Feb 1, 2016

MMMM #526 "You'll Miss It" + CBS This Morning growth.

A remarkable column by a writer in The Toronto Star includes this passage:


Uber would prefer driverless cars. Journalism would prefer next to no staff. It will be an unhappy span of years before the industrial shakeout ends. Meanwhile, people, drive, write, rent out for Airbnb, TaskRabbit and temp, not realizing they are conniving in their own destruction.

     I've had my own heated newsroom discussions about Uber, and I have found---as almost everywhere these days--- a generational divide. The 30 and under crowd mostly love Uber. I say fine, but keep the playing field level for the men and women who have driven taxis for decades.
     As Heather Mallick suggested in her column, those journalistic Uber cheerleaders are embracing the same voodoo economic chicanery that is decimating their own ranks. What's The Matter With Kansas?, she asks, the question and title of a fine book by Thomas Frank. Young Canadians might ask the same question of Kelowna. That British Colombian city's airport offers four cab companies, but no Uber. So far.
     Mallick also wrote about Republican women who love Donald Trump, despite his constant put-downs of women. I found myself reading her columns about Canadian politics, about as far removed from my life here in the Deep American South as can be.
     She senses death in newsrooms as staffs are cut and freelancers with no benefits nudge traditional journalists aside, and I find myself nodding. So as a tiny counterbalance, here is one small set of hands applauding her work from afar. From a place where Donald Trump supporters can rough up a protester and receive encouragement from the guest of honor. 


     And speaking of the digital disruption to the newspaper business, it may be even worse than she thought. Read this piece by  the president of ProPublica, which includes th is chart of newspaper circulation


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      The network show that follows Alabama News Network This Morning on CBS 8, is, of course, CBS This Morning. 
     Their positioning statement is "We've put the news back in the morning"...and a Washington Post article wrote over the weekend about the show's audience growth.

A hard-news focus has helped the show quietly rise in the ratings since it launched nearly three years ago, hitting a milestone 1,000 episodes on Friday. Really, pretty much everything “CBS This Morning” does is quieter than its broadcast counterparts. There are no celebrity news segments, or cooking demonstrations, or summer concert series with thousands of screaming fans.

HERE is the full WaPo article. 

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A headline that makes me cringe:

Stunning report: A massive amount of people are dying in China from smog

The Morning Ticker.

Make that "number" of people and i might read your article.

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Join Olivia---back from some time off---Elissia, Darryl and myself starting at 5:00 AM on Alabama News Network! CBS 8 or ABC Montgomery.

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular longtime feature of www.timlennox.com]

1 comment:

  1. Maybe the "massive amount" of people refers to their total weight. ;]

    ReplyDelete