Newspapers Endangered by Bad Management

Aside from the attempted shakedown by the Governor of Illinois, the Chicago Tribune, like other newspapers, is suffering from bad management.

Newspapers are manufacturing enterprises, but their product is intellectual -- news.

Too often, today's newspapers don't give a fig about informing their readers.

Too often, today's newspapers are shills for governments and other big advertisers like developers. They don't investigate. Despite huge resources from the Tribune Company, the Orlando Sentinel and the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel are dull and duller. They're pretty papers, in the spirit of shallow USA Today, but they don't inform. They've neglected their constitutional duty to inform the people about governmental and business affairs and they've paid the price for it -- bankruptcy.

People encountering newspaper reporters often report distasteful experiences -- being misquoted and basic facts being gotten wrong.

That's why newspaper circulation, advertising and news are in a death spiral.

Until newspapers return to our Founding Fathers' vision -- a bulwark of democracy -- they will continue to decline. Give us the real news -- stop censoring what you know to appease the rich and powerful, whose wealth and power diminish with every passing day. "Dance with the ones that brung you" -- your subscribers.