Conde Nast closes Gourmet and more.....

[Jim Michael]

Business cycles are just that - cycles. Folks may attempt to attribute causal factors aligned with their ontology, but they are going to occur in spite of attempts to prevent them or mitigate their severity. Everyone who had been paying attention knew what was coming last year and took steps to mitigate their risk. Once this down cycle is complete (it's not) something else will come along which won't be planned for, be it a black swan or another series of bad business decisions.

How many folks do risk analysis on a regular basis? If you are in business and are not doing regular qualitative risk analysis then you can't have a firm grasp of the potential risk that your business is exposed to.

[Bruce Watson]

What Ed says. Certainly true.

There's more though. So called "media consolidation" has also decimated print media. It hurts print media from several separate directions. First, it throws a huge number of reporters and photographers out of work since various media under a single corporate master can share stories and photographs. Second, it increases dependence on advertising -- the single corporate master typically makes deals for all the media it controls to spread the advertising across all the media. The two together lead to far fewer stories and far more ads.

But the biggie in my mind is the tendency for corporations to turn the media they control into propaganda sheets for their own agendas. An example, I'm sad to say, is Murdoch's takeover of the WSJ. What used to be a bastion of good reporting is sliding into irrelevance. Good reporting is being replaced by corporate propaganda. And it's not just WSJ. The NYTs has the same disease, as do all the leading papers and magazines.

The five or six corporate owners of the majority of print media (in the USA anyway) have sold the media's collective soul. The subscribers find that they have ever decreasing credibility. So subscriptions fall and the whole thing devolves into the black death spiral that we are witnessing today.

I'm guilty -- I dropped my 20 year old subscription to my local paper last year. They wanted to know why, so I told them. Not that it mattered, or changed the paper in any way. They had practically stopped reporting local and state news (they, and I, are in the state capital, so there's little excuse for this, especially when the legislature is in session), and what little they did report was often fluffy side issues. For example, they "missed" the local state agriculture university proposal for a BSL-4 biohazard facility off a major thoroughfare in the middle of a million people. Not a word in the paper. Don't you think the people of the community should be informed when their government (it's a state supported school) wants to build an infectious disease facility in their midst? Isn't that... news?

And what really saddens me is that I used to work for that paper. As a photographer. The mighty have fallen indeed. But not in battle. They are pointlessly committing suicide. And we are all the worse for it.

[BrianShaw]

I'm guilty -- I dropped my 20 year old subscription to my local paper last year. They wanted to know why, so I told them. Not that it mattered, or changed the paper in any way. They had practically stopped ...

Me too. Except my subscription went a few years longer than 20 years. Not only did they make the paper slimmer and with less interesting news/features, but almost everything was a day or two late. The sales folks keep calling and calling - practically every other night - begging us to renew. When it's not guilt ("we can't keep printing a local paper without valued subscribers like you"), it is a price break ("well, how about a decade-long subscription for only $2.99 per year"), or it is the dreaded threat of an information drought ("if you get your news from the internet you MUST remember that electricity might not always be available, and what would happen...")

The demise of Gourmet is a shame because of its long history, but lets face it: Gourmet has been struggling for years. What upsets me is that they just accepted my one-year subscription... and then immediately close shop. What's up with that?

[KEK]

Bruce and Brian I'd never give up my local newspaper. Think what would happen to my notebook when I took it into the crapper.

[Brian_A]

I gave up on the local paper a long time ago but they still send it to me. I don't know why, they must have extra money. Never have any kids coming to the door to collect on it. While I enjoy the funny pages and the local events stuff, I don't get much use out of it. Everything I want to know can be found via the main news websites and much more up to date. Thankfully this area has a great recycling program!

[BrianShaw]

Thankfully this area has a great recycling program!

I get tired from walking 87.9% of my mail straight from the mailbox to the recycle bin. At least I get some exercise, eh?

[Bruce Watson]

I gave up on the local paper a long time ago but they still send it to me. I don't know why...

Sure you do. Think about it... It's about advertising. They keep sending you the paper to keep their circulation numbers up so they can charge more for the advertising. This, in a nut shell, is what's wrong.

[Brian_A]

I get tired from walking 87.9% of my mail straight from the mailbox to the recycle bin. At least I get some exercise, eh?

No doubt. Guess it's my way of "going green." I wish that the junk mail people would get the hint..

[Kirk Gittings]

Sure you do. Think about it... It's about advertising. They keep sending you the paper to keep their circulation numbers up so they can charge more for the advertising. This, in a nut shell, is what's wrong.

This has been a common business practice for magazines as long as I can remember, though I had not heard of it for newspapers. I must be on some list as I routinely receive magazines for a few months for free. I assume this is for the bumping circulation reason-they never tell you. Once I received Outside for free for about two years.

[Brian_A]

I must be on some list as I routinely receive magazines for a few months for free.

I wouldn't mind being on that list for magazines.. I guess I'll have to settle with The Washington Post...