in the Charleston Gazette color comics again for this weekend's newspaper.
We often spend to much time surfing the internet, or watching the news on TV. There are a number of magazines that cover the news with out bowing to corporations . The print media is often neglected, remember not to long ago Lowdown was in print.
I looked up the Chicago Chronicle, and it seems kind of Mickey Mouse (lightweight, amateurish) but I'm not seeing any Russian propaganda. Can you point me to some tainted articles?
Searching for New York News Daily only turns up the old-line Daily News. The domain name http://nynewsdaily.com/ has expired.
Trump and co. like to call all democrats communists. And you cannot deny that the D party has a long infatuation with communism. The NY times was praising Stalin to the skies when he was murdering people by the millions. I sometime think the D party's hostility to an armed citizenry, to small business, and often to free speech is a holdover from communism.
But all the same i often wish that Biden & Co. would channel their inner Lenin and have some plutocrats, kleptocrats, Fascists, and money-grubbing religious phonies "liquidated", as the reds used to say. "you can't talk law to a rat. you kill it or leave it alone" as Rooster Cogburn said.
You know what's funny? Liberals always want to ban guns. They say they want to ban self loading rifles, which they always call "assault weapons" because it sound scarier. (And if you think they'd STOP with AR's, you don't know any history; True Believers never stop.) But it seems to me that kleptocrats or fascist "evangelists" with millions or billions of dollars , are FAR more dangerous to the US than scary looking rifles. Rifles can be used by good people OR bad people, and even a very bad man can only kill a few people by himself. But a bad man with billions of dollars can put another Hitler in power. Like the German rich men put Hitler in and the evil evangelists did so much to put Trump in.
Thanks for this heads up--I will alert my friends of the existence of these fake Russian propaganda vehicles. We are lucky in Atlanta to have Cox News' Atlanta Journal/Constitution, which still has some top-notch investigative reporters keeping us (and our elected officials) on their toes.