According to former newspaper editor and current blogger Don Surber, a recent Rasmussen poll found that a smaller and even smaller portion of the public gets its news from print newspapers.
Newspapers were the least important source of political news in the 2016 presidential election.
A new Rasmussen poll showed only 4% of voters used newspapers as a primary source of news among six choices, including social media, and radio.
This may explain why Hillary “Why Aren’t I 50 Points Ahead?” Clinton failed to win despite the endorsement of 243 newspaper, to only 20 for President Trump.
I’ve always found newspaper endorsements silly. Why should I, a more-than-reasonably-informed voter rely on the opinion of a bunch myopic liberals at your typical newspaper to make an informed choice in the voting booth, or anywhere else for that matter.
Any more, newspapers are completely irrelevant to most people’s lives. Except for the coupons, most people don’t give a crap about the daily or weekly dead tree edition of the local paper. Newspaper publishers count on readers wanting those coupon inserts, because they don’t make much on display ads and nearly nothing on classifieds (thanks to craigslist). But if most advertisers really realized how few people pay attention to those inserts, let alone march into stores to buy stuff because of them, newspapers would be in even worse shape.
Given the absolutely shitty way most newspapers cover day-to-day events, whether political or mundane like basic crime stuff, they really do deserve to go the way of the buggy. They’re worthless and irrelevant in daily, or weekly life.
Here in bucolic Fauquier County, the local weekly newspaper is a complete waste of recycled newsprint. Nobody in the newsroom there is from the county or has a clue about life here. They fill the pages with absolute puff crap. No real news, no serious government coverage, no breaking crime coverage.
Whole sections of the county remain invisible because the publishers are a bunch of rich, liberal, environmental posers from the northern end of the county. The current management hasn’t a clue how to run a news organization. The only purpose of the paper is to promote the radical environmental bullshit positions of the owners.
Not worth buying, let alone reading.