Mary had a quiet day today as we planned. I had to leave for work early so she made breakfast for herself, fed the dogs, took care of the morning routine including loading the last of the dishes into the dishwasher. After lunch, she did some writing and then relaxed in the late afternoon.
I provided an excellent dinner...
...by picking up the takeout order Mary phoned in to Willow Street Pizza in Los Gatos on my way home from work.
All in all, a totally uneventful Friday.
And now it is Saturday morning simply because I didn't push the right button to post last night. We've had a nice breakfast of fruit, cottage cheese and cinnamon bread, toasted. We subscribe to the San Jose paper Monday thru Friday and we get the New York Times Friday, Saturday and Sunday. For those of you wondering how I can let that bastion of liberal think into my home, I justify it because it happens to be excellent journalism except for a few of its political positions. And, the San Jose Mercury News went through a change of ownership a year or so ago driven by a greedy board member. It is now a shadow of its former self and continues in a death spiral of cost cutting, reduced content, reduced revenues leading to more cost cutting, etc.
Mary and I are plowing through the Friday and Saturday Times, reading articles to each other and having a pleasant, relaxing moment. Our only plans for today are to walk the neighborhood when Mary and the weather are both up for it. And, to continue our preparations for May 11th. Our biggest concern is to keep Mary away from any flu or colds, especially the H1N1 (how do you say that, maybe 'hone none'?) flu. Unfortunately, we are in an area with lots of potential for exposure. Oh, and we are NOT going to the local San Jose Cinco de Mayo celebration this year. Of course, we've never gone but just to be clear...
I want to thank each of you who have sent email. Your thoughts and prayers are really greatly appreciated. I read out loud to Mary the recent email from Joyce, Barry & Rozanne, Ken & Gloria, Milt, Tom & Sheila, Tom & Susan, cousins Dr. Mary Jo, John C, Kathy, Mike and Fran and perhaps others I can't remember. Mary does read email but is not always feeling up to drafting a response. So, thank you for your messages, thoughts and prayers.
Pat
Friday, May 1, 2009
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1 comment:
The Merc is dying because Craigslist, eBay, and Google have killed newspaper revenue streams. Local advertising and classifieds have been copmletely decimated by the web. Plus newspapers haven't figured out how to compete with the real time crowd sourcing aspect of the net in terms of coverage, so their perceived value has dropped. All the old media groups have this issue - Yellow Pages, Television, Newspapers, Magazines, etc.
The Merc is owned by Media News Group, and is their big brand. It gets all the love in MNG (which owns nearly 200 newpapers nation wide), so you can imagine what papers in other locales look like. For example, the Rocky Mountain News just folded in Denver because Scipps is bleeding dry and has no answer. Detroit's newspaper is no longer a daily and just cut out a bunch of delivery areas. The SF Chronicle almost folded a month or so ago, we'll see how their new labor contracts work.
The scary part to me is the role newspaper journalists have historically played in our democracy and that it's not clear at this point how that role will be replaced. At their best, these journalists do independent, in-depth, long term reporting that challenged power interests - private or government.
The classifieds and ads in papers essentially subsidized this kind of work and I don't see the web providing a similar mechanism. 140 character twitter messages might give interesting coverage of planes crashing into rivers, but wouldn't help with something like Watergate or cigarette company whistle-blowers.
Hopefully investigative journalists will figure out they are their own brand and don't need a intermediary like a paper to communicate their story - and that there's some mechanism that can provide them a living to do so.
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