Death of a News Icon
Newspapers are croaking. - #SriLanka collapsing?
Reading the Kansas City Star and the Kansas City Times daily as a kid was a pleasurable experience and a fond memory. Those were the days when a big city often had two or more dailies competing for news stories.
The KC Times ended up folding in 1990.
The Kansas City Star has struggled for years since the internet explosion depleted the lucrative classified ad revenue that every newspaper could count on. Then the web came along, stealing huge amounts of subscribers who never returned.
Although the Star is still around, living off its history and former status, the paper is suffering like many newspapers today - particularly the small-town papers focused on local news. About 2,500 dailies and weekly newspapers have closed since 2005, according to, ironically, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in their editorial: A 40-year slog in a changing ink-stained world.
“According to Pew Research, Sunday circulation for locally focused newspapers dropped from 28 million in 2015 to 15 million in 2020. Forbes said Sunday circulation in 1990 was 63 million. Revenues, and staffing, have similarly plunged.”
A few months ago, a podcaster named Kevin Keitzman shared something on his show quite stunning: according to some unnamed sources, Keitzman reports that The KC Star newspaper in 2020 has only 30,000 subscribers. That’s a stunning number for a “big city newspaper.” Not sure he clearly knew if those 30,000 were analog (paper) subscribers only, or if that figure includes digital subscribers. Either way, if accurate, it shows how dire the newspaper business is these days.
Longtime reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Bill Torpy goes on to write: “Another report said the big dailies, who are mostly still standing, have lost 80% of their print circulation since 2000. Newspapers are replacing some revenue with money coming from the digital side, although the gain is not restoring the dead tree money as well as we’d like.”
The death of newspapers has me wondering - if news goes all digital, what are we going to wrap fish in or line our bird cages with?
Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka…
Yesterday, I pointed out a developing story about a tumultuous protest taking place in the Netherlands - something that most Americans knew nothing about just 36 hours ago. I discovered this news on Twitter.
Well, Elon’s future pet project is starting to look like a good source for news (if you follow the right accounts, of course.)
According to this tweet by the 21st Century Wire account, Sri Lanka is experiencing its own form of social upheaval:
The hashtag #SriLanka or #SriLanka Crisis brings up recent reports of rioting and clashes between people and the police. Like this:
Food and fuel appear to be in short supply, and the Sri Lankan people appear desperate:
According to this tweet from a Sri Lankan Journalist, her country’s inflation rate is presently at 50%.
There appears to be a ban on gasoline sales in Sri Lanka. This tweet is dated July 2nd:
There are now two nations (the Netherlands, Sri Lanka) experiencing significant economic and social upheaval. And so far, the western media is ignoring these events.
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