Mar 29, 2021

Morning Call Christmas List


The remaining staff at the Morning Call was concerned that their mother ship, Tribune Publishing, was going to end up in the hands of a hedge fund known for cost cuts. In the Morning Call's case, there was little left to cut. The reduced staff works from home, with the presses in Jersey City, which are programmed by computers in Chicago. 

There is now news of some wealthy white knights interested in saving the chain. More encourgaing is that there is a particular investor interested in the Morning Call. While all these suitors should mitagate the staffs' worries, as a local pundit my concerns remain.  Jeff Bezos, with pockets as deep as they come, has not changed the agenda journalism of the Washington Post. 

While I'm glad the Morning Call will be purchased and survive, I still dream of more objective journalism locally.

2 comments:

  1. The decline of the morning call has been going on for decades. There never was a internal analysis of their policies to right the ship. If you alienate half your subscribers, you will go down. We can assume any new management will be more interested in propagating propaganda, will not be interested in a viable profitable company. After all in today environment profits are a dirty word. Ideological purity is what counts.

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  2. Jeff Bezo's turned a still respected but very partisan Washington Post into an extremist propaganda organ that routinely invents narratives and fabricates false claims as news stories. The NYT's is little better. The state of the media in this country would best be described as catastrophic with trust plummeting to historic low levels. In spite of this it appears those who own and control America's media are bound and determined to double down on keeping objectivity out of reporting.
    The effect of all this on the nation is not positive, we are increasingly more divided, angry, fearful, and ignorant of the truth. Many have concluded the media is the real problem in America, no the respected institution it once was. The Morning Call has had it's own part to play in this loss of trust here locally. They certainly earned it by their reprehensible lack of journalistic integrity. This lack of integrity and objectivity truly damaged and facilitated damage to be inflicted on the city that was their home and ours. That is their final legacy no matter what happens to them.

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