NY Times and LA Times' Profits Decline Again

"NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Newspapers made a bit of a grim display this week when they reported their first-quarter earnings, revealing profit declines at The New York Times Co., Tribune Co., McClatchy Co. and powerhouse Gannett Co., but displayed at every turn the rising importance of the Web to their businesses."

I am an ex-NY Times reader. We had it delivered every Sunday and I was certainly reading the front news section and Arts and Leisure from the time I was twelve. It didn't shape my political thinking as much as listening to my father on the ride to school. He was a smart, cool ex marine and small business owner who had turned his back on most forms of elitism and pretension. That's a bit of a tall order in a suburb like Grosse Pointe, where most of the families lived in a fog of gormless midwest entitlement.

When my sister had her first baby I moved from London into a flat on Hollywood Boulevard. It was a fifteen minute walk to her house - straight uphill in desert heat with no pavement and boy racers at every turn. Driving was the wisest course.

She got the LA Times delivered every day and I would read the news and Calendar avidly, having developed a newspaper addiction from my time in London. My special treat in those days was to go to the big newsagent on Fairfax at Melrose on Monday, buy the London Sunday Times and a box of Silk Cut and spend Monday evening working my way through both.

The reason I smoked is I really enjoyed it. Nicotine patches saved me from that addiction.

The reason I don't read the NY Times, LA Times, and papers of that ilk anymore is that I don't enjoy it. September 11th changed my mental processes and saved me from that addition.

I don't know why the business men running those papers are so out of tune with me, don't care either. It's nice to see the figures though, and realise just how many Americans are literally and figuratively not buying the biased news stories they spin.