Wow, I had heard that things were terrible for the OC REGISTER, as their parent company is filing for bankruptcy and will likely just give their assets over to a lender (meaning a fire sale will arrive with unprofitable assets getting the axe). How much is the OCR in trouble? Besides the money situation, you have to wonder if anyone is reading the paper's coverage in face of numerous intelligent options in print and cyberspace.
For example, since 8:30 PM last night there was a link to this blog from the OCR's Angels Blog, and later this afternoon another link to this blog in a breaking story ... at a time of great interest in the Angels and zero competing fan interest (there is no real news about the Lakers or college teams this week) ... and as the picture here below from our sitemeter indicates, of the last 4,000 unique visitors to this site, exactly 15 arrived here from the OCR's Angels blog (url is "FROM THE DUGOUT dot FREEDOM BLOGGING . com").
How many fan-run Angels websites have a neutral third party monitor counting unique visitors? In-house numbers are all lies, our publicly available site-meter is the little green box at the bottom of the home page. According to our public SiteMeter, we'd had 3,500+ unique visitors since midnight access the site when i checked these numbers and made this screen grab just after 6:30 pm. Has the now-penniless OC Register even planned on employing its baseball writers to cover potential October baseball?
0 recs | 20 comments
I never like hearing about newspapers going out of business
Figgi4life - September 1, 2009 via mobile
Me Neither
For everyone who says, “I just get my news from the Internet,” I ask: and where does the Internet get its news? If there are no newspapers, who does investigative reporting? Who has the time and resources to devote to daily coverage of matters of local, national and international concern? Nobody has yet figured out a way to be profitable as an exclusively online international news agency.
jjackflash - September 1, 2009
It is erroneous to assume...
…that the internet cannot in some way maintain quality journalism.
…that investigative journalism can only be practiced by the “print priesthood”.
…that newspapers have been paragons of investigative integrity instead of compromised by advertisers and old boy networks to the point that the quality reporting that has occurred in the past few decades has almost been by accident.
…newspapers cover matters of local, national and international concern. They really don’t, they coast on the reputation that they do, they run AP stories and Brittany pictures.
…newspapers have poached content form the internet for about a decade now, if you are still reading the dead tree inkstainer, most if not all of the fact checking was done free of charge on wikipedia and google.
Rev Halofan - September 1, 2009
Plus
To the end that stories come from newspaper journalists:
for years now yahoo sports, fox sports and espn (and others) have been employing journalists to post web-exclusive content. As for non-sports news, web-based news articles are most definitely available, often hours before print media. In fact, I frequently check the blog posts of numerous local political insiders for up-to-the-minute local news. Why read a print interview of a politician when you can read his blog?
Newspaper is only superior to the Internet because the Internet has not yet been used to collect bird poop in the bottom of the cage.
BruinHalo - September 1, 2009 via mobile
In the Abstract
there’s no reason that web-based media can’t perform all of the functions of print media; the problem is that nobody has figured out how to make money doing it yet. Your criticism of print media is valid; many of those criticisms apply because newspapers have had to scale back in the last decade or so because of budget woes.
Let me know when there’s an Internet-based agency (let alone numerous agencies) with the resources (both financial and otherwise) to be a legitimate news gathering, investigating and reporting agency. And not just for up-to-the-minute stuff, but researched, edited in-depth studies.
jjackflash - September 1, 2009
I agree
Schadenfreude is satisfying, and in the case of Whicker quite luxuriantly deserved, but the loss of local papers has its cost. At some point, someone has to do the reporting; a new infrastructure has already begun to develop for sports, but not for the nuts and bolts beats such as City Hall, crime, and fires. As much as I bitch about the LA Times, and how low they have fallen, still over the weekend they were the best source of news on the fires.
Sure, newspapers have mostly brought this upon themselves by failing to serve their public adequately and not modifying their business model to account for the new media and advertising realities, and eventually new institutions will rise to fill the breach, but I do not rejoice at the slow disintegration of our print media. It may be inevitable, but it is not a good thing.
rspencer - September 1, 2009
You do realize, of course...
…that papers such as the OC Register are mostly reprints from wire services, and even repubs of pieces form other papers, right?
MSNBC.COM has been heavy with AP wire pieces too, so for maybe 10 years I have been getting the same stuff as the Register and the Times, but hours or days sooner and when the information was still topical.
Stirrups - September 1, 2009
Might be a dumb question.....
but what constitutes a “unique visitor?”
Is it someone coming to the site from a computer that has never been here before?
norcaliangelsfan - September 1, 2009
Great questions
As I understand it, our ISP is logged and stored by SiteMeter. If you arrive here later in the same day form the same computer, the ISP is not logged. The turnover is at 4,000 visits. If you are visitor #1 and Visitor #4,002, you are counted twice. At present we are near an average of 4,000 unique visitors per day, according to the third-party, this is not me or some in-house IT guy selling you snake oil, this is a neutral measurement that I am actually proud of, as few else can offer this confirmation of reality to its readers.
Rev Halofan - September 1, 2009
One thing I love about HH
Most of its visitors are definitely unique.
rspencer - September 1, 2009
What will all those right-wing nut jobs do now with no place
to comment on articles and topics covering their “social issues” ……….Bah, ha, ha, ha ,ha.
44FAN - September 1, 2009
Hang out in the same bars as the left wing nutjobs working at the failing LA Times maybe? Newspapers are on the way out. The OC Register has bucked those trends in the past, but the internet has become too large of a competitor. Craigslist is what’s killing the Register, not subscriber numbers. They still average around 300,000 or not far under, which is their normal numbers. It’s the lack of ad revenue that’s hurting them.
It’s the only newspaper Orange County has and it’s not good to see it struggle. The LA Times is about the sorriest excuse for a newspaper there is.
firebird81 - September 1, 2009
They'll go to one of a hundred Web sites, where they mostly are already
For me, this isn’t about politics. If the Times (decidedly not a “right-wing nut job” paper) were to go belly-up, I would feel the same way and be saying the same thing. It’s more about Orange County losing its local coverage. As bad as newspapers mostly have become, they still serve a useful purpose that is not yet adequately filled by other sources.
One great thing that may come of all this is that “journalists” will slowly disappear, to be replaced by reporters who are close to where the stories are and who do what they do because they love it, not because they want to “make a difference.”
rspencer - September 1, 2009
"want to make a differnce"
translation: Want to make sure my version of the story is published as the record regardless of the truth.
Rev Halofan - September 1, 2009
Bingo!
rspencer - September 2, 2009
exactly
Fred Fredrix - September 2, 2009
yep. ie. littlegreenfootballs
If you can’t find right-wing watering holes, go there and follow the blog list from that spot outward.
The politics across the Internet – on all sides – are overwhelming that of traditional media. Just stare at CNN for a while and observe. Soon it becomes apparent that they are a lot of “hey, we twitter too! look how relevent we still are!!! oooh! another email just came in…”
Stirrups - September 1, 2009
Or Ace of Spades HQ
If you want something more freewheeling and unfettered.
rspencer - September 2, 2009
OK, new favorite thing to do on HH
click the sitemeter at the bottom, view the “world map” of people who have clicked here and see where this site has spread.
I love seeing European visitors.
And from the Game Thread Monday, I know we have some visitors from Iowa (which showed up when I was looking).
Check it out on a big news day and you’ll be surprised how far spread this site’s influence is.
BruinHalo - September 2, 2009
Although you'll learn some sad truths as well...
like perezhilton.com is incredibly popular.
BruinHalo - September 2, 2009
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