Dead Tree Media Dethroned

And the internet media reigns supreme:

According to a report by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “the Internet overtook print newspapers as a news source this year.” The popularity of newspapers did not decline, but rather, the number of people naming the internet as their primary news source nearly doubled.

The inerrant ability to fact check instantaneously on comment threads as well as the real clash of ideas that happens there surely added to the internet numbers but there is more to it than that:

Michael Dimock, the Pew Center’s associate director, credited the presidential election, which he said lent itself to online coverage. “People often don’t want the general overview of an election,” he said. “They may want to follow their candidate, picking and choosing what they’re looking at in a way that mainstream media doesn’t allow.”

Print media better learn that we don't want their nonsensical opinions anymore. Just the facts and some hard investigative reporting and local coverage. We can form our own opinions from that.

Up until a couple of years ago I would have thought that the print media was salvageable. I no longer think that is true. I just don't care about newspapers anymore. Not American papers, at least. None of them have any credibility to say they are really a "paper of record" anymore. When they stopped doing real, hard investigative news and substantive local reporting that was fact checked they ceased to have a legitimate purpose.

If I want fluff and fiction I'll buy a tabloid at the supermarket.

As long as we have to suffer through the fact free garbage put out there by the fanatical likes of the Kristols, Coulters, Novaks and Millers of the world they are not producing a product that is even worthy of lining a bird cage with.

We have all heard that Greg Sargent (TPM Media) was just picked up for a new Blog by the WaPo. Now that he has to deal with editors that may refuse to print the truth does anyone here think his work may suffer? I hope not BUT the reality is that the entire newspaper industry structure is, now, a failed one. Adding a few decent and savvy voices and tagging stories on the net with WWW3 compliant tags does not change their structure enough.