Reply #83: Aw, dog gone it! Now you got me started thinking. [View All]

[arendt]

It always bugged me in newspapers that they didn't
simply give an event or a topic some kind of
Dewey Decimal Code, so you could easily fish
out ALL the stories about a subject and put them
in time order.

I want a newspaper that says, we will track N topics
from start to fiinish and give you back references
(on a website) if you come in in the middle of a
topic and want to catch up. Each day, we will have
M stories, where M is less than N (since stories
can go quiet for a while and then come alive again).

That way, the media can't get away with burying
a topic on Saturday, page 97. We can call them
on it by putting our method out there. Then we
say: on topic N, we ran X stories with a total of
Y column inches. While whore media ran ONE
story of 2 column inches.

----

Also, I think we should have distinct sections,
as opposed to just mushing all the stories together
in the front section. I think we should have sections
about, e.g.:

-our military, its budget, its lesser-known activities like
Plan Columbia

- fundamentalism in the world (Islamic, Christian,
Zionist, Hindu, Financial, etc.)

- non-laissez faire economics (i.e., the sensible
use of government regulation)

- European affairs
- Asian affairs
- Islamic/Middle East Affairs
- Latin American Affairs.

We might have to assign these sections to different
days of the week, as they now do for such "marginal"
topics as: science, medicine, education. (We must
have celebrities, sports, and right wing cause celebres
EVERY DAY.) But, the Dewey Decimal System plus
the topic index should keep the story lines linked.

----

I also would like the stories to have "abstracts",
like in technical journals. That way, the reader
could be informed of the gist of the article, and
if he wants more detail, he can read the body.

Today, the whore media has "leads" that are
up to half the story long, before you get to the
meat. Even journalists are calling this self-
indulgent crap.

And why do they get away with it? Because they
have NO COMPETITION.

----

Regarding your idea to get permission to publish
good existing investigative stuff:

We could have readers post LINKS to stuff
they want published. Then other readers could
VOTE on what to put in the paper. (Of course,
the on-line people could read the article via
the link, right away.) That is a step in the direction
of the audience being the editor. Of course,
the votes have to fall within the rules outlined
above (total of N topics, topics grouped into sections,
etc.)

----

As for funding, you catch my idea correctly. I figure
that it is a NO ADVERTISING paper, not even friendly
advertising. That avoids the whole issue of "you
stinking liberals are censoring our ads."

Yes, Ms. Magazine has no ads, and it costs about
$10 an issue. That is proof that ads pay about 75%
of the cost of publication.

If we want to sell this as a daily paper, I guess we
could use our donations as subsidies for publishing;
but I think we need to save them for content generation
and editorial and publishing overheads.

We might charge 25 cents per copy. But, we won't
be as big as a real paper, and I can get a local rag
for 50 cents. I don't know what Kinko's charges, but
I know that 3 to 5 cents a page is the best deal I've
ever seen for mass runoffs in such a store. If we
put out a five page paper, and charge 25 cents,
we just break even.

Anyone have numbers on page costs from Kinkos?

----

Anyway. I will keep trying to organize this material.
The flow of new content to this thread seems to
have ended (scottxyz excepted). So, I should
be able to sort through all of this over the weekend.


Thanks to all who posted; and stay tuned.

arendt