OC Register: Bankrupt, Unread, Angels Fans Won't Notice Disappearance

…that the internet cannot in some way maintain quality journalism.

…that investigative journalism can only be practiced by the “print priesthood”.

…that newspapers have been paragons of investigative integrity instead of compromised by advertisers and old boy networks to the point that the quality reporting that has occurred in the past few decades has almost been by accident.

…newspapers cover matters of local, national and international concern. They really don’t, they coast on the reputation that they do, they run AP stories and Brittany pictures.

…newspapers have poached content form the internet for about a decade now, if you are still reading the dead tree inkstainer, most if not all of the fact checking was done free of charge on wikipedia and google.

Schadenfreude is satisfying, and in the case of Whicker quite luxuriantly deserved, but the loss of local papers has its cost. At some point, someone has to do the reporting; a new infrastructure has already begun to develop for sports, but not for the nuts and bolts beats such as City Hall, crime, and fires. As much as I bitch about the LA Times, and how low they have fallen, still over the weekend they were the best source of news on the fires.

Sure, newspapers have mostly brought this upon themselves by failing to serve their public adequately and not modifying their business model to account for the new media and advertising realities, and eventually new institutions will rise to fill the breach, but I do not rejoice at the slow disintegration of our print media. It may be inevitable, but it is not a good thing.

…that papers such as the OC Register are mostly reprints from wire services, and even repubs of pieces form other papers, right?

MSNBC.COM has been heavy with AP wire pieces too, so for maybe 10 years I have been getting the same stuff as the Register and the Times, but hours or days sooner and when the information was still topical.

Most of its visitors are definitely unique.

translation: Want to make sure my version of the story is published as the record regardless of the truth.

If you can’t find right-wing watering holes, go there and follow the blog list from that spot outward.

The politics across the Internet – on all sides – are overwhelming that of traditional media. Just stare at CNN for a while and observe. Soon it becomes apparent that they are a lot of “hey, we twitter too! look how relevent we still are!!! oooh! another email just came in…”