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adam_demamps_wingman t1_ixyppfz wrote

Miss you, Rocky Mountain News.

In its last nine years of operation, it won four Pulitzer Prizes. Two in 2006.

It missed its 150 year anniversary by weeks.

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F1secretsauce t1_ixy9ohe wrote

Short and distort. The market maker Citadel sold 65 billion shares it did not own in 2021 and bought 0. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1146184/000128417022000004/CDRG_BS_Only_FS_2021.pdf

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app4that t1_ixznmp6 wrote

Stupid question: How?

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Easih t1_ixzopx3 wrote

Selling share you dont own is done by essentially borrowing share to sell and then buying back at lower price; its not magic.

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Rotterdam4119 t1_ixzpvvq wrote

It’s pretty simply really.

You and I can agree that I will sell you a share of Apple stock in 3 weeks for ‘x’ dollars per share. I’ve now “sold short” 1 apple share.

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F1secretsauce t1_ixzwh3w wrote

Borrow and sell. It looks crazy cuz it is. There are only 6000 companies on the nyse. So if he is shorting every company then he is still short more shares then exist in the whole nyse and that’s just one hedge fund in 2021. But the game is called short and distort right? So who do they hate? They fucked up and shorted the wrong companies. Like GameStop for example they are short for a decade at 2.00 and now the price is over 100. For 2 years. (Post 4 for 1 spit price it’s actually 25. And they borrowed and sold at .50 post spit price) and they need to buy billions when only 304 million real shares exist. So now they are failing to buy the shares they sold and committing crime daily to stay alive one more day. Basically The whole too big to fail crowd is over leveraged and shitting their pants rn because GameStop just built an online market place for gaming where u can sell in game items to other gamers for real money. Or sell used online games to other gamers when u are done with it. You can even sell ur own music or buy indy music on there and play it with ur GameStop wallet or transfer it to ur phone or whatever

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PondoSinatra9Beltan6 t1_ixy532p wrote

Sadly, that is close to the bottom of Wall Street’s sins, severity wise. The most dangerous organized crime organization in New Yoirk isn’t the Gambino crime family, it’s Goldman Sachs.

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TurtleRockDuane t1_ixzdo87 wrote

Isn’t this issue as simple as we humans don’t want to pay for news? I mean like Napster and illegal downloading music, the free access to News decimated newspapers. Very few with Paywalls get enough subscribers.

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bigbrothersrule t1_iy000y6 wrote

It's rarely ever simple. It started with a short-sighted decision to give all content away for free. That's content that subscribers were paying for in print form, now free for the entire world to consume and/or appropriate. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time because only nerds used the internet, everyone got papers delivered, and classified ads were a cash cow. If anything, this was an extra way to sell some ads. So publishers trained consumers that their content wasn't something they ought to pay for.

Then three things changed.

  • Predictably, in 20/20 hindsight, people figured out that they could just read the newspaper earlier and free over the internet. They cancelled their paper subscription. That made the newspapers even more reliant on online advertising and classifieds.

  • Then, online advertising consolidated into, well, basically Google. All the pricing power left the papers' hands. They were doing all the work to attract eyeballs, while Google kept a larger share of the ad revenue.

  • Craigslist. It cannot be exaggerated how much that low-fi crime magnet of a website changed journalism forever. All of a sudden you could sell or advertise anything you wanted to the world for free. With the last cash cow gone, newspapers were left with a slice of Google's ad pie, and halting attempts to convince people to pay for content again.

The narrative about Wall Street and private equity is completely true, but it's only the outcome of systemic weakness that the publishers inflicted upon themselves in the '90s. The vultures only descend when it smells like death down there.

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fried_clams t1_iy039yn wrote

My newspaperman father used to call all of the mergers and buyouts the "mating sounds of dinosaurs", meaning that they were going extinct. The most important factor in the decline of newspapers was the loss of readers, not subscription and newsstand revenues. They couldn't attract enough advertising revenue after a critical mass number of eyeballs moved to the Web. Newspapers kept enough advertisers, and survived the onset of radio and then TV because they offered more detailed, comprehensive and local news. They kept there circulation and ad dollars.

It is interesting that for all their history, newspapers were joined at the hip with advertising. We all just assumed that they would always stay together.

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nikonuser805 t1_iy07le4 wrote

The Newspaper business reminds me of the underpants gnomes in South Park. But in the case of Newspapers, the transition from the 1990s to the 2030s looks like this:

Step 1. Gather news. Print and distribute physical medium. Profit.
Step 3. Gather News. Distribute through electronic medium. Profit.

And Step 2 is the utter chaos and disastrous shitshow for those who work in the news business. This is where they are today, and no one really knows how to get to step 3.

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Tyler_Zoro t1_ixzuric wrote

Yes, the fundamental issue is that people stopped buying newspapers because easier ways of getting lower-quality news appeared. TV was a forced perspective on the News. You could watch it linearly on their schedule, the newspaper was still relevant in the age of TV news because it was non-linear and you could read on your schedule.

But as soon as the internet made it possible to randomly access whatever news you wanted, the quality of newspaper news became a much less powerful attractor.

The finance games in the OP are just the secondary effects of that transition.

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B_P_G t1_ixznvuh wrote

What do humans want to pay for? The issue is that the internet (over the span of a few years) changed the newspaper business from one of local monopolies or duopolies to a hypercompetitive market on a product with no marginal cost. Some of the former monopolies took that harder than others. But from a consumer perspective the internet has given you access to more news than ever.

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29979245T t1_ixzw83b wrote

Looks at uBlock and sideloaded paywall bypasser.

Let's call it 90% sinister forces, 10% me.

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TK421sSupervisor t1_ixyd6e2 wrote

Makes one wonder if this was the plan all along.

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georgke t1_ixymzrt wrote

For sure. Journalism is dead.The state, together with big corporations dictate what is truth now. No room for any critical sound in the media anymore.

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Riversntallbuildings t1_ixyvq7m wrote

It’s not dead, but it has been resting. It will come back in a new, and better form.

CNN was founded in 1980. That’s less than 50 years ago. There are plenty of opportunities to build new information networks.

We’re simply in a transition period.

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breecher t1_ixyzg6w wrote

The problem is that news media were relatively well funded organisations from the days of printed news media and later tv. They had muscle, so they could withstand legal repercussions from corporations or even countries who tried to silence them through lawsuits.

There are still plenty of good journalists around, and many have find ways to make a career through the internet in various ways, but if they don't have a resourceful organisation watching their back, they are much more vulnerable to being silenced or suppressed by rich and powerful entities.

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Riversntallbuildings t1_ixz1bpe wrote

Agreed. Which is why I keep advocating for more corporate regulations, consumer protections and modern Ranked Choice / STAR voting methods.

Improving our tools for democracy and reducing the power of the two party system is one of the biggest priorities I can think of.

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georgke t1_ixywsal wrote

I hope so. There are some fantastic independent news channels in my country which I feel provide unbiased news. But corporate sponsored media, even CNN, are heavily pushing an agenda which has become very obvious since corona happened.

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StonccPad-3B t1_ixzcms7 wrote

"even CNN". With the exception of Fox, CNN is probably the worst offender when it comes to pushing an agenda.

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Riversntallbuildings t1_ixyzo74 wrote

Yes! That’s what I would say, more than anything else, try to support independent news sources.

In the age of information (AKA unregulated digital advertising) there is clearly an agenda to sell everything. Or nothing at all, in the example of climate change and how we can hold corporations accountable for the amount of waste and pollution they produce.

The idea of pushing the responsibility onto consumers when the corporations have done everything to erode the power (choice) of the consumers is at a tipping point. People are waking up, and they’re getting fed up with the hypocrisy.

At least I know I am.

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passporttohell t1_ixztoni wrote

The problem with this line of thinking is that it leans on the 'things will always get better' mantra.

This is my personal experience with that: I am 62 years old now, twenty years old when Reagan was elected. Prior to that there was much hope and promise with 'work hard and you will get ahead', 'Year by year your income will increase, you will go from renting an apartment to owning a home', 'there is always a better job around the corner', etc. etc.

Then Reagan came in and killed the 'Fairness Doctrine'

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/955/fairness-doctrine

Then FOX news became a thing, and it's been downhill ever since. Americans still believe they have a television (or print media) that mostly tells the truth, yet that hasn't been the case for many years now.

So on one side you have people that dig deep to find the truth, recognize propaganda when they see it, take the time to do fact checking to make sure their news sources are consistently telling the truth. etc. etc.

So while those who dig deep see a constant degradation in quality of living, wages, costs of living, education and health care the majority of Americans live in a bubble of misinformation, although more and more of them are beginning to question what is told in the news media vs. their own personal experiences with family, friends, co-workers.

I have been waiting for 'things to get better' since Reagan occupied the office. It has steadily gone hill ever since then with no reversal of course, and in some cases making sudden lurches into worse conditions than I had thought imaginable.

Lulling oneself into a false sense of security helps no one. Taking the time to become aware of how dangerous does more harm than good, best to rip off the bandaid, learn to seperate truth from fiction and figure out how you are going to react to the reality of where we are, whether that's to become more involved with local or national politics or start making plans to expatriate to another country with better standards of living, income, health care and education.

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Riversntallbuildings t1_iy0qtw3 wrote

I absolutely agree. The fairness doctrine needs to be modernized and applied to all digital communication not just broadcast communications.

We need data privacy, portability and interoperability regulations. Corporations do not get to control markets and access to information and yet that’s what we’ve allowed in so many digital examples.

Antitrust laws are woefully outdated.

I am not lulling anyone into a false sense of security or complacency with hope.

One way I believe we can make significant change is by continuing to support and expand Ranked Choice or STAR voting methods. It’s one way to reduce the power of the two party system and reduce the influence of money in politics by dividing their resources among more qualified candidates. I also think it’ll help reduce the “polling noise” that is pretty outdated and out of touch.

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KruppeTheWise t1_ixzor7g wrote

Are there? Look at twitter, let's say you're-

pro Musk-it takes a billionaire to buy a platform and "free" it from distortion out of the goodness of his heart.

Anti Musk- any billionaire can buy any media company and distort it to his and other billionaires interests.

In either situation, the prospect of a free and critical media is fucked.

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Riversntallbuildings t1_iy0m53w wrote

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.

There was a time not too long ago where news was all local. And while I don’t disagree with you on the disparity of power with big media conglomerates, the barriers to entry for self publication and self distribution has never been lower.

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GeoffreyArnold t1_iy0609y wrote

> It’s not dead, but it has been resting.

Naw, it's dead. When I visited the U.K. in the 1990's, I was struck at how different and politicized their mainstream news was compared to the United States. I was grateful for the objectivity we had in most American news outlets by comparison. Then, all of that started to change around 9/11 and the Bush years...and any objectivity completely went away during the Trump years. Now, our news media is far worse than what I remember about the U.K. 30 years ago. Journalism in England never got better, and I don't expect it to get better in the U.S. now either.

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chevymonza t1_iy0idjb wrote

US media outlets have been owned by the 1% for quite some time, although most of the propaganda was through "news" fed to stations by the gov't. Now it's Sinclair, Murdoch, Ailes, etc.

One of my relatives is an ivy-educated journalism teacher, and often asks his class to consider both sides of news stories, but he's still pro-Trump and buys into a lot of the related bullshit. I'm floored that he's apparently unaware of the history of Fox, and the control of people like Murdoch.

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Riversntallbuildings t1_iy0v0zu wrote

It actually began back in the Regan administration with the repeal of the fairness doctrine.

The U.S. needs to modernize the fairness doctrine and make sure it gets applied to all digital “news” communication platforms, not just broadcast news.

Additionally, please support Ranked Choice and/or STAR voting methods. It’s one of the few ways we can begin reducing the power (dysfunction) of the two party system and reduce money in politics by dividing their resources across multiple qualified candidates.

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Tuga_Lissabon t1_ixyokdr wrote

"erosion of a vital way to hold power accountable"

I can even hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth from congress, the senate and other politicians. So sad.

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scdfred t1_ixzel3h wrote

Newspapers also completely failed to grasp the impact of the internet until it was far too late. They doomed themselves by not innovating.

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tucci007 t1_ixzsaay wrote

#HOMOPHONE ALERT HOMOPHONE ALERT

"Led" is the past tense of the verb 'to lead' (pronounced 'leed')

"Lead" (pronounced 'led') is a soft gray metal

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chevymonza t1_iy0ik14 wrote

You forgot about "lede." Or maybe you just buried it.

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AndyC333 t1_iy0g4sa wrote

It started sooner than this. (I have not watched the documentary yet, response to comments). Source - I am 56 years old and read newspapers every day.

In the 1970’s Gannet bought up local papers, filled them with associated press news wire articles, and laid off the local reporters. The major papers (ie New York Times) followed a little later, fired most of the “reporters” to replace them with A/P wire stories and corporate funded media releases.

From “Woodward and Bernstein” took down a president it took five years for 75% of investigative reporters to be laid off.

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JESquirrel t1_iy0r500 wrote

This sub seems to almost entirely be left leaning talking points.

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prayermachine t1_ixyzz7r wrote

Craigslist killed them.

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ron_swansons_meat t1_iy00p6u wrote

And Facebook marketplace killed craigslist. Have you been there lately? It's a ghost town.

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bettinafairchild t1_iy03hs2 wrote

Craigslist was killed by the removal of persona ads due to FOSTA/SESTA.

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pat_speed t1_iy12kd4 wrote

It wasn't an accident, it was by design

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dillrepair t1_iy1ufy1 wrote

Nope. No sympathy. These ambulance chaser local news reporters fostered the system we have now. They allowed the GOP to take over at the local level by repeating their sensational lies for temporary ratings and readers. The fourth estate has failed, especially judging by how they still cannot just ignore trump.

The fourth estate is essentially to blame for the resurgence of fascism and anti-American crony capitalism in this nation.

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smaartypants t1_ixz3hdc wrote

The greed of the newspapers, so many ads one had to search for the actual news articles.

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bettinafairchild t1_iy03eas wrote

You don’t sound like someone who ever read newspapers. This doesn’t describe them in any way.

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smaartypants t1_iy05ttp wrote

52 years of reading the newspapers. Probably more years then you’ve been around.

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bettinafairchild t1_iy06y37 wrote

Then why do you think there are so many ads you can’t find the articles? Are you only reading The National Enquirer or something? I mean, you’re just wrong about newspaper layout except cheap tabloids and the backs of papers where all the ads for prostitutes are.

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chevymonza t1_iy0itf0 wrote

If they're talking about the websites of the newspapers, then it's true how loaded up with ads those are.

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bettinafairchild t1_iy0n7xw wrote

I very much doubt that he’s been reading newspaper websites for 52 years. He’s talking about physical papers.

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chevymonza t1_iy0nhh3 wrote

Probably, but it is pretty insane just how bad most newspaper-sites are.

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bettinafairchild t1_iy0nyz4 wrote

Yes, I agree. Though given that they’re all going bankrupt, I wouldn’t call them greedy—they’re just trying to keep their heads above water.

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Gdott t1_ixywjie wrote

No one feels bad for bankers or journalists.

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Nailz1115 t1_ixze9rn wrote

I don't have sympathy for Wall Street bankers but reporters/editors/etc. for local newspapers were solidly in the middle class. These were people covering city council meetings and baseball games and performing a real civic duty - keeping the locals informed

Very different from the people spewing nonsense and vitriol on cable news

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