The state of journalism today:
With all the million-dollar salaries being thrown around journalism circles these days, you’d hardly know we were in the depths of a media downturn.
While much of the journalism profession is idled, redundant, bought-out and collecting unemployment, a slim layer is suddenly pocketing supersalaries as the media landscape remakes itself around rags — and riches.
Well, isn’t that special…on one hand, you could argue it’s the power law effect in place; on the other it could be that the last survivors in journalism leadership – like in music – are more concerned with feathering their nests before the deluge than in figuring out how to build boats.
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Can you expand on the music observation? ARe you referring to performers, producers, or promoters? IIRC, you are associated with opera, do you observations come from there?
I could care less as long as the gov’ment doesn’t intend to bail them out when they fail.
Speaking of which, anybody see the Southpark where Stan goes to DC for a refund on a margarita machine and they show how the government is determining who gets bailed out? (Hint, it involves cutting the head off a chicken over a grid and wherever the body falls is the solution- ‘bail out’, ‘let them fail’, ‘nationalize!!!’, ‘print money’)
Ah- “here’s”:http://media.cnbc.com/i/CNBC/Sections/News_And_Analysis/__Story_Inserts/graphics/__HUMOR/_S/SP_bailout_game.jpg a pic. If only it was this random, at least this system wouldn’t have a prestacked deck.
mark –
In “this Nation article”:http://www.thenation.com/article/death-and-life-great-american-newspapers last year, a couple of busybodies describe how they want to hook up the media pigs with some federal tit:
1. Free mailing for periodicals that earn less than 20% of their revenue from advertising.
2. Up to $200 annual tax deduction for subscribers to daily newspapers.
3. Government takeover of failed newspapers, to be converted into print versions of PBS. Specifically, The San Francisco Chronicle.
4. Rewrite laws to allow municipal ownership of newspapers, so bankrupt cities can own bankrupt newspapers and add their people to their bankrupt pension plans.
5. Equip every middle school, high school, and college with an FM transmitter, to fix “the disconnect between young people and journalism”. It will also fix all of those people who complain about how their property taxes are too low.
All of this is just horsing around, of course; what they really want is something like the huge bail-out the French are giving to their failed newspapers, only huger. They insist that this will not lead to government control of media, because these will be “enlightened policies and subsidies”.
It’s funny they didn’t think of reducing executive and journalist salaries to save some money. Usually that’s the first thing they think of.