Saturday: Newspapers

Paul Fahri/AJR: Online Salvation? The embattled newspaper business is betting heavily on Web advertising revenue to secure its survival. But that wager is hardly a sure thing. Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. compares the current state of the Internet to television in the age of "Howdy Doody." Which is probably a good comparison, given that America's sources of news and information more closely resemble the dummy, with advertisers filling in as the ventriloquists. The failure of the newspaper industry, and media in general to understand the basic dynamics of this "new" (oh puh-lease) medium is evident on every single one of their websites. Like our political candidates, the news industry has come to rely almost totally on advertising firms and consultants, most (if not all) of whom meet around big tables with storyboards, recommending cockamamie floating adverts, embedded multimedia sidebar "billboards", and the ubiquitous "polly gets a cookie for the visit" crap as poor substitutes for a clean blank screen with a box enabling the visitor to simply ask a question. [Image @ Museum of Broadcast Communications (MBC)]