I started my blog in 2002. That was pre-MySpace, pre-Facebook. That was back before newspapers realized they were going out of business. That was back when no one gave any credence to Internet writers.
I have opened newspapers and read incredible lies.
The newspapers loved pinup pictures of pretty young swimmers, and as a national champion, I got more than my share of space in the sports pages.
I met Ulrika Jonsson on December 8, 2001, at some party hosted by the Daily Express, or maybe it was the Daily Star. The FA wanted me to travel around to various newspapers to be courteous and meet the editors. I visited the News Of The World too, and met a woman with big, red hair. I didn’t memorise her name.
Newspapers have an extraordinary amount of local content, including real estate listings and restaurant reviews.
I would have a poet able bodied, fond of talking, a reader of the newspapers, capable of pity and laughter, informed in economics, appreciative of women, involved in personal relationships, actively interested in politics, susceptible to physical impressions.
The difference between burlesque and the newspapers is that the former never pretended to be performing a public service by exposure.
It is easy to overlook the importance of the young in underdeveloped countries. It is the natural course for nations, and diplomats, and those who publish newspapers, to speak to the established order. Seeking out the young requires a conscious effort.
The worst part of my life is newspapers are still alive – sorry, I had to say it.
The newspapers were saying, ‘You have AIDS.’ They actually said I was dead. I just threw myself into my work when the whispering campaign turned really ugly.
Across the years, in spite of everything I knew, my passion endured. Newspapers and magazines paid me to cover fights when I’d have paid my own way.
What has struck me about the political world, as opposed to the business world, is that rational discourse has become all but impossible. All too often, arguments are conducted not on the basis of facts but on the basis of emotion – and, honestly, it is no fun being abused in the pages of tabloid newspapers or online.
The Internet has meant that advertising has migrated; there are hardly any classifieds in newspapers any more because they’re all online. If people have a car to sell, for example, they sell it online; they don’t go to the newspaper.
I draw a weekly comic strip called Life in Hell, which is syndicated in about 250 newspapers. That’s what I did before The Simpsons, and what I plan to do for the rest of my life.
There was a really long period of time when, if the newspapers ever referred to me, even if I was talking about, I don’t know, cake making, they would put ‘lesbian Sandi Toksvig.’
Some of those stories in local newspapers are just as dull and boring as the stories that I get from on-line services, which are basically sort of straight news.
The newspapers turn a blind eye to how they get their material as long as they have great photographs.
I think there’d be huge losses if there weren’t newspapers. I know everything’s shifting to the Internet and some people would say, ‘News is news, what you’re talking about is a change of consumption, not the product that’s out there.’ But I think there is a change.
When you become a ‘public person,’ I find it very difficult to keep following social media. It is too harsh, too violent. I only read newspapers online.
Back when people couldn’t read, other people would take newspapers and turn them into theater so that people would know what was going on in the world. That is a powerful thing.
I have always argued that newspapers should not have any civic purpose beyond telling readers what is happening… A reporter who doesn’t quickly tell readers what they most want to know – the score – won’t last long. Better he should teach political science.
It may be coincidence that the decline of newspapers has corresponded with the rise of social media. Or maybe not.
The question I ask myself is what would have happened if newspapers hadn’t initially given their content away for free on the Internet. It’s so hard to get people to pay once they are accustomed to having something for free.
The newspapers of the twenty-first century will give a mere ‘stick’ in the back pages to accounts of crime or political controversies, but will headline on the front pages the proclamation of a new scientific hypothesis.
I’ve had an ambition to be somebody since I was 13 years old because I wanted to help my family. I wanted to hurry and grow up so I could make enough money to buy my father a big car and my mother a beautiful home with an electric washing machine and all those things she used to see in the newspapers.
Misery sells newspapers.
The best discussion of trouble in boardroom and business office is found in newspapers’ own financial pages and speeches by journalists in management jobs.
It used to be that artists thought of nature as their environment. Now media is our environment. It has been for the past 50, 70 years. It’s what you see on TV, on the computer, what is in the magazines and newspapers.
It’s one of the biggest fibs going that American newspapers are now being forced to give up their commitment to investigative reporting. Most of them gave up long ago as their greedy managements squeezed every cent out of the bottom line and turned their newsrooms into eunuchs.
I absolutely want and prize and love and revere every single media review I get, but if I got 50 reviews from major newspapers and one review from Amazon, I still would feel a little weird: ‘What’s going on? Why aren’t people responding?’
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
We have got to make sure there is proper independent scrutiny and accountability for people in the press, just as there should be in any other industry where things go wrong. But let’s not try and think it is for politicians or governments to tell people what they stick in newspapers. That is deeply illiberal.
America’s great newspapers have staffs that range from 50 percent to 70 percent of what they were just a few years ago.
The smaller newspapers probably won’t have any critics at all. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing because there’s a certain level of seriousness that you can’t get with a small newspaper for critics.
My life was made easy – I lived in a village, and by writing for some newspapers and magazines, had enough to live on. I was happy to be there and write.
This MeToo is bothering me much, making me shun TV and newspapers. They are making such wild charges for cheap publicity, claiming something happened longtime back, or perhaps did not happen, or perhaps could have happened.
Once they become AKC registered, the newspapers will become flooded with ads for them. And you’ll see Border collies in pet stores and animal shelters.
Rock bands were never newsworthy. In the ’60s and ’70s, rock bands weren’t in the newspapers because they weren’t considered mainstream; they wouldn’t sell papers.
If political cartoonists continue to rely on newspapers, we may be in serious trouble. It’s a very transferable form of journalism, though – it works great on Web sites.
I don’t think I constantly have to be on a promotional spree or be seen in the newspapers every day or even be part of social parties and film gangs. I’m having my own set of journey, and I am happy with it because I don’t want to be like everybody.
I was reading newspaper front pages from the 1930s, and I was taken aback. I’m not naive about American history, but I was a bit knocked off my feet by things that used to be on the front pages of newspapers.
My family didn’t really have newspapers at home or talk about politics – my family are not political. They were too busy getting on with it – working, looking after kids, trying to pay off the mortgage, all that stuff.
If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.
Every child should have time for arts, music, sports, drama, robotics, school newspapers and the like, not to mention recess and play.
