newspapers | S J Miller Communications

This book publicist wants her newspapers!

September 29, 2009 by Stacey Miller

Rumors of newspapers’ death have been greatly exaggerated. Daniel Lyons penned a Newsweek column, “Techtonic Shifts,” in which he gloats about the demise of newspapers. Lyons would like to see newspapers die quickly so that we can all get our information online, and he boasts that he’s already cancelled two of his newspaper subscriptions.

Well, Lyons may be right about one thing. Newspapers do appear to be on a downward spiral. More of us seem to be catching breaking news through the broadcast or online media, and an increasing number of people are using handheld devices to carry around with them all the information they’ll need throughout the day. The role of newspapers is changing, and it would be impossible to deny that.

Here’s why we still need newspapers.

June 26, 2009 by Stacey Miller

Here’s why we still need newspapers. Yesterday, I received the news via the Internet. I knew about Farrah Fawcett’s death and Michael Jackson’s demise (and the rumors of his demise) as soon as the major and minor news outlets broke the story. I got the news alerts. I found the full articles on the Web sites. I received the tweets. I even turned on my actual television set which is a rare feat for the news gatherer in me these days. I listened to the radio coverage (well, actually, to listeners’ responses) to the stories all night.

Stephen King waves his Amazon Kindle 2!

May 6, 2009 by Stacey Miller

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been following the travails of the Boston Globe. Will it survive? Will the New York Times Co. close its doors? (It looks as though it will survive for the time being. According to the Boston Globe‘s web site, the last of the Boston Globe‘s unions has finally reached an agreement with the New York Times Co., and all that’s left is for the union’s membership to ratify the agreement.)

Anyway, while reading every scrap of information I could about the Boston Globe’s troubles and those of other newspapers across the country, I stumbled across a Time magazine article called “Will Amazon’s Kindle Rescue Newspapers?”

Maybe Rupert is right, but….

November 18, 2008 by Stacey Miller

Rupert Murdoch has just declared that newspapers are alive and well, and rumors of their death have been greatly exaggerated. That, according to an Associated Press article that describes Murdoch as a “global media magnate.”

Presumably, Murdoch has interests in other media outlets besides newspapers, so he can afford to be objective. The Associated Press, too, sells its stories to media outlets beyond newspapers, so perhaps Rupert is right. Perhaps book publicists and others who are conducting book promotion campaigns can pitch away to newspapers, as always, and pretend that these are the good old days when newspapers mattered, and when the Christian Science Monitor didn’t even have its own Web site, and when the Los Angeles Times and other major dailies hadn’t even thought about cutting down on the number of book reviews they published.

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