Newspaper editors can ballyhoo all they want about print vs. web. Just another indication that they are clueless about how the world has changed, how journalism has been consistently spiraling down the drain, and how our communities-as-public-realm have suffered because of such.

For decades the overwhelming majority of newspapers has been corporate owned. Today, not only are they corporate owned, but they are corporate controlled. Almost completely dependent on corporate advertising, rarely do newspapers dare cross that line between corporate advertising and corporate wrath.

The quality of journalism has steadily declined over the years. Most journalism programs don't focus on much more than spelling and grammar. Asking hard questions? Forget it. How are young journalists to know what questions to ask when they don't have any extensive training in, say, economics or political science? How are young journalists to show the courage to ask probing questions when editors and owners, sensitive to the wants and needs of their corporate owners and advertisers, are poised with red pen to delete anything that might prove itself to be 'offensive to the sensibilities of their readers' (i.e., translated: offensive to the views of corporate leaders and public relations officers).

As such, concepts such as 'social class' or 'economic exploitation' have been all but purged from the lexicon of corporate media reportage. Opposing sides are reported upon, domestically and internationally, with readers rarely provided even the most minimal understanding of what is at the basis of the opposition. In-depth reportage is absent, displaced by 'Big' questions like Who will win? Who is winning? Who will back down?

Privileged social groups are reported upon regularly. Underprivileged groups are reported upon as criminals, rarely anything else.

Want to see how corporate media might report on the world were they not to be totally watered down by corporate power and journalistic mediocrity? Take a look at the black press. Google the Chicago Defender or New York's Amsterdam News. Notice the kinds of probing questions that are asked, the references to history that in today's corporate media are only the stuff of fish wrap, the effort to give traditionally voiceless peoples a voice. A cursory read of some of the most outstanding black newspapers can only make one ashamed of what most Americans are reading for what passes today as news in the corporate media.

Our corporate media are the McDonalds and Burger Kings of the newspaper industry. Lesser papers, local but no less corporate influenced/controlled, are the Del Tacos. Fast corporately sponsored news is equivalent to fast food. Our bodies are bloated with salt, fat and sugar; our minds saturated and numbed with superficiality.

Example: We see a newspaper's editor wringing hands over the state of today's newspapers, and can't get beyond 'print journalism' v. 'going on the web'. Now, there's a real in-depth treatment of the issue for you! Any reference to (today's absence of) investigative journalism? Any reference to newspapers in historical perspective? Any references to how newspapers can possibly function under corporate power and influence without losing their objectivity (integrity)? Any reference to ethnic media's challenge to the corporate media?

How many of us realize that the ethnically based media in California has a larger combined readership and a larger percentage of subscribers than do the so-called mainstream corporate newspapers? Why might that be? Well, that would call for an honest discussion that places corporate news under some critical scrutiny. Can't have that because, gosh, it might mean reduced subscribers or, more importantly, a withdrawal of corporate support! So, let's talk about something really pithy, like print v. web.

The overwhelming majority of media outlets, including the Pleasanton Weekly and its parent corporation are nothing more than political activist organizations for the Socialist Democrat party. Period.

My guess is that you will quickly censor this post since you go to great lengths to block any post critical of the Democrat party.

One of the main roles of the media is to keep our government in check and the Pleasanton Weekly, along with it's cohort organizations, fails miserably in this critically important regard.

@wrong: here\'s a competing view, which suggests that the mainstreamers tolerate a great deal of nonsense in order to maintain their access, especially to the Right. Web Link The article cites the experience of highly respected writers Mann and Ornstein, who famously wrote last year:

"The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country\'s challenges."

They\'re correct, of course -- they predicted the events of the current \'crisis.\' They have also been shunned by the GOPers as a direct result of telling it like it is. "Go along to get along" should not be the job of a journalist.

Oh, and Mr. Wrong? Here it is three days later -- and your comment is still here! Doesn't do much for the persecution complex, does it?

I read newspapers and on line news content. The paper in my Pleasanton drive way every morning is pretty much a junked up newspaper, with the refrigerator add hanging out of it, the stickers covering the headline on the front page. I read it though, after I remove the refrigerator add and the stickers, I dive into the local section and skim the rest.

I like the Pleasanton Weekly best of all.

Just a couple of days ago I purchased an Android phone because my business necessitates it. I sure miss my regular old cell phone.
I am learning now how to text and have downloaded several apps so as to better communicate immediately the transactions involved with my business. I am amazed with what an android is capable of. I now wander what the IPhone is all about.

Communication, printing, writing, talking, texting, it is all great stuff.

Michael Austin

Hey Citizen Paine...sorry you lack a well planned method of keeping an opinion from being deleted.

Mr. or Ms. Wrong you are correct with you message.

Just my opinion, Julia Pardini

PS...I do like the new format, thank you Danville Express and others