Unions Get Busy To Fight Gov's Budget

Now that the budget is out, let the lobbying against it (both public and private) begin:

Cities Without Newspapers Will Be A Reality Sooner Than You Think

The imminent demise of the New York Times is on the radar screens of many media watchers, but the problem of today's print journalism goes much further than just New York. Due to falling circulations and less interest overall in old fashioned newsprint things are looking terrible for the future of the Fourth Estate across the country.

From Editor and Publisher:

CHICAGO Newspaper and newspaper groups are likely to default on their debt and go out of business next year -- leaving "several cities" with no daily newspaper at all, Fitch Ratings says in a report on media released Wednesday.

"Fitch believes more newspapers and newspaper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009 and several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010," the Chicago-based credit ratings firm said in a report on the outlook for U.S. media and entertainment.

Fitch is generally pessimistic across the board, assigning negative outlets to nearly all sectors from Yellow Pages to radio and TV and theme parks. But the newspaper industry is the most at risk of defaulting, it says.

The dawn of the internet age had the heads of the old institutions laughing at the new medium. Now they're struggling to stay afloat as people rely on computers more and more. Some suggest that even our brains are changing as well, but what is certain is that our reading habits are morphing faster and faster. In the business world, that has serious consequences for the newspapers and more importantly, their audiences. Perhaps they'll be forced even more to turn online to not only read what is going on, but be interactive with content providers as well.

Corporate Sponsor Coming To A Subway Station Near You?

With threats of two more fare increases in two years (on top of this year's hike) looming over straphangers' heads, the MTA is looking for more sources of revenue. One way to do that is to let corporations (and their ad agencies) take over stations throughout the city and coat each with light, paint and whatever material it takes put more messages of mass-consumerism into New Yorkers daily grind.

From AM New York:

Sponsorship, little more than a sketch on paper at this point, could become the most visible component of the agency's aggressive push to increase advertising revenue, which currently brings in a little more than $100 million a year.

Marketing firms "have contacted us to say that they have ideas and we're in the process of reviewing those," Sander said.

MTA officials would not provide further details on station sponsorships.

"There are a dozen people that would jump on this," said MTA board member Norman Seabrook, who called for the agency to rent subway stations to Disney several months ago. "There are thousands of people losing their jobs everyday and we cannot sit by and continue to raise their fares."

When the MTA makes it a choice between raising fares and plastering our subway stations with advertising, it isn't hard to decide on which the great majority will go with. However, the problem is that the situation was allowed to come to this, where we must be subjected to more consumer crap stuffed into our eyesockets. Sure, the stations are dilapidated and anything new would be an improvement, but again, the thing is we are forced into choices that let the corporate world push farther and farther into our lives, as opposed to just having a well-run MTA that doesn't experience hundreds of billions in yearly deficits.

Hitting Fox News Where It Hurt$

We can bash Fox News and their propaganda all we want but it won't get us very far in the long run. Sure, getting a Democratic debate canceled is nice, but what really knocks them back is taking them out through their sponsors. Liberals on the net are starting to step up to the challenge of pressuring companies that patronize Fox's airwaves from the ground up.

From the AP:

MoveOn.org, the Campaign for America's Future and liberal blogs like DailyKos.com are asking thousands of supporters to monitor who is advertising on the network. Once a database is gathered, an organized phone-calling campaign will begin, said Jim Gilliam, vice president of media strategy for Brave New Films, a company that has made anti-Fox videos.

The groups have successfully pressured Democratic presidential candidates not to appear at any debate sponsored by Fox, and are also trying to get Home Depot Inc. (HD) to stop advertising there.

At least 5,000 people nationwide have signed up to compile logs on who is running commercials on Fox, Gilliam said. The groups want to first concentrate on businesses running local ads, as opposed to national commercials.

"It's a lot more effective for Sam's Diner to get calls from 10 people in his town than going to the consumer complaint department of some pharmaceutical company," Gilliam said.

Since Fox is so big, it is much more effective to start on the local level. So if you see someone advertising on Fox, call them up and tell them to place their ads somewhere else. Principles are everything, especially to small companies. Places like Pfizer and Boeing won't care at first, but if there is a groundswell, don't be surprised to see big changes and depleted revenues for big bad Fox News.