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Reality check: the new era began a while ago

Posted Mon, 11/02/2009 - 17:20

Warren Stephens and Walter Hussman

Warren Stephens and Walter Hussman have joined forces to create a blessed spot for conglomerate media and move towards paid content at 'ludicrous speed.'

Today, each of the NWA Newspapers ran a story about the merger signaling “a new era” for news in our corner of the state. They even said “This region shall have the strongest, healthiest, newspapers in these United States. This 'blessed spot' will have more of what so many other regions are losing or have already lost.”

Blessed spot? That's the funniest thing I've heard...

I guess the editorial boards presume their biased media conglomerate is different from other media conglomerates. And I guess they think a region with zero print competitors (not even an independent weekly!) constitutes a “blessed spot” for print journalism.

Or, maybe I've got them wrong. Maybe they're finally realizing that the whole reason for the merger is that their model can't compete with social and independent media in the first place.

Nah... who am I kidding?

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