60% of the country would rather listen to 4'33" by John Cage than read Molly Ivins.

Or Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.

60% of the country would rather sit in the garage with the doors taped shut and the car engine running than read Molly Ivins.

H.D.:

Tsk, tsk, you whiffed on the reference....

Or the Yoko Ono box set that actually got released in 1992, for reasons unknown to anyone. The set is not titled YOKO'S GREATEST SCREAMS, but probably should be.

And Ms. Ivins fails to realize that it is her and her like-minded (so to speak) cohorts that are killing them.

Well, I'll never tell her. Why warn your enemy when he's busy consumating his destruction?

Hilariously, Ms Ivins acknowledges that newspapers are failing, but doesn't think that it's being brought about by market forces - she thinks that it's due to cowardly newspaper owners.

She thinks that the 13% decline in newspaper readership over the past two decades is unimportant, and could be reversed.

She also has an amazingly self-aggrandizing view of the role of newspapers: [We] have a critical role in democracy. It's called a well-informed citizenry.

Apparently she is unaware that far more people get their national news from television or the internet, than from papers.

Newspaper readers are overwhelmingly interested in just four things: Local advertising, the comics, local news, and crossword puzzles.
That's why some free "alternative" weeklies are making more money than retail mainstream dailies.

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at March 24, 2006 11:52 AM

I bought a newspaper four years ago.

All newapapers are now local, as Tip O'Neill might say.

Who is this?

Kirk:

Helen Thomas's younger sister.