PRESS NOTES

Posted at 8:58 a.m. ET

The state of the liberal press is reflected this morning in two stories.  From NewsMax:

Battered by a one-two punch of declining readership and ad pages, Newsweek magazine is getting an extreme makeover this year that will include a large circulation reduction, deep cuts in operating costs, and a new effort to attract advertisers by concentrating on an elite audience.

According to The New York Times, executives at Newsweek say the retooled magazine will focus on being a "thought leader" that focuses on telling readers how to think about news, rather than telling people what happened in the last week.

They don't understand their problem.  They've been telling people how to think about news, and what to think, for years.  That's one reason they've lost subscribers, including me. 

And from the New York Post:

The embattled New York Times Co., trying to wriggle out from under a pile of debt as advertising revenue dries up, is talking to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim about making a sizeable cash investment in the company.

Slim, said to be the world's second-richest person with $60 billion, bought a 6.4 percent common share stake in the Times Co. in September for about $118 million, but is interested in gaining a larger share of the company, according to a report last night in The Wall Street Journal.

Ditto The New York Times.  Journalism is a profession (or calling) known for its arrogance.  Many of our press lords don't seem to understand that the quality and credibility of their product has cost them support.  After all, they've been through recessions before, and have survived.  When news pages are turned into editorials, half the country falls away.  Some of the most prominent newspapers in trouble today - The New York Times, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, have become infamous for their front-page editorial slant.

January 18, 2009.