Interesting newspaper statistics as the number of staff plummet.

@SoDakCampaigns

Saw this on the Internet today:

According to this, over the last 20 years the number of staff employed by the Argus has been reduced from 65 to 8. Yet in that time, it’s parent company has acquired 2 daily and several weekly newspapers around the state, and shipped their publication out to Iowa.

Someone explain to me why exactly why taxpayers still have to be on the hook to place public notices, as opposed to filing such things in local libraries, or being placed on-line?

If it is going to be in law that taxpayer dollars are spent to support their mission, We should go back to supporting community sources of news and information and the local jobs they create.

Not media conglomerates who come in and strip-mine them for assets and ship jobs and production out of state.

22 thoughts on “Interesting newspaper statistics as the number of staff plummet.”

  1. during the glory days, the competitive coverage of bona fide news was a huge sport of its own, with owners building and fielding teams. the conglomerating and strip mining you mention has happened, and it’s hard to find evidence to make a case that news coverage is even found on the company mission statements.

  2. It’s time to classify the internet as a utility. Maybe Fox news won’t get to openly lie on air and then admit to it when they get sued.

          1. The sad thing is, all of them were actively shaking their heads behind the scenes but then would go on air and continue the lying narrative because…..money. They spawned the GQP and created the John Dale’s of the world.

        3. Yes, we get it: The Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit and its discovery process have given us a nice view of the media sausage-making that goes on at Fox News. At the same time, should the jury in that upcoming trial hold Fox News legally liable for those stories they did on Dominion Voting Systems, we should all be prepared for the likes of the New York Times to speak up in favor of Fox News when that decision is (successfully) appealed. It’s one thing for a reporter at a competing media site to root for Fox News to lose the lawsuit; it’s quite another thing to ask the NYT’s CEO and corporate counsel to do the same.

      2. Fox’s lawyers: The “‘general tenor’ of the show should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not ‘stating actual facts’ about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in ‘exaggeration’ and ‘non-literal commentary.’ ”

        “Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statement he makes.”

        Those facts?

  3. “You cannot play God then wash your hands of the things that you’ve created. Sooner or later, the day comes when you can’t hide from the things that you’ve done any more.” – Cmd Bill Adama, Battlestar Galactica 2003
    fictional, but fitting.

  4. Agree with PP. Taxpayer dollars — if spent — should support only community news sources and the local jobs they create. Not a single public dollar should support transnational media conglomerates, who strip-mine local assets and ship jobs and production out of state.

  6. I thought the topic here was the left-wing buying up papers and then failing, but I guess that it opened the door for the FOX haters to divert the attention. Then again, FOX is expanding and ranks first in every time slot, so it is hard to complain when CNN has fewer viewers than Teletubbies reruns and MSDNC ranks behind Home and Garden Channel. As far as lies go, no one lies more than Biden, but of course, he just reads the teleprompter script written by the CCP. For those of you who don’t watch anything except MSNBC, the CCP is Biden’s Chinese boss.

    1. fox gets 100 percent of the wingnut demographic, while the non-wingnut segment is divided among the other network choices, or don’t get counted in viewership numbers at all because they don’t consume cable news at all. that would include me.

      1. I don’t watch fox news and the majority of conservatives don’t.

        We aren’t sheep like the left.

        1. ah the so-are-you-but-what-am-i response. the obvious untruth of your post need not even be pointed out, so i am speechless.

    2. ALSO ALSO – the left wing isn’t buying up and gutting papers, it’s paper-pushing corporate organizations generating cash flow, at the cost of lives, and traditions that keep the industry alive. it’s not even about necessary technological evolution, because these things leave and nothing is left in its place but the void. i hate to be as windy as mr.dale about this but it’s a bee in my bonnet for sure.

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