It's time to stand up for newspapers: Without newspapers, where would radio and television stations get the stories they read from each morning's front page? How will people begin conversations if they can't ask, "Did you see that story in the paper?" And what will people pin to the kitchen bulletin board or mail to relatives when their son scores a game-winning touchdown?
What will fill up Yahoo's local-news category? It's built on the backs of hundreds of partner newspapers. In any given month, those papers attract 70 million visitors to their own sites.
What if newspapers didn't exist? Now is the time for newspapers to do something proactive; time for them to demonstrate what life would be like without them.
It's time for every daily newspaper in the United States, in cooperation with the Associated Press, to shut down their free Web sites for one week. [via]
US Media Jobs Losses In 2008 – One In 11 Newspaper Jobs Disappeared, One of 14 Radio Jobs Gone, And TV Lost One in 33, But Internet Media Companies Were Still Hiring: What makes these numbers really bad is that while they are for the whole year the bulk came in the second half of the year and Q4 particularly was a disaster. With many media companies reporting January revenues worse than December there is no let-up in sight – jobs will continue to go.
