Link Think: LA (End) Times

A tip of the hat to LA Observed, which was crowded this morning with downbeat vignettes from the Los Angeles media landscape, including the move of iconic LA music mag Arthur to Brooklyn, poetic goodbye emails from laid-off LA Times staffers, and this "Editor's Note" from Los Angeles Magazine's Kit Rachlis on the prospect of a Los Angeles with no Times:

Paper Rout

Nobody disagrees that newspapers face a frightening set of challenges: a generation of 20- to 35-year-olds who get their news for free from the Web; the migration of advertising to the Web but not to newspaper sites; advertising rates on the Web that are 1/10th to 1/20th what newspapers charge; and now an economy that is in near recession. Any one of those factors would be daunting, but together they represent the most radical disruption the industry has ever faced. Even papers with committed ownerships, like The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, are struggling. What's required is something not usually found in American corporations: the strength to weather at least four or five more years of uncertainty; a willingness to experiment like crazy; and a belief that what's being provided is more than just a business. The Times, on the other hand, has chosen to slash the paper and invest too little too late in the Web. It is hard to imagine a worse course. I will miss the Times, but the truth is that when I pick up the paper every morning, I miss it already. [full item]

Got any good tips for Daydreaming's Link Think? Share them with us here.

--Gary Dauphin

11:52 AM ET | 07-23-2008 | permalink

comments | | e-mail