News for February 27
February 27, 2009 by Barbara
Filed under News and Analysis
Stopping the Presses
Denver’s Rocky Mountain News published its final edition today, shuttering its news operation just 55 days shy of the newspaper’s 150th birthday, a victim of the economic ills that have been plaguing the newspaper industry. The Rocky may be the first of many U.S. newspapers that could close in the coming months; the San Francisco Chronicle’s owners said this week that they may have to lay off employees and possibly sell or close down the paper if its fortunes don’t improve. What’s happening in the newspaper industry, and what can save it? Links include:
BBC News | “If the economic crisis goes on much longer, will there be any newspapers left in the US to write about it?”
OJR | “A new online news publisher need not capture all of the Rocky’s former readers, or advertisers, to do well. If a former Rocky reporter, or a small group working together, managed to claim just a few advertisers and a few thousand daily readers, they easily could clear more money than they did working at the Rocky. (Heck, I’m making more from my websites than I ever did working at the RMN.)”
The Biz Blog @Poynter Institute | “As of today, however, every major city in America still has a daily paper. And as we have written earlier, many companies are in deep financial trouble with papers that are still profitable — just not profitable enough to pay the interest and comply with covenants of debt they took on a few years back. But this is what it looks like to go from bad to worse. We are in for more bankruptcies and more closures before long.
James Boyce @The Huffington Post | “The Rocky Mountain News’s road ends today. The San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Post Intelligencer and many more are not far behind. Ironically, delivering news through new media is cheap, fast and easy. Readers made the transition, it’s just too bad so many newspapers, with so many good people, never did.”
The Daily Beast | “What simply must change is this hand-wringing attitude that if newspapers die, so will responsible, in-depth reporting. Enough already. In recent years most newspapers weren’t doing that kind of journalism anyway. Choices were made, and rarely did investigative reporting win out over covering the local sports franchises, for example. So let’s get this straight. There is a big future for news, journalism, investigative reporting, analysis, in-depth reporting, and terrific storytelling. But we need to do some work to create the business models that will support it.”
FiveThirty … Nine? | FiveThirtyEight
On Tuesday, the Senate achieved cloture (broke a filibuster) on S.160, the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2009, which would (1) permanently expand the size of the House from 435 to 437 members and (2) give one of these additional seats to the District of Columbia. This measure is quite likely to formally pass the Senate soon, be followed up with a vote in the House, and be signed by the President. Unless it is struck down on a Constitutional basis (and it will certainly be challenged), it will become the law.
- Related link: Representing D.C. | RaceWire
The Price of War: Pentagon Lifts Ban on Flag-Draped Coffins | Global Comment
The administration should take pains to keep all of its promises of transparency on the wars, even as soldiers come home from Iraq and more are sent to Afghanistan. The American public needs to know not only the cost of war in dollars and national debt, but what happens to the people who go to fight. This includes not only photos of flag-draped coffins and funeral processions, but continued coverage of veterans issues for those who survive, as our technology has made it possible for soldiers who might have been in one of those coffins years ago to survive. If we’re going to send soldiers to war, we should be able to face the results.
Politics of the Plate: The Price of Tomatoes | Gourmet
Immokalee is the tomato capital of the United States. Between December and May, as much as 90 percent of the fresh domestic tomatoes we eat come from south Florida, and Immokalee is home to one of the area’s largest communities of farmworkers. According to Douglas Molloy, the chief assistant U.S. attorney based in Fort Myers, Immokalee has another claim to fame: It is “ground zero for modern slavery.”
Turning Power to Pain | Fora.tv
Since 1996, sexual violence against women and girls in Eastern DRC has been used as a weapon of war to torture, humiliate and destroy not only women and girls, but entire families and communities.
Hundreds of thousands of women and girls have been raped due to conflict in the region. The V-Day movement and UNICEF (in partnership with UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict) are engaged in a global campaign to bring much needed attention to the needs of Congolese women and girls.
On the ground, women survivors are coming together and breaking the silence. Dr. Mukwege and Ms. Ensler speak about violence against women, the efforts underway to end it, and their work toward supporting a new wave of women leaders in the region.
They discuss what it takes to economically and socially empower women and girls so that they can become leaders in rebuilding their country.
Barbara Schwartz is the editorial director at the Xenia Institute. She lives in Oklahoma City, Okla., and currently is pursuing a Master of Divinity degree at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa.
