Flash: Front Page of Washington Newspaper Contains No News

[babylonsister]

Flash: Front Page of Washington Newspaper Contains No News
By Harry Jaffe Published Friday, March 06, 2009

NOTE: See a response from Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli below.

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Today’s news is there is no news on the front page of today’s Washington Post. Not one of the six articles on page A1 begins with a hard news lead that imparts real news to readers.

Welcome to the new age of daily newspapering, where the actual news of the day has migrated to the Internet or TV or radio or the inside pages of the paper. Bye-bye to the old “who-what-when-where-why.”

In its Friday, March 6, edition, the Post published a pair of lead articles about the travails of US corporations and plummeting stocks; no real news there. Above the fold, readers could find a soft news piece on the Obama White House feuding with Rush Limbaugh or a story about an initiative whereby the government would ask investors to help bail out failing banks.

Below the fold the paper offered a feature about a clean coal project revived by President Obama’s new stimulus bill. The one foreign piece covers the hunger crisis in North Korea. That’s a very old story.

snip//

Giving readers a different mix of articles on the front page is one way to experiment with the newspaper at a time of declining revenues and readership. The New York Times on March 6 also published a few soft news stories on its front page, but it did include one that would qualify as real news:

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans blocked a $410 billion omnibus spending measure on Thursday night, forcing Congressional Democrats to prepare a stopgap budget resolution to keep the federal government from shutting down.

That once was news.

more...

http://www.washingtonian.com/blogarticles/people/capita...

[bigtree]

1. Sir, we’re landing here, but what are you reading these days?

Obama’s Interview Aboard Air Force One: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/us/politics/08obama-t...


Q: What kind of newspapers do you read, do you read the clips, do you read actual papers, do you watch television?

A: Other than The New York Times?

Q: Other than The New York Times. Do you read Web sites? What Web sites do you look at?

A: I read most of the big national papers.

Q. Do you read them in clips or do you read them in the paper?

A. No, I read the paper. I like the feel of a newspaper. I read most of the weekly newsmagazines. I may not read them from cover to cover but I’ll thumb through them.