No.. the internet killed Newspaper Industry.

Hi Yes i agree that the net had a major influence on everything localized, and it has been globalized to an extreme (bound to happen) AND here in the usa (lower case) we have moved torwards quantity and not quality . Auto industry, schools, aig (and all the others), wall street, on and on .... you get the idea.And this was started long ago during the 1960's and has progressed to this point. we are after short term progress (money, power etc) and disregard long term consequences.

Frank

^ Ordinarily I would say the same thing, but why would that be the case? You can read papers from other countries via the internet too, and they're not dying.

If anything, the blogs just up the readership of the papers, since they link to the newspaper websites all the time, and give them added traffic. Sure, no one's buying a copy of the paper, or a full-time subscription, but so what? Like Moore says, they're mostly driven by ad revenue anyways.

Personally I think the newspapers are dying because the newspapers suck. That kinda undercuts Moore's point though, since it seems to me that newspapers who've done something stupid or bad going out of business would go in the "pro" column for capitalism, not "con".

But he's more talking about being on the wrong side of the struggle between selfishness and altruism. Eventually, rapacious selfishness will bite you in the ass. Too bad in this case it took about a century...

>> ^NetRunner:
^ Ordinarily I would say the same thing, but why would that be the case? You can read papers from other countries via the internet too, and they're not dying.
If anything, the blogs just up the readership of the papers, since they link to the newspaper websites all the time, and give them added traffic. Sure, no one's buying a copy of the paper, or a full-time subscription, but so what? Like Moore says, they're mostly driven by ad revenue anyways.
Personally I think the newspapers are dying because the newspapers suck. That kinda undercuts Moore's point though, since it seems to me that newspapers who've done something stupid or bad going out of business would go in the "pro" column for capitalism, not "con".
But he's more talking about being on the wrong side of the struggle between selfishness and altruism. Eventually, rapacious selfishness will bite you in the ass. Too bad in this case it took about a century...



I'd say it was more short term incentives vs. long term incentives. Altruism has nothing to do with building a business that makes a good product. It's just selfishness on a longer time horizon. Everything they do is in order to meet their quarterly expectations. That's what always happens to businesses once the MBAs take over. Nobody gives a split about the product they sell anymore. They're just worried about the 15% of liabilities they can cut without hurting revenue too much before they move on to their next gig.

^ I agree, but I don't think that was the point Moore was trying to make. His argument is more ideological.

Michael Moore got it all backwards.