See, I told you so--The end of the American newspaper industry

On election day, I posted a bit about how that day would be the death knell of the media--specifically, the print media. I wrote this: "(G)et a good look. (The current media's dominance) ends tonight. The media, as we know it, is about to die. And a well-deserved death it is."

Looks like I was right, but a whole lot faster than I ever expected. The Tribune Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune (duh!) and other papers, has already gone bankrupt. The New York Times, the paper I most despise, is hemorrhaging money, has put up their building as collateral on a $225 million line of credit and is looking to dump other assets, including the Boston Globe and its 17 percent stake in the Boston Red Sox (a fact that, if I were a Red Sox fan OR a Yankee fan, would seriously piss me off). The Miami Herald is already up for sale. Cox Newspapers is in dire straits. The Washington Post hasn't said much yet, but you know they're hurting.

The problem, or so the talking heads say, is that advertising revenue is decreasing rapidly. And that's true; and, it's also true that a lot of that is due to the economy. But all those papers and paper conglomerates were suffering before, as all of them were rapidly losing readers. A lot of people don't realize that papers can't set their ad rates; they're set by an established system that directly links circulation to ad prices (this is why the Dallas Morning News got in a lot of trouble a few years back, because they were lying about their circulation and were overcharging advertisers). Fewer readers=less ad money=less revenue. The problem is compounded when you consider that a lot of advertisers will pull up stakes because they're not reaching the readership they want.

Why the loss of readership? That ain't the economy's fault. That's the fault of the papers themselves. Folks aren't going to pay to read tripe they consider garbage when they can look at it online for free and/or check other sources for the same price.

Papers are obsolete; their leaders are too arrogant and stupid to recognize it. Maybe they'll get it when they're all unemployed or the papers go to Web-only formats with a much smaller staff.

But remember, I called it first.