Canny Comment
posted by Susan Stark
Take a good look at the graph above. This represents the New York Times circulation from 1993 to 2006. The article that this graph was printed in did alot of hand-wringing about the cause of this decline, but of course they didn’t mention the obvious:
The first decline is at 1994-95. This represents when people started using the Internet for their information.
The second sharp decline begins at 2002, when the NYT started lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There continues to be a steady, continuous decline from there to 2006.
Unfortunately, we don’t have stats from 2007-8, but the article states that the Times had to lay people off recently, so it’s not getting any better.
This is what happens when you become a Mouthpiece of the State, instead of a newspaper that investigates and reports the truth.
4 Comments.
A simple search of the NYT archives would show you that the NYT has been talking about WMD's in Iraq since 1994. Newspaper circulation overall has declined over the last 20 years. To blame the NYT decline in circulation on WMD's is intellectually insulting.
No, they started lying about weapons of mass destruction in 2002to make a case for war with Iraq. There is a sharp decline in circulation from that point onwards. If anyone has been "intellectually insulting", it's the New York Times.
As for the "overall decline" in newspaper circulation that you mention–well, maybe that's a symptom of newspapers (and other media) becoming mouthpieces rather than dedicated journalists. Example: the Washington Post has gone from being a paper that once brought down a US president to a paper that thinks investigating conditions at a local veteran's hospital is sooooo daring.
Edward, if newspapers want to improve their ciculation, they just might do that, well, by calling a spade a spade, instead of trying to convince everyone that that spade is really a pruning hook. Ya think?
uh… most papers have declined in cirulation… maybe the fact you can read any paper over the internet has something to do with that?
uh… I believe I mentioned that in the article, anonymous.