:
I RED THE NEWS TODAY, O'BOY (3#)-

Is the Newspaper Industry
really on the verge of disaster?

# John Morton. "I will point out that despite weak advertising and all the other woes newspapers endured last year, the average operating profit margin of the publicly owned companies' newspaper operations was 17 percent. Most non-media businesses couldn't hope to achieve even half that in the best of times."

# Neil McIntosh: "Serious journalism was described at the conference, repeatedly, as something like broccoli, or medicine the citizenry needs to spoon down, no matter how unpalatable, if democracy is to survive."

# Desperation over losing control of the public discourse must have prompted this melodramatic story by Matt Richtel at the NY Times which issues a dire warning to bloggers: stop blogging or you will die!

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