We're Starting to Think Newspapers Do Not Have a Bright Future

In your pleasant Thursday media column: newspaper ads slide on down, Tavi Gevenson prepares to launch, Tribune Co. is still shameless, a drunk student journalist tells it like it is, and science meets journalism (Hello!).

  • Spending on print newspaper ads fell 7% in the second quarter of 2011, marking the 20th straight quarter of declining print newspaper ad sales. Could print newspaper advertising be on a downward trend? We'll keep an eye on this one. In other news, the Washington Post just announced that "we're closing all of our local bureaus except Richmond and Annapolis."
  • Tavi Gevinson, the teenage fashion writer wunderkind who is down with Jane Pratt and more luminous and successful than you in various other ways, as well, is all set to launch her new website, RookieMag.com, with a host of big media backers and hot (but also cool) celebrity contributors. Maybe you can work for Tavi Gevenson one day, if you start dressing a little better.
  • Everyone should take a moment to contemplate the fact that the Tribune Co. asked a judge yesterday to allow it to pay up to $42.5 million in "management bonuses" to itself this year. The reason the company has to ask a judge is because it is currently bankrupt thanks to incompetent management. What you should be contemplating is a picture of Sam Zell, frolicking in a pool of money as laid-off newspaper reporters fan him, with million-dollar bills.
  • Berkeley student journalist drinks three beers, sits down, writes a column that will "tell the truth that nobody wants to say" about journalism: "we got complacent, and we stopped evolving, and soon the concept of a news article became far removed from what you, as a person, valued." Fairly accurate. Someone give that kid some meth and see what else he comes up with.
  • Poynter's Matt Thompson suggests that journalists could improve their craft by developing a method as rigorous, truth-seeking, and reproducible. as the scientific method. But someone from a prominent right wing think tank disagrees, calling it "secular hogwash" and "radical liberal anti-Christianity." This post, at least, has achieved perfect fairness. Science can't teach you that.
[Photo: Julian Povey/Flickr]