Cronkite: Quest for media profits hurts

CRONKITE: QUEST FOR MEDIA PROFITS HURTS
[SOURCE: Associated Press]
In a keynote address at Columbia University, former CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite warned that pressures by media companies to generate ever-greater profits are threatening the very freedom the nation was built upon. said today's journalists face greater challenges than those from his generation. No longer could journalists count on their employers to provide the necessary resources, he said, "to expose truths that powerful politicians and special interests often did not want exposed." Instead, he said, "they face rounds and rounds of job cuts and cost cuts that require them to do ever more with ever less.'' "In this information age and the very complicated world in which we live today, the need for high-quality reporting is greater than ever," he said. Cronkite said news accuracy has declined because of consolidations and closures that have left many American towns with only one newspaper. And as broadcasters cut budgets and air time for news, he said, "we're all left with a sound bite culture that turns political campaigns into political theater." The former anchor urged owners of media companies -- newspapers and broadcast alike -- to recognize they have special civil responsibilities. "Consolidation and cost cutting may be good for the bottom line in the short term but that isn't necessarily good for the country or the health of the news business in the long term,'" he said.
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* Wake-up call to a.m. news: moms tuning out
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Matea Gold]
This season has seen a significant erosion of the morning shows' demographic sweet spot: 25- to 54-year-old women. Almost 450,000 of these women -- coveted by advertisers because of their household purchasing power -- turned off the three broadcast morning programs so far this season, a decline of 10% compared to the same point last year, according to a Times analysis of Nielsen Media Research data. (Male viewers the same age also fell by 9%, but they make up a much smaller portion of the audience.) It's difficult to trace the exact cause of the drop. It comes after two popular morning hosts, Katie Couric and Charles Gibson, left their shows to be evening news anchors. At the same time, the advent of "mommy blogs," the growing popularity of online news sites and the ever-more-frantic press of daily life appear to have led many women to forgo the morning ritual of watching TV. News executives are sanguine about the ratings dip, calling it a short-term fluctuation. They attribute it in large part to the unseasonably mild winter in much of the country until recently, noting that temperate weather draws people outside, and away from their television sets. But could it have something to do with the content of the shows? "Watching morning television for me is the equivalent of reading People magazine in the dentist's office," said Jenny Lauck, a mother of three who writes for websites from her home in Santa Rosa, Calif. "They don't have anything new or particularly relevant to my life. It seems like a lot of fluff. I feel like I can get information faster and cleaner on the Internet."
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-et-women9feb09,1,51398...
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