Monday, December 08, 2008

Sloppy editor or Freudian slip?

In a breaking NYT story about the Tribune Company filing for bankruptcy:

The Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy protection in a federal court in Delaware on Monday, as the publisher of newspapers like The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune struggled to cope with rising debt and falling ad revenue.

...

It is only the latest — and biggest — sign of duress for the newspaper industry yet.

Spellcheck wins again! Or maybe, this being the NYT after all, the reporter believes in some grand conspiracy to crush the newspapers.

Of course the news isn't a huge surprise: relying on ad revenue is kind of a second-order business model. They don't so much sell what they make, as make something that somebody else uses to try to get people to buy what they make.

As I've said elsewhere, if you want information you're going to have to pay for it somehow. Bloggers can be much more knowledgeable than your average reporter about something near or dear to them, but you can't rely on finding one to tell you about the story you happen to need to know about. Some news is so difficult or dull to get at that you have to pay people to go get it for you. And that doesn't include the other costs like publishing (even e-publishing costs money) or travel.

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