From CNN's Jack Cafferty:
"How to Save Your Newspaper: A Modest Proposal.” That's the cover story of TIME magazine this week. In it, Walter Isaacson – former managing editor of Time and the current CEO of the Aspen Institute – as well as my former boss here at CNN – writes how the crisis in journalism has reached meltdown proportions. He says we can now imagine a time when some big cities will no longer have a newspaper, saying that last year more people in this country got their news online for free than paid for it by buying newspapers and magazines.
News outlets now primarily rely on advertising revenue and not on newsstand sales and subscriptions.
Isaacson describes how news outlets now primarily rely on advertising revenue and not on newsstand sales and subscriptions. He says that in order for newspapers to survive they will have to charge for content by way of subscriptions. He also suggests introducing an easy payment system – like how people buy songs on i-Tunes or use an EZ pass.
It's clear that with the decline of advertising dollars, newspapers are in deep trouble. Publisher McClatchy reported a $21.7 million loss for the fourth quarter. It says it plans to cut about $100 million this year, it's unclear how much of that will come in the form of layoffs. Other companies like the New York Times, Gannett and Lee Enterprises have already reported lower profits in that same quarter. And, Rupert Murdoch's giant media conglomerate News Corp posted its biggest ever quarterly net loss this week, taking a write-down of $8.4 billion.
The CEO of another struggling company, the Sun-Times Media Group, says he'll resign at the end of the month – after the company announced last month it would close a dozen of its weekly papers and ask union workers to take a pay cut.
Here’s my question to you: How important is it to save America's newspapers?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
Sarah Palin is back again. Now she's taking shots at Tina Fey, Katie Couric, John McCain and the media.
The former Vice Presidential candidate gave an exclusive interview to conservative John Ziegler for a documentary on how Barack Obama got elected.
What would you ask the governor?
In it, she lashes out at Tina Fey and Katie Couric for exploiting her during her 12-week odyssey as John McCain's running mate. She said a Saturday Night Live skit crossed the line when Fey, who parodied Palin, said marriage is a sacred institution between two unwilling teenagers. It was a reference to Palin's then-pregnant and unmarried daughter.
Palin blamed the McCain campaign for the often referenced interview with CBS news anchor Katie Couric in which Palin couldn't name the newspapers she reads. She says it's all McCain's fault for granting additional access after the first interview with Couric went poorly. Poorly is an understatement. Palin came off as functionally illiterate.
Today Palin's office released a statement accusing the media of taking her statements out of context to, "create adversarial situations." She also says the media would have gone easier on her and her family if she'd been on the Democratic ticket. It should be noted that the conservative Ziegler went pretty easy on Palin, refusing to ask any difficult questions including, for example, what newspaper do you read, Governor?
Here’s my question to you: Is there anything you'd like to ask Sarah Palin?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Click the play button to see what Jack and our viewers had to say. (PHOTO CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES)
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
John McCain is whining about the media - again. His campaign manager, Rick Davis, wants to meet with the president of NBC News to protest the network's coverage... saying it's abandoning "non-partisan coverage" of the presidential race.
McCain's not happy with what NBC's Andrea Mitchell said on "Meet the Press" yesterday, when she questioned whether McCain may have known about some of the questions at the faith forum Saturday night ahead of time. John McCain was supposed to be held in a so-called "cone of silence" during Barack Obama's interview, which happened first. But it turns out McCain was in his motorcade on the way to Rick Warren's church during the interview.
Watch: Cafferty: Media objective?
McCain's campaign insists the Arizona Senator didn't hear the broadcast of the event in the car and didn't hear any questions. They say the insinuation from Obama's camp that McCain cheated is outrageous and they're going after Andrea Mitchell for "simply repeating Obama campaign talking points".
This isn't the first time McCain has been critical of the media's coverage of the race. The campaign recently put out a video spoofing how much the media love Obama.
A recent Pew Poll found 48% of those surveyed say they're hearing too much about Barack Obama, compared to 26% who feel the same way about John McCain. But, a media study that came out last month found that NBC, ABC, and CBS were tougher on Obama than they were on McCain during the first six weeks of the general election campaign.
Here’s my question to you: How would you rate the objectivity of the news media in covering the presidential race?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
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