Newspaper Revenues

Here’s an article from today’s Washington Post on the fate of newspaper revenues.  The gist of the article is how the Internet’s free aspect has contributed to the freefall of newspapers.  We may see some go out of business in the next year.

As a former journalism major, I see another problem.  When I took journalism classes, emphasis was on being objective in what we reported.  Presenting both sides of the story, or at least doing our best to do so.  That was a long time ago.

Now I’ve watched the major newspapers erode into tabloid style journalism and major mistakes are made in the quest to beat the Internet to publication or just to be the one to break the story first.  In the rush to do that, they sacrifice integrity and quality.  

Last week, a subscriber wrote into the WP infuriated that they would spend a front section article describing the First Lady’s clothing that she wore at an event.  In the “old” days, I would have expected this to be a photo in a tabloid, not an article and photo in a major newspaper.  What she wore isn’t really news.  Interesting to read, yes, but was worth the space when something else might have been reported on?

This is just me, but I think that if the newspapers want to compete with the Internet, they need to find something that the Internet can’t give people.  Its weakness, which may also be its strength.  Anything can go up on the Internet, which means there’s a lot of inaccurate information available.  Anyone can say anything they want, including getting very nasty.  A newspaper can, quite literally, be an objective filter and because of the paper format can provide different kinds of details.

Can a newspaper give people something different than the Internet?  I think so.  Though we’ve had ebooks around for a while, they’re still not selling that well because books give people something different than an ebook does.  Now the newspapers just need to figure out what that is.

Online Book Club

Sponsored by your local libraries, Dear Reader.com sends out five minutes worth of reading each day.  Each week, it’s a new book.  If you like it, check it out from the library or buy the book.

Get Books for Free

Publisher Thomas Nelson recently started a Blogger Book Review program.  Sign up, and you receive a book free in exchange for reading it and posting a 200-word review on your blog and one of the book sale sites like Amazon.  Christian writing isn’t something I would normally read, so it’s been a different reading experience for me!

Rex by Cathleen Lewis

Rex, by Cathleen Lewis, is the story of a mother who has to learn how cope with the myrid of difficulties raising her blind and autistic son. 

Soon after Rex’s birth, it’s discovered that he is blind and autistic.  Barely a few months old, he’s sent to a school for blind children to learn the things that sighted children easily pick up.  Though everyone tries to teach Rex, it’s a difficult task and begins to look like Rex may have to be put in a wheelchair and that he will never talk.

Then, there’s an amazing discovery:  Rex is a musical savant on the piano.  He can hear a Mozart piece for the first time and reproduce it, note for note.  Or change it to a different key and just start playing.  It’s a miracle that starts to bring Rex into learning to work with the world using music. 

What I thought of it:   From the description, I thought it would be a page turner of a great story.  It certainly has the human interest aspect down.  But the story never got off the ground and wowed me.  Instead, it was more like a vignette out of the mother’s life, without a beginning, middle, or end.   The writing also didn’t draw me in and keep my interest.  I’m afraid I can’t explain why, other than to say that it just didn’t do anything for me.

501 Must-Read Books

501 Must-Read Books is a nice reference that I spotted at Borders and just had to get.  It’s divided into eight sections:

• Children’s Fiction
• Classic Fiction
• History
• Momoirs
• Modern Fiction
• Science Fiction
• Thrillers
• Travel

But it’s not a dry tome of lists.  Each book gets a page and a photo.  The photo ranges from illustrations to covers of the book to the author, and many are in color.   The text about the book describes the story and why it made the book.

Some of the books I’ve read many years ago and may revisit.  These are the ones I’ve read recently:

From the Must-Read list, so far, I’ve read:

• The Handmaid’s Tale (a disturbing book)
• Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (strange book)
• The Stepford Wives (couldn’t stay interested in this story)
• Stranger in a Strange Land (the edited version – didn’t like it)

Right now, I’m reading Dune.  That was surprisingly hard to find.  I ran a search in the library catalog, and they had everything but.  Went to the library and spotted the book on the paperback rack.

Chapter Ones from the Washington Post

A great first chapter (followed by a great book) can sell a book.  The Washington Post has on their Website a sampling of first chapters of books they’ve reviewed, along with a link to the review.  If you’re looking for fiction, though, you’ll have to dig through a bit–there’s more non-fiction than fiction.

The American Patriot’s Alamanac

The American Patriot’s Alamanac: Daily Readings on America by William J. Bennett and John T.E. Gribb is like a meditation book.  Each page is a new day, featuring a different story about an event or a person in history, along with a list of other significant events that occurred on that date.  But it’s not just about distant history; some events described are more recent, like September 11.

I’ve seen some reviews calling it “a daily history lesson,” though I don’t agree with that.  History lesson starts me thinking about memorizing dates and places like I had to do in school.  This book is about people.  It’s their stories about how they contributed to America, and the stories are refreshingly respectful.

A couple of the memorable stories:

George Washington and his spectacles showed how a great leader can rally his troops, even in times of great dispair.

The Pied Piper of Saipan shows both goddess of people and that there can be hope in the middle of war. 

The authors even have an entry on Bob Hope’s first tour  to visit the troops. 

As a veteran, I’d particularly recommend this book for anyone who has served in the military.  This book is filled with stories about how our military has been such an important part of America’s culture.

Alphabet Soup

I picked up a couple of books from the library.  One of them is called Cold Zero, which is a non-fiction book about an FBI special agent on the hostage rescue team.

I had trouble staying involved with it and finally stopped reading it because of all the acronyms and abbreviations.  For reference, here’s the difference between abbreviations and acronyms:

An abbreviation is made up of letters that stand for something, but they don’t form an actual word.  Example:  FBI, DOD, SGT. 

An acronym is made up of letters that stand for something, but also spell out a word.  Example: MODEM, SNAFU.  Yes, both these actual stand for a much longer word, though they’re in common use as the acronym.

This particular book had enough abbreviations  (using this one word for both it and acronyms) in it, like ASAC, HRT, ELSUR, RAs, SAC, etc.  The author did define each one like we’re supposed to–the first instance of it define it and put the abbreviation in parenthesis.

The problem is that places like the FBI and the army have their own culture, and abbreviations are part of it.  Often, you have to be part of the culture to understand more about the abbreviation than what defines it.

So I get this definition of ASAC, which is Assistant Special Agent in Charge, and then the abbreviation continues to turn up periodically as I read the story.  Problem is that there are already so many being filtered in that I don’t remember any of them.

Contrasting this book with two others about the FBI– a profiler and the other a woman agent–and they didn’t have any abbreviations to stumble over.  

 However, both those books were written with a non-fiction writer and the agent; Cold Zero was written by the agent.  It looks like the non-fiction writer helped filter out things that the average audience wouldn’t understand.

I suspect this might be why there’s very little fiction about the military.  I tried my hand at writing a novel about my experiences during Desert Storm, and it’s very hard separating the abbreviations from the story.  They’re very much a part of the military culture.

Don’t expect the average reader to remember what an acronym or abbreviation means.  Expect them not to remember.  Write accordingly.