Greenfield reinforces ‘free newspapers bad’ theme
Jeff Greenfield
CBS Sunday Morning was a celebration of its 30 years on the air, with features that looked back at life in 1979. It included a segment with media critic Jeff Greenfield, who whirled through a look at how the media has changed. He effectively described how the digital revolution has converged our information and entertainment into a handheld box.
What stuck in my craw was this line, delivered with an image of the Los Angeles Times on an iPhone: “You don’t want to buy a newspaper? Read it for free online — one reason why newspapers as we know them may not be around much longer.”
My wife turned and said that’s probably true. Ugh. My own wife. A week earlier, I had this debate with colleagues in own newspaper. I’m tired of people blaming free content. It’s not one reason why newspapers are in the fix they’re in. It’s not the 10th reason. It’s not in the top 100.
What did a newspaper cost in 1979? Well, I found an article that said the Los Angeles Times increased its newsstand price to 25 cents that year.
If you don’t think that we were (and still are) effectively giving away newspaper content for free, then I guess we can’t have a conversation about this.
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