The Death of Newspapers

"A GOOD newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself." --Arthur Miller, 1961

Chicago used to be a great newspaper city, most major metropolitan were. And then he Rupert Murdochs of the world got into business, not to report the news, but to make money. The once proud Chicago Sun-Times was gutted when Hollinger International took over and siphoned off more than $400 million right into Conrad Black's bottomless pockets. The cuts that have decimated the small community papers owned by the Chicago Sun-Times, are now at the paper's door. Fewer reporters are expected to get the news, and those fewer reporters are usually less experienced recent journalism school grads who work for less. Where two reporters worked on a story, one reporter works and he loser is the public.

Now, we can say that newspapers have been done in my the Internet, but we know that's not true. Newspapers have been done in by the greed of corporations who buy companies for the profits they generate, not the reporting they provide. Advertising dollars are what keeps newspapers alive, and those dollars have, in the past 10 years, been moving to the Internet. According to a 2006 article in The Economist: "In Switzerland and the Netherlands newspapers have lost half their classified advertising to the internet." That same year, the venerable New York Times came under fire not because of its reporting, but because its share prices fell. And the first place so-called modern newspaper barons look for cuts is in the newsroom. What we have today is more media and less news.

So what does this mean? Well, when politicians burgle their opponents' offices who will tell the story? If, as Benjamin Franklin said, "It is the fist responsibility of every citizen to question authority," who will publish these questions or the public response? A newspaper does more than investigating abuses or even spreading general news, it holds the governments to account. Bloggers do the same thing, but we do not do it with the same educated background, eye to detail, and mania for accuracy (well, some bloggers anyway), and we certainly don't do it objectively.

Giants die, and when they die they fall harder and leave a gapping wound for the rest of us to ponder. Newspapers are important on both the local and national level. The loss of talented people who are willing to report the news objectively but with intelligence leaves the rest of is poorer.

And now more information about dead Diana

Ten years dead and Diana (no other identification needed) remains a staple of the tabloid press. For whatever reason, the British government has bowed to the demands of wealthy arms dealer turned store keeper Mohamed Al Fayed and Diana's own conspiracy minded followers and has mounted another expensive inquest. Unable to accept that accidents happen, even to the incredibly wealthy, a decade after the fatal car crash, people still insist Diana was murdered. Of all the conspiracy theories I have read, my favorite includes a stealth tank. Yes, you read that right. Some people posit that a British Army Tank, hidden in the tunnel, moved forward to crush the speeding Mercedes and then rushed away unseen and unheard.

I suppose to establish motive, the inquest seems unhealthily concerned with Diana's active and rather public sex life. To whit: Was he pregnant? Did she mean to marry Dodi Al Fayed? Did she want a quiet middle class life as the wife of Dr. Hasat Kahn? Did she invite the press to her public affair with Dodi to get back at Charles. None of this has anything to do with the accident, but it feeds the unending public appetite for intimate information about a very public person.

Of all the things revealed by this side show, my favorite is the contributions of Raine, Countess Spencer, Diana's publicly hated step-mother. We are now to believe that cast out by the cold hearted Royal Family, Diana turned for comfort not to her own mother, with whom she was not on speaking terms, but to her step-mother, who she had nick-named "Acid Raine." Raine married Diana's father after his first wife, Diana's mother, decamped with another man, losing custody of her children. When she lived, Diana had not one good thing to say about Raine, but now that she's dead, Raine, who is on the board of the al Fayed owned Harrod's Department Store, has decided to rewrite history. When her father died, Diana, then Princess of Wales, instructed her servants to place all of Raine's in plastic trash bags, which were then kicked down the palatial family home steps, reportedly by Diana's brother. This is the same brother who refused Diana's request to live on the family estate but who castigated the Royal Family for their callous ways at Diana's public funeral. And he was living in South Africa at the time. But Raine publicly stated that since Diana's divorce, they had grown close and that Diana confided to her that she planned to marry Dodi Al Fayed.

So, what does this have to do with the car accident? Well, apparently, the Royal Family targeted Diana because she was about to marry Dodi, even though people who knew Diana say that no such marriage was in the works.

From previous inquests, we know that Diana died from injuries she incurred when the speeding car in which she was riding came to an abrupt stop against a pole in a Paris tunnel. American physicians, who were not there and who did not examine Diana, claim that had the accident happened in the US, they could have saved her life. And while I question French emergency methods in this instance, I think second guessing what was done from a distance is both unfair and unimportant. All I know is that if Diana had worn a seat belt, she might have walked away with a few bruises and even more publicity.

In the end, Diana may have been the victim of her own publicity machine. She was fighting for the public heart, using her considerable weapons of physical attractiveness and her connection with various charities, some of which had grown tired of her act. Diana wanted to ruin the Prince of Wales, and she did. If she couldn't be queen, he couldn't be king.

Deeper still, it was have been galling for a young, attractive woman to lose out in the love sweepstakes to a middle age hausfrau who is more at home in riding cloths than haut couture. All women have been there and we understand the sting. On the other, when a woman of no obvious physical appeal beats out a beautiful blond, I find myself muttering, "You go, girl."

In her ire, Diana did her level best to bring down the British Monarchy, and she may have succeeded. But I think the problem was that in doing so, Diana began to believe her own press and that is a dangerous thing. Dead now for 10 years, Diana continues to haunt the Royal Family, which I am sure now looks back with horror on its plan to find a suitable bride for their unmarried heir. Oddly, I think the smoke was clearing when Diana died and she had come to some civilized understanding with her former husband. She was out of the Royal Family, because she wanted a divorce. She dragged them through the mud in print and on television, so clearly she was willing to burn her bridges. She was stripped of her HRH because she said, perhaps in a moment of piqué, that she didn't want it. Had she lived, Charles probably would have remained unmarried, and maybe miserable, which is what she may have wanted. But who really knows. And although we now know that Diana may have accepted Dodi's advances for any number of reasons, she apparently did not consider theirs a serious relationship. Diana loved the limelight--who couldn't do without public adulation, but in the end that's what did her in. She thought she could control the press, and she was wrong.

The thing is Diana is dead and her bones are being picked over for no other reason that it makes good press. I find that sad and ugly. She lies alone on a island, finally achieving the quiet of the family estate denied her during her life. Her brother, who so vociferously opposed his step-mother's plan to turn the family seat Althrop into a tourist attraction, opened the estate to the public, selling trinkets decorated with his dead sister's image. And while some of the profits go to charity, some of the profits go into Althrop's pockets. Diana is now a cottage industry, feeding those who refused to help or who haunted her in her lifetime. I add to that sorry list of greedy relatives and press and avaricious former butlers, the public harpies who keep the myth and the ire alive.

Diana's dead. It's over. Move on.

¿Hablas inglés?

Joe Vento, the owner of Philadelphia's famous Geno's Steaks, the home of the original Philly Cheese Steak, is in all sorts of trouble because in 2005 he posted a sign, telling customers "This is AMERICA: WHEN ORDERING PLEASE 'SPEAK ENGLISH.'"

The Spanish-speaking population immediately pounced on him, calling the sign "intimidation," because it suggested that he did not want certain customers in his establishment. Since 2006, Vento has been the subject of a Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, which in February found "probable cause against Geno's Steaks for discrimination." Vento did not post a sign that said "Whites Only," he did not post a sign stating, "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service." He simply asked his customers to order in English. Maybe he wanted to keep the line moving. Maybe he wanted to make sure that people got what they ordered. Maybe Vento thought that in an English-speaking country it is reasonable to ask customers to order in English. When I travel in a foreign country, I try to learn basic phrases because I do not assume that the people of that country speak English (although more often than not in Europe, many do). When walking into a restaurant in Italy, I do not assume that I can order in English. But then I am not the Spanish-speaking population, which has something other than language on their agenda. I applaud that public information is now written in more than one language; I don't even mind that to get an English-speaking customer service representative, I have to punch number 2; but I am not thrilled when special interests groups take aim at a small business owner. I would feel differently if Vento had barred his doors to anyone who was not White or of a certain ethnic group. He didn't do this. No one has been refused service. He simply asked them to speak English.

Clearly, the timing of his sign is the heart of the issue. We have a problem with our porous borders. For years, anybody could get in and out without much hassle. And that includes Chinese workers stealing in by ship, Irish laborers who overstay their visitor visas, and Pakastanis who come as students and stay as IT professionals. If we are serious about Homeland Defense, and we aren't, then the first place to watch for illegals is at the borders. I do not care if 99.9 percent of the illegals from Mexico are clean living, honest, hard working people because some people are not (and how law abiding can you be if you are willing to flaunt immigration laws). Citizens have a right to know who is coming into the United States. Personally, whatever Vento says, I believe his sign had more to do with the immigration debate than anything else. But I don't know what his true motives are because I don't know the man, and neither do the Spanish-speaking activists who started the uproar in the first place. But they sure seem willing to strip him of a business he worked long and hard to build.