Papers are caught in a downward spiral of lower ad revenue, fewer subscribers, fewer writers, less quality, even fewer subscribers, even lower ad revenue, and so on.

The way of the future will be internet/television/radio based news organizations and individual bloggers with very small, very localized newspapers for local politics, local sports, and community events.

Think of all the trees that will be saved! As a matter of fact, Der Staat and other such liberal rags should willingly sacrifice themselves in order to save the rain forests. They need to put THEIR livelihoods where THEIR politics are for a change.

Before The News sold itself to Satan, it enjoyed a plentiful subscription. The Greenville Piedmont was the afternoon paper, and gave us the events which had occurred since The News had gone to print at 3 or 4 a.m. The Piedmont also had all the gossip and scoop of what went on in the Greenville area from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. As a teenager, we liked reading it because we got a lot of information about our high schools. Plus we good find out whose car was stolen, and where it was founds. I think they called the crime section “CrimeTrackers”

There was no 5:00and 5:30 local news to reek of redundancy, as the 6:00 local news does, these days!
There was a 6:00 local and 6:30 national news program, and that was all, folks.

The Piedmont (afternoon paper) gave us good information – crime reports, police watch locations, local arrests, social events, local parties – what you would expect a large town or small city to make available to it’s readers.

Then. . . . . Big Bad Gannett came into our dear Palmetto State,raped and pillaged our morals, ethics, and our women. We didn’t ask for their left wing only opinions, and we sure as hell didn’t want them to brain wash our youth. The Piedmont was dissolved completely and went to the big newspaper heaven in the sky. The News was torn apart, rearranged and is not only a shell of what the original intent was when the Peace family owned it. We have had excellent journalists over the years, but most have jumped off the LEFT side of the Liberty Bridge into the ARMS of Gannett. I may have purchased ONE newspaper from Greenville in the last 5 years, whereas I used to purchase 12 papers per week. Gannett turned our sweet paper into nothing but a paper with b/w ads and no real writing, no guts or substance. The writers who held the paper together have either been run off or recruited by better rags.

Are the days of the newspaper gone? I don’t think so, not yet. However, The Greenville paper needs an enema of some sort to wake it up. It is SO stuffy & boring & liberal & leftist………and the majority of my city doesn’t feel this way!

Some of them actually believe the physical medium is the problem, which is, of course, partially true. If that were the sole issue, however, their own online traffic would be rising along with the “new media” sites/sources and the aggregator sites. This is not happening, as evidenced by the numbers above.

My own best guess is that as the new media grows into its own and internet access/technology continues to improve, the smaller dailies will either morph into VERY local exercises or disappear. The biggest may make it as regional servers, and to provide the dead tree versions for the remining old-schoolers.

As for me, I’m done with the State and their sister rag here in Myrtle, the Sun News. They suck equally, just in different ways. Like a lot of folks these days, I have tailored my access to news by developing my own set of sites. I thought I would miss the papers, but I don’t.