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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My mother (who runs a newspaper shop) gives a different explanation:-
Guardian readers are dying!
Quite simply the average Guardian reader is 70+. Very few young people read it. It belongs to a time when Marxism was a credible political alternative, when the Fabian Society was considered to be a force for good and not some sort of radical left-wing Orwellian group seeking to undermine democracy.It is a paper that denounces wealth and expects its readership to be part of “la revolution” Che Guevara style (even if they happen to be amongst the bourgeoisie themselves….)
All newspapers are dying, partly because they are “old hat” technology and partly because they are seen as being mouthpieces of the established political parties that are rapidly losing credibility. But in the case of the Guardian it is the readership that is literally dying, and not replaced by younger readers willing to be made to feel guilty for their Western levels of wealth on every page.
M Courtney says:
January 22, 2014 at 3:00 pm
“It is the Tabloids that rely on pictures. Whether of HRH The Duchess of Cornwall (Daily Heil)”
You are a crazy person. The Daily Mail was instrumental in the propaganda efforts against Germany during WW 2.
Same goes for CNN: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/01/22/Ratings-Zucker-Era-CNN-Collapses-to-New-Lows
A word of warning!
There are those who would prefer if the plebs did not have access to the kind of communication that the net has given us over the past decade or so.
Just as the VCR was once a very simple device that could record anything on TV and the DVD player came along with its greater restrictions on recording. The newer devices for using the net are becoming somewhat the same. There are certain things that can’t be downloaded.
Will it be, that in 10 years from now, the devices we use to access the net won’t allow us to access certain sites or types of sites??
Keep your old laptops well oiled!!
dermot carroll says:
January 23, 2014 at 1:49 am
” … Will it be, that in 10 years from now, the devices we use to access the net won’t allow us to access certain sites or types of sites?? … ”
—-l
Heed the oracle 🙂
truth and honesty matters.
we buy newspapers or media outlets to tell us what is happening in the world. if we cannot trust that source, we look elsewhere for better and more reliable information. but the liberal media have still not understood that yet.
this is why the BBC is so widely despised and lampooned. it used to be a trusted media outlet, but now it is simply a joke.
even as the minor blog level, the same applies. i was reading a political blogger, who was quite insightful. but then we were getting blog posts from conspiracy-central, and 30% of readers left the site.
truth and honesty matters, any you are never going to get that from the independent or the grauniad.
ralph
DirkH says:
January 23, 2014 at 1:25 am
M Courtney says:
January 22, 2014 at 3:00 pm
“It is the Tabloids that rely on pictures. Whether of HRH The Duchess of Cornwall (Daily Heil)”
You are a crazy person. The Daily Mail was instrumental in the propaganda efforts against Germany during WW 2.
Ah, that will be the same paper who headlined with ‘Hurrah for the brownshirts’ and supports Marie La Pen’s fascist party in France and campaigned against the UK accepting Jewish refugees in WW2 . The Daily Fail is so right wing it sees Leftist tendencies in Mien Kampf.
View from the Solent says:
January 22, 2014 at 4:31 pm
Gareth Phillips says:
January 22, 2014 at 2:40 pm
I think it’s really sad that a once great newspaper is falling on hard times. The newspaper media in the UK is saturated with right wing leaning papers with the Guardian being one of the few papers that takes a more liberal view.
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For a certain value of “liberal”.
And define “right wing”.
If you live in the UK and don’t understand those terms I’m afraid you are beyond my skills at teaching political thought.
M Courtney: “It is the Tabloids that rely on pictures. Whether of HRH The Duchess of Cornwall (Daily Heil) or the incredibly straight Kelly Brook (Star or Sun).”
Strange how the riders of the highest horses seem to come from the left. Personally, I like to read as many newspapers as possible but the household Newspaper of choice is the Daily Mail – whose short-comings and hyperbole I am aware of and quite capable of tuning out. However, I find your (and many of the left’s) ridiculous use of the title ‘Daily Heil’ to be on a par with warmists accusing me/us of being a ‘Denier’ (with all the subliminal meaning of that word): You do not insult the newspaper, you insult those who read it by associating them with the Socialist Fascists that used such greetings (Heil).
OTOH: I quite enjoy reading many of your comments here…
brian macker says:
January 22, 2014 at 9:20 pm
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.
—-l
You might have misread the thrust of the article; the Guardian is not being compared to the Independant, both are being compared to other publications (which are not in the graph) : ” … All newspapers have lost sales. But the Independent and Guardian have suffered more than average … ”
I agree that with a cursory reading one might be left with an erroneous impression.
Gareth Phillips says:
January 23, 2014 at 2:39 am
“Ah, that will be the same paper who headlined with ‘Hurrah for the brownshirts’ and supports Marie La Pen’s fascist party in France”
Well, anything anti EU is called fascist in Europe these days.
” and campaigned against the UK accepting Jewish refugees in WW2 .”
Wasn’t that official Empire strategy?
” The Daily Fail is so right wing it sees Leftist tendencies in Mien Kampf.”
Mein Kampf shares the antisemitism with the Left.
Gareth Phillips:
At January 23, 2014 at 2:39 am you say to DirkH
Sorry, but your factual point is misdirected. DirkH cannot understand your point because he is, too.
Richard
Gareth Phillips:
Blimey!
While I was typing my post to you (at January 23, 2014 at 3:29 am) DirkH was providing his post (at January 23, 2014 at 3:27 am) which proved my point!
Richard
“…The allusion to Nature’s Providence rules out humans as the agents in their own development: civilisation only exists because the weather was nice. The reality, of course, is precisely the opposite: civilisation exists because nature is indifferent to our discomfort, thus humans worked together to improve their condition.
“Vapid accounts of human history and the forces which shape it underpin vapid accounts of the contemporary world. Such analyses become less convincing. Hence the newspapers remain on the shelf…”
Exactly right. Some years ago, just before Christmas The Independent had a headline “Your Credit Cards Are Killing The Planet” After which I could no longer take them seriously.
So Global Warming reduces news paper circulation. Can I get a research grant for investigating that? After all it is related to Global Warming!
I can’t stop laughing.
Ah, correlation is not necessarily causation… Just sayin’
Oh, and the decision by major papers to go to smaller type on smaller pages for “economy” was also daft. Let’s see, THE group most prone to reading papers was older folks, with decreasing vision. I know, lets make the type smaller…
It went from “I can read it without glasses” to “where are those glasses?…” so I just stopped bothering…
Silly newspapers don’t seem to know that extreme liberals don’t read.
Harry Passfield says at January 23, 2014 at 2:57 am…
Please don’t be offended at my irreverent use of the established nickname for the Daily Mail. It was just an aside – not a comment on the readership.
The nicknames stick, not because they are always true, but because the fact they are sometimes true at all is remarkable.
The Indy was Independent (once)
The Torygraph does suppory the Tories (though its remaining readership seem to be UKIP)
The Grainiad does have terrible typos (including, allegedly, its own name)
And, sorry, the Daily Mail was impressed by 1930s Germany… that is remarkable.
M Courtney. That’ the problem with nicknames. The one Guy Gibson had for his dog has long since dropped from general useage. That’s the thing: some are just insulting, the best are humorous. In that vein I accept the examples you gave but I would add that, as much as it has been accepted that the old Guardian has moved from liberal to hard left, it seems to be accepted that the DM can’t throw off it’s 30’s orientation – which was a lot to do with influence owners had on their editors in those days. As an example, I once considered myself C of Heath. But then, we tend to grow up…
Air America was the name of a Vietnam era drug smuggling operation by our government. Mel Gibson starred in a movie of the same name about the smugglers. Was the naming of the radio channel a coincidence?
This post should serve as a reminder to everyone that we CAN change the media by making our choices known. For example, I refuse to watch, access or knowingly use resources from: The Weather Channel, The Weather Underground (yuck), MSNBC, CNN, USA Today, NYT, WaPo, LA Times, The Guardian, NBCCBSABC News, …
And by letting their sponsors know that we don’t use those media any longer, we will ultimately quicken their demise.
The Daily Fail is so right wing it sees Leftist tendencies in Mien Kampf.
Say. Didn’t the writer of that book go on to become a National Socialist? Ah I forget. Socialism is a right wing movement. Real leftists are Communists and sing the Internationale. As opposed to some National anthem.
Like you know “the rocket’s Red Blair”.
M Simon:
At January 23, 2014 at 6:07 am you ask
I don’t know, but perhaps you can tell me when the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) became democratic?
Richard
M Courtney says: January 22, 2014 at 3:00 pm
Whether of HRH The Duchess of Cornwall (Daily Heil) or the incredibly straight Kelly Brook (Star or Sun).
___________________________________
I think the implied slur on the Daily Mail is rather wide of the mark.
I think you will find that Hitler was a lentil-eating vegitarian socialist (check the name of his party), who shares (shared) a rabid anti-sematism that is only matched by the modern Hampstead inteligentsia of the Liberal Left.
Do you remember the march by lefty feminists, shouting “we are all Hamas now”. Do these nutters have any clue what they are saying??
ralph