Mortal Threat To Newspapers

What do Craig's List, Greer's OC and Townhall.com all have in common?

Each is a mortal threat to newspapers.

by By Hugh Hewitt - July 27th, 2006 - Townhall.com

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. . . Townhall.com is not only a one stop shopping center for news and opinion, it is now home --in its third week-- to more than 1,000 new blogs, a blog community that will grow and grow as Townhall.com penetrates further and further into the reading demographic that also wants to participate, but not according to old media's rules or who can no longer endure the MSM’s many left-wing biases.

On Monday of this week I had an interesting conversation with one of the supporters of the Bertie County Board of Education. It started when the individual found it important to insist my opinions did not matter because "blogs are not press" while we were talking about issues where we disagreed.

The essence of the argument was that we don't print a newspaper, or announce our news with a radio or TV person. We are on the Inernet and that means we are not press . . . according to this individual.

After I tried to explain why I did not agree, incuding the fact that the ACLU (a group I rarely agree with) said they were prepared to defend us as press, we could only agree to disagree. The Patriot Blogs ARE PRESS! The individual did not know that the Superintendent for Bertie County Public Education had granted us "press status" in a recent letter, after having denied us "press status" last year. She at least has learned about the power of the press, even the press that some people don't think of as press.

Hugh Hewitt has written an interesting article about blogs as news sources (and therefore press) and the Internet as a new form of advertising (both classified and retail) that is seriously under cutting the primary revenue source of newspapers. It is not blogs alone that are harming newspapers (and TV and Radio to a lesser degree), but these new forms of online advertising as well.

When you start with the fact that the liberal bias of the press has already alienated over 40% of the American public, the new technology of the Internet is changing news coverage dramatically. It is hard not to see liberal defense of Main Stream Media (MSM) as almost Luddite.

I repeat, The Patriot Blogs are press! Thanks for reading.

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