I'M SLIGHTLY embarrassed by the bagpipe dirges played when American newspapers drop employees like autumn leaves. Some columnists practically bawled over the accelerating decline and decay of the American newspaper.
How many tears rolled down columnists' cheeks when GM announced it would cut 30,000 jobs by 2008? Their self-pity showed that some journalists believe the planets orbit around them.
Newspapers seem to be dying and that brings on the tears. When dinosaurs went extinct, who cried?
No one. Unlike newspapers, dinosaurs couldn't write their own obituaries.
Like dinosaurs, newspapers have massive bodies and brains the size of walnuts.
They give away their product for free on the Internet, then run in circles squawking like chickens when circulation goes down like the Titanic.
Even the dimmest hooker knows to get paid upfront.
"Put the money on the dresser, honey."
But suicidal corporate geniuses leaped into the Internet before figuring how to get the money off the dresser. Because everyone else was doing it, newspapers raced to post content on the Net for free, which is like burning furniture to warm your house. Eventually you're left in the cold with no place to sit.
In addition to dumb, newspapers were dishonest. Some big ones falsified circulation numbers. Some reporters were revealed as cheats. Credibility tumbled.
Newspapers scrambled for circulation with futile schemes that could have been devised by Wile E. Coyote. Some offered sudoku, some tried Lucky Bucks, many inserted color posters of athletes. Nothing worked, the idea tank is dry.
Since a lingering death is painful (and embarrassing), newspapers should accept a quick, honorable death - and just shut down. (Yes, my pension is safe.)
A "product" so out of touch with Today shouldn't hang around like seagulls over a landfill.
And they're not. Daily newspapers are dropping dead almost as fast as daily newspaper readers. Newspapers are an "old people's " medium in a youth-dominated market. Worst of all - they're not cool.
Newspapers destroy forests and create litter.
Once printed, they are thrown into carbon dioxide-belching trucks that clog highways and irritate commuters. When you pick up the "product," your hands get dirty.
Newspapers are hobbled by the labor-intensive technology of Ben Franklin, a publisher who could ignore the baying of Wall Street wolves.
Anyway, most people now say they get their "news" from the Internet and TV.
That's why everyone is so smart and so well-informed about the world around them.
If there were no stodgy newspapers to set the agenda with boring stuff like government, world news, politics and finance, TV news would be free to give viewers what they want - more weather, cute animal videos, traffic accidents, house fires and "special reports" on the dangers (or promise) of cosmetic surgery.
The dilemma: While people get their news from the Internet, the Internet gets its news from newspapers.
Without newspapers, who provides the content?
Bloggers!
Blogs are an excellent source of "news," much of it overheard and passed along by the blogger's girl friend. If she's sick, the blogger can make something up. No editors or accountability gum up the works.
When you tire of the "news" (in a minute or two), you are just a mouse click away from porn.
Newspapers can't touch that.
E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977.
