Read a Newspaper. Boost Profits

We have Transit Week, Flower Power Week, Troll Week and Help the Hobbits Week, so why not “Read a Newspaper Week”?

Put down your phone, turn off the laptop or iPad and pick up a newspaper, any newspaper, and thoroughly read it, digest the contents and the flavor of what your are reading. For once, just read and stop briefing your brain with snippets of information.

Stop, look and read.

It's very simple.

Someone on the Left Coast dubbed it slow news or slow reading or something terribly Californish. But the message is simple: take your time to read a newspaper.

But then the news hit and then I decided that no amount of newspaper reading will curtail the devolution of the newspaper industry, an absurd attempt to re-capture profits instead of readers.

The news is this: more employees will be cut, retired and disappeared at The Virginian-Pilot between now and the end of the year.

The estimate is 20 to 40 people.

This isn't extraordinary. It's happening in the newsrooms nationwide, in television, newspapers and radio.

Turner Broadcasting to cut staff by 10 percent; CNN to shed 300 jobs

Turner Broadcasting, the parent company of CNN, TBS, TNT and several other channels, plans to cut its total workforce by 10 percent in the weeks ahead, eliminating nearly 1,500 positions, sources at the company confirmed Monday, according to Politico reporter Dylan Byers, Oct. 6.

CNN alone will shed 8 percent of its staff, resulting in the elimination of roughly 300 jobs either through buyouts or layoffs, the sources said, Byers wrote. The cuts will affect all CNN channels, including domestic, international and HLN.

The news isn't the cuts; the news is what news will be cut. 

Will the channels cut these chatty talk shows discussing everything from George Clooney's wedding to salacious gossip about celebrities and politicians and food shows showing overweight chefs telling us how to cook and eat food? Will they claw back the blowhard political mouths that tell us what we want to hear rather than what we need to hear?

It's not that journalists are an endangered species. It's that coverage of the real issues and topics will wane. It's that politicians and government officials will feel exempt even more so from public scrutiny and public scorn.

They will feel even more empowered and will take greater risks knowing that fewer journalists are sticking their nose in their business.

Issues such as civil rights, corruption and self-righteous proclamations will prevail, because, as you know, that's what politicians and government officials are prone to do.

Who's watching the watcher isn't the catchphrase today.

In fact, no phrase can describe today's preening news. In a world of gazillion voices, journalists have suddenly turned into talking heads and advocates.

Politicians, government officials and corporate chieftains love it and they duly toss dollars at these media machines.

So, let the money flow, and if you are so inclined, take a slow read this week or next.