Apparently, crazy non-factual opinion just doesn’t sell all that well. Kind of reminds me of the doomed “Air America” radio network.
Climate resistance writes:
There are of course a number of reasons for the decline of ‘dead tree media’, one of which is the rise of Internet-based media. However, the internet had been around for a decade before the series above begins, during which time sales were stable, or possibly even showed an improvement.
This one graph tells the story:
![independentAndGuardianCirculation[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/independentandguardiancirculation1.jpg?quality=83)
However, I prefer a different explanation. All newspapers have lost sales. But the Independent and Guardian have suffered more than average, and I don’t believe their catastrophism is coincidental.
See whole story here: http://www.climate-resistance.org/2014/01/buy-a-newspaper-or-the-planet-dies.html
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Dana Nuccitelli, phone your office.
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I wonder if the dead trees used to print those two papers are the same trees used to divine the temperature proxies? It would be a delicious two-fer…
I think the problem is that these people really do believe, they will sink with their ship. They behave in this way because they believe their view of the world is more compassionate, more broad minded and more in touch with the world than other people (who do not read the Guardian or Independent). Under their compassion is a sneer, narrow mindedness and self-belief, and they are so cocooned this this bubble of imagined make beleive reality that they fail to understand they have lost the plot. When I meet these people I don’t debate with them because I know as soon as I declare an opinion that is not allied to their belief system they will switch off without trying to understand my point of view.
Think Monbiot and you have the Guardian mindset, think of a roomful of Monbiots and you have the Guardian readership.
The Independent’s collapse in sales may be due to their also publishing ‘The i ‘, tabloid format, very cheap and popular (still with a lot of the Indie’s prejudices and hobbyhorses but much more readable, and with a serious approach). ‘The i’ started off in October 2010 and the Indie’s fall started a few months later. Both are owned by the Russian oligarch Lebedev. ‘The i ‘ has a reasonable circulation (well, compared to the Indie), 293,946 in 2013. I personally think the Indie has collapsed because it’s just too boring for most people.
The Guardian has become the paper of bien-pensant metrolpolitan bourgeois intellectuals and its columnists are generally there to appeal to that audience, as an echo chamber of middle-class left ideology. With confidence in politicians at an all time low here in the UK and so many people seeking a different style of politics, the Guardian has only limited appeal, with its self-righteous attitudes and the classic approach of lecturing people (as well as their blatant censorship of any dissenting views).
I drink to the demise of both these rags but I will not hold my breath. The EU likes them because they unequivocally support its drive to ‘unify’ us.
It is not surprising. The paper decided to put a block on my comments in relation to climate topics because I kept referring to authoritative material that exposed the IPCC’s mantra.
*metropolitan.
… and middle-class in the UK doesn’t mean the same as it does in the US.
Climate alarmism fatigue. What else?
I eventually cancelled my subscription to Time Magazine because the articles written by actual experts on the topics discussed were overrun by opinion pieces and regular columns by journalists who were generally clueless, or at least, knew far less about the topics they wanted to discuss, than I did. If I wanted that sort of “expertise” I could chat to people in a bar.
certainly Alok Jha’s latest Guardian report on the Turney Fiasco was the worst of the coverage. UK Independent isn’t a lot better – shhh….don’t mention CAGW – but a couple of bits that are new:
22 Jan: UK Independent: Steve Connor: Communication breakdown on board the Akademik Shokalskiy blamed for the ship being stranded in Antarctic ice over Christmas
Serious questions have been raised about the behaviour of the expedition scientists who led a group of tourists and journalists onto the ice without properly planning for the rapid evacuation ordered by the ship’s captain as he became increasingly concerned about being trapped by sea ice…
Andrew Luck-Baker, a BBC radio producer who was one of the four journalists on the expedition, said that most of the 52 passengers were fee-paying tourists and there were chaotic scenes on the ice during the period when Captain Kiselev was trying to get them back to the ship.
“The expedition leaders could have some tough questions to face about logistical shortcomings that may have put the vessel at increased risk of becoming trapped. These were operational errors and mishaps during a visit by scientists and tourists to a location close to the Antarctic shore on 23 December,” Mr Luck-Baker said…
The expedition, which The Independent understands was sailing under a tourist permit rather than a research permit, has been criticised by some seasoned Antarctic scientists…
***Professor Turney said: “The timeline in the SMH article is inaccurate. I strongly reject any suggestion that I would knowingly put the safety of my team members at risk.”…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/communication-breakdown-on-board-the-akademik-shokalskiy-blamed-for-the-ship-being-stranded-in-antarctic-ice-over-christmas-9078090.html
It sells quite wel. National Enquirer or Weekly World News. But the audience is different.
Batboy meets with Aliens, plan to fix Global Warming.
View from the Solent says:
January 22, 2014 at 4:31 pm
Define “right wing”. In Australia it is a term used by left-wingers to denote anyone they do not like.
@Gillian Lord – It is the same in the USA.
In my office in London in the late ’60’s I read the Telegraph and a colleague read the Guardian.
After an aeroplane crash the Telegraph headline was “97 passengers survive plane crash”
while the Guardian headline was “Three die in plane crash”.
I was prompted to ask my Guardian-reading colleague why he read such a miserable rag.
“Guardian’s catastrophism leads circulation to plummet”
Well that’s one thing we can accurately attribute to global warming.
They both enjoyed some buoyancy ~2007-2009, low arctic ice and all that, but then 2009 climategate bent them down and now nature isn’t cooperating. They are at a stage where they are no longer reporting on actual planet Earth. How long will they follow this trend down? Already further than the BBC which is trying to claw its way back from the brink.
Boy, would I ever love to see the climategate release of a year ago still being held confidential. What if 10 million people each revealed just one word? Now that would be real ‘crowd sourcing’. Any adroit electronic wizards around that could figure this out?
crosspatch says:
January 22, 2014 at 3:21 pm
The recent decline in UK papers may be partly due to the economy, which is also a very good “partly” due to the cretinistic green energy policy that is killing industry and squeezing the budgets of citizens. Probably the best way to increase circulation is for them to put out editions that weigh more – say a kilo or two. It would be used to burn in the stove in winter.
The chart shows The Guardian dropping from 350000 to 250000. Down about 2/7ths. Indendent is down from 200000 to 75000. Down by 5/8ths, which twice as bad as The Guardian. The article is wrong.
I have 2 newspapers thrown on my driveway everyday.
One is a left-leaning (by my view) major Chicago newspaper, the other is a more local newspaper.
It’s been close to 30 years that I’ve been reading the “major” paper, why quit now ?
This is Chicago, the politicians “all” eventually go to jail.
Sell them to some oil sheik, jusk Al how.
Oops – jusk should be just ask.
The Guardian’s dogmatic stance on man-made climate change indicates a lack of curiosity and adaptability, showing that in at least one respect they truly live up to their name. I’m reminded of their article “Climate change is happening too quickly for species to adapt” where the author is so sure and full of himself. The species will probably do well; The Guardian, who knows?
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jul/14/climate-change-evolution-species-adapt
The Grauniad is the UK’s batty aunt living in her loft and prattling on about nothing by the hour to nobody in particular. The family reserves a space for her at dinner and then its back to the loft for more prattling. Ever was it so, so shall it ever be. God bless England – there shall never be another quite the likes of her.
Militant media, no matter the subject, is always irrelevant to everyone except the acolytes. Consider, for instance, Watchtower.
I find this quote: “The awesome truth is that we are the last generation to enjoy the kind of climate that allowed civilisation to germinate, grow and flourish since the start of settled agriculture 11,000 years ago.”
Is actually telling. Mankind believes in the end of civilization as we know it – and then does everything humanly possible to get humans to self destruct by by demonizing life giving CO2. The solution to the end of life as we know it is to to make energy, which amplifies human effort to survive, too expensive for the poorest.
History will look back at this generation of dumb-asses and wonder how sheople could be so easily led into stupidity.
Pro Eu and Pro Uncontrolled immigration have also been factors.
dp said “The Grauniad is the UK’s batty aunt living in her loft and prattling on about nothing by the hour to nobody in particular. The family reserves a space for her at dinner …”.
But she only gets fish & chips wrapped in yesterday’s Guardian edition …!
E.M.Smith says:
January 22, 2014 at 3:25 pm:
—-l
I think that is very good description of what happened.