Purse Strings

We've written about the decline of print media for sometime. In some ways it's inevitable. In others, not so much.

The Wall Street Journal will debut a newly formatted version of its print edition starting Nov. 14, which will combine several sections and reduce the size of some coverage areas as the paper copes with an accelerating industrywide decline in print advertising.
Editor in chief Gerard Baker announced the changes to staff in a memo Wednesday. As a result, the paper will feature fewer pages with less space dedicated to coverage of arts, culture and New York news.

“All newspapers face structural challenges and we must move to create a print edition that can stand on a sound financial footing for the foreseeable future while our digital horizons continue to expand,” Mr. Baker wrote in the memo.

wsj.com/articles/the-wall-street-journal-to-combine-sections-to-cope-with-ad-decline-

As advertisers have moved and the Internet and social media have changed things this is to be expected. But there's another story here in some ways much more important. It too is about consolidation. As these take place it can lead to fewer and fewer choices for the consumer which leads to more and more price-fixing monopolies also. The upcoming mega-merger if it gets approved between AT&T-Time Warner is an example. Globalization with one world government is another, in case you can't see it.

But there is a positive side to these trim downs, consolidation of consumer purchasing power. Consumer purchasing power can be tossed around more readily and with bigger impact as many of these media firms are still dependent on advertisers,digital or otherwise. A clean up of media is well overdue. Any pretense of being an objective Fourth Estate ranks up there with Clinton lies, huge. For years the arrogance of big media centered on the premise that no one would take them on. That day is here. Look around. CNN's collaborating with the current  administration and trying to pass it off as objective reporting is now an open book. The Wolfman  is a con man as are his superiors.When it comes to corruption media can hold a candle to anyone.

The elites understand two things--power and money. In DC it's about power to which money is the venue to that power. Hello Wall Street. Hello Hollywood. The only decline the elites are concerned about is that of the status quo. Take care of the corrupt MSN and you will dent severely the status quo. Real bullets are not necessary because you already have the most powerful one, your purse strings.