Metro-sexual Newsstand Incest

The increasing centralization of media outlets in the
United States is nowhere more apparent than in the traditional powerhouse
of
American Journalism, the daily newspapers. Whereas most major cities
once had 4 or 5 independent dailies, now most are luck to have two papers,
which probably belong to corporate chains. Between them, the Gannett
Co., Knight-Ridder and Rupert Murdock own thousands of papers.

This drama is being played out on a local stage in the ongoing soap
opera in which longtime East Coast old-media heavyweights
and eternal
rivals the Boston Globe and
the New
York Times, a sort of journalistic
Red Sox – Yankees, buried the hatchet and arrived at an incestuous marriage
of
convenience.
Basically,
the
Times bought the Globe from the Taylor family, finally closing
the corporate door behind what had been the last of the privately held,
family-owned major media outlets. While the corporate suits swore complete
editorial autonomy for the Globe, and the article in the posting above proves the
subsidiary product can occasionally surpass that of the home office,
we all knew the Boston Globe was the Gray Lady’s bitch from that point
on.

Now the New York Times syndicate wants to expand the happy family by
adopting idiot bastard son "The Metro", a daily
tabloid-style paper distributed free on the subway. The Metro, unfortunately,
is a real newspaper, part of a chain which claims 14 million readers
every day in 40 cities in 16 countries worldwide, supported completely
by advertising.
Some of the writing is actually decent, and a lot of it is locally produced, although
the whole idea of boiling the
world
down to an entertaining 15-minute read is somehow intellectually insulting, like getting
an intelligence briefing from Paris Hilton. The Times
proposes buying 49 % of the local operation, a move made marginally
more difficult by the reportedly liberal
use of racial slurs including the "N" word by Metro executives at
European conferences, which may play in Prague but doesn’t tend to go
over big in the People’s Republic
by the Charles. There is even a porno
angle.

Meanwhile, cross-town rival the Boston
Herald has written the justice
department a whiny letter in protest and the Feds are "investigating". The Herald has
been flagging lately, and has been offering itself at half-price, trying
to simultaneously compete with the Globe on the upper end and the Metro
on the lower.  The idea that their competition are joining forces
has them shitting bricks.

Actually, almost all daily newspapers are supported chiefly by advertising. Our
students are always dumbfounded the first time we go through a copy
of the Globe and we ask them how much they think it costs to produce
and distribute each copy of the paper. Guesses range from ten cents
to 45 cents (considering they get back 50 cents). The actual figure is about
$1.85. When I ask them straight out how a company can produce something
for $1.85 and sell it for $.50, the light usually goes on in at least one kid’s
head and he or she shouts out "Advertising!".

So this media conglomerate has effectively cornering the highbrow
market and the subterranean levels of news distribution in
Metro Boston, leaving the middle ground to the Boston
Herald and the
near majority of the population who don’t even read a paper daily, get
their news from some other source, or simply don’t give a shit.

Where is our free choice of newspaper POV?  Where is our journalistic smorgasbord?
Where is good old fashioned reporting rivalry, digging for the scoop,
columnists with distinctive voices carping back and forth? Where is the
balls-on prose and the thought-provoking opinion? Where is the vital heart of American journalism today?

We all know the answer
to that one, don’t we?