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bohratom
My Jersey Giants finally winning again..
join:2011-07-07
Red Bank NJ

bohratom

Member

Oh the Irony of the Ironies...

I use the Internet to BYPASS the traditional Main Stream Media (aka NY Times, LA Times, WAPO) so I rather had a good laugh reading this story while drinking some coffee.
dianasatyr
join:2008-12-13
Baton Rouge, LA

dianasatyr

Member

Here we go again, lots of:

1. Capitalism is the best thing since sliced bread, and everything it destroy deserves to be destroyed, and/or

2. The fact that young people no longer like it means it is worthless.

...

1. Unfortunately, every society needs some things that don't make money. A source of news collected by reliable professionals, and fact checked, and edited by professional editors is one. One million blogs can't replace one good newspaper, because there is always a pressure inside one's head to tell the story with your most cherished beliefs embedded in it. Not many bloggers can resist that pressure. Newspaper professionalism can help a reporters resist it, and to me it seems that they do, quite often.

Good things like this go away easily and never come back. You may be old enough to remember when there was actually LOCAL NEWS ON THE RADIO. It was often very superficial, but it got the basic facts about their city out to the citizens. The FCC stopped requiring that news from radio stations decades ago, so the stations owners, being good capitalists, dropped it. It's not coming back.

Some things capitalism throws away turns out to be something the community realizes later that it really needs.

2. The young you may be ready now to dispense with something in society that the older you will want some day. Example: fast passenger trains. I remember well (This reminiscence will be brief!) how back in the '50s and 60 planes were SO COOL. The fares were rather high, but flying was fun: comfortable seats, small crowds in the airport, pretty stewardesses at you beck and call, no expectation of being blown up back then, flying through the heavens like a god. So train riding became uncool, and diminished year after year.

Now, if you're on a vacation trip rather than a business trip wouldn't it be nice to travel somewhere on a fast train?--They go up to 200 mph in Europe. If we had them here the traveling public would split between those who have to get where they're going REALLY FAST--who would take planes, and those who don't--some of whom would enjoy taking trains. In the train: less crowding in the cabin, less fear of dying--because even if the train crashes you're not certain to die, probably in fire, as you are in a plane when it crashes; less rigorous security checks (because of the difference just stated); and more comfort because the production cost of train travel per passenger mile are less than for a plane; so they don't cram you in so tightly.

And best of all you can look out the window at our country!

Older people, who get to take more vacations (I suspect) would like those things and pay for them. But if we throw passenger trains away completely now those older people will never get to try out the train experience--and in a few decades those older people will be YOU.

Newspapers are like those trains. It's very likely that if you let them wither away now, someday a lot of you will wish you had them back.

bohratom
My Jersey Giants finally winning again..
join:2011-07-07
Red Bank NJ

bohratom

Member

That was a good laugh, I mean read....