Goodbye middlemen...

Power Line - SF Chronicle May Fold:

...The collapse of the newspaper industry continues apace; now it's the San Francisco Chronicle that is likely to be sold or even closed down in a matter of months. This follows Sunday's bankruptcy filing by the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, just two and a half years after investors paid more than $500 million for the company.

We've known for a while that the newspaper industry is in desperate trouble, but it didn't occur to us until recently that it may be a leading indicator....

Mostly the dying of the newspapers is about the simple fact that the Internet kills middlemen. Newspapers are "middlemen" who gather up news from all about and package it for resale. But most people don't really want to buy 100 pieces of news to get the one that really interests them. We did it that way for centuries because there was no alternative, but it was always grossly inefficient.

Even if the paper goes "online," the same problem remains. Plus, the job of the "journalist" was always a kludge. Most of the time the reporter is writing about things he knows little about--he or she can't be an expert in more than a tiny fraction of the things covered. So everyone has had the experience of reading an article on the particular industry one works in, or the church you belong to--and cringing because the reporter is wrong on various details. And there are now some bloggers covering things who know a hundred times as much as any reporter about their specific subject.

I was sitting in an auto-body shop recently, and picked up an auto-body shop magazine, and there was mention of some controversy raging amongst the auto-body shop BLOGS! Too crazy!

Many of us conservatives like to opine that the Gasping Media is dying because they cold-shoulder conservatives, and generally publish a pack of lies to help Democrats and the general cause of nihilism. They do, and the bloodsucking parasites richly deserve to have Mr Pointy driven through their hearts. But, I have to guess that even if they were not despicable lefty frauds, their general decline would be much the same...