Day: August 6, 2013

The Rapid Demise Of Print Journalism: Something To Mourn!

As one who grew up a great fan of print journalism, what is happening in the present time is a great moment of depression.

US News and World Report and Newsweek as print weekly magazines are gone.

The Boston Globe, bought by the NY Times for $1.1 billion twenty years ago, has now been sold by the Times to John Henry, the owner of the Boston Red Sox, for $70 million, a fire sale at 93 percent discount!

The Washington Post, in the Graham family for generations, has been sold to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, for $250 million, when it was worth much more than the Boston Globe twenty years ago.

Print Journalism is in rapid decline, and newspapers, as we knew it, will never be the same, and that is a loss for journalism and for the American people.

The New York Times, the Washington Post, and so many other newspapers now can only survive with online commitments, by this author and millions of others.

Print Journalism played such an important role in American history, and its decline is, in many ways, a sign of the cultural decline of America, in an era where there is no cooperation, no crossing the aisle to do what is good for the American people!

Journalism has become an industry without a future, as the commitment to excellence has been replaced by the commitment to profit alone, so entertainment, rather than information, has become the major goal of online and television journalism!

This is all very sad and to be mourned over!

The Republican And Conservative Attack On Single Mothers, Particularly Minority Mothers: Failure To See Their Sacrifices And Heroism!

America is living through a very sad time, when we see Republicans and conservatives, including those on talk radio and Fox News Channel, constantly on the attack against single mothers, and particularly minority mothers, failing to see their sacrifices and heroism!

Comfortable middle class and upper class whites who have a stable family structure and adequate financial resources have no clue as to the life of those single mothers, whether white, African American, Hispanic and Latino, Asian American, or Native American.

Instead of realizing that it is men who helped to contribute to this problem of single motherhood, but that it is these single women who have devoted their lives to bringing up their children under dire circumstances, and that they should not be condemned, and denied basic government assistance to make the lives of their children better, we have the spectacle of ridicule, lack of respect, and lack of understanding just how complex and difficult being a single mother really is!

They need to be given the credit and dignity that any mother is given, who happens to be more fortunate in financial and personal life matters, as being poor is far more a challenge than the issue of how much materialism and greed can be promoted in those families which have no struggle on a daily basis!

Single mothers should not be subjected to racism or misogyny, and we have a lot of work to do in this nation to overcome the hate and the prejudice unfortunately visited by right wing forces which have no interest in improving the lives of women and children!