Sun-Times and NYTimes circulation drops recently reported — 21 percent drop in average weekday circulation for six months ended in March 2005 for S-T, “sharp” 4th-quarter earnings drop for NYT [see: http://www.imediaconnection.com/news/7670.asp] — relate to online competition.

“Advertisers are following consumers online,” says Shawn Riegsecker, president, Centro, a local advertising buying service specializing in online advertising with “over 1,300 local sites encompassing online newspapers, TV and radio sites, alternative weeklies and business publications,” says Imedia Connection — http://www.imediaconnection.com/news/7379.asp.

“That’s why,” says Riegsecker, “this is less about . . . bad news [about] newspapers, and more about which newspapers will begin to assert [put] their premium brands online – and how quickly and strategically they’ll do it.”

In other words, they should get on-line or get lost.

* See here http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/12/22/181923.shtml for more on DePaul U. as stifler of freedom. 

* And consider this about Maureen Dowd, of Are Men Necessary? and NYT fame:

IS MAUREEN DOWD NECESSARY?   J. Peder Zane has her number :

American journalism has a proud tradition of balloon-busters, but Dowd is H.L. Mencken without the piercing observations, Dorothy Parker without the brilliant wit. Her prose is filled with moral indignation, yet her cheap shots lower the level of discourse that she wishes were higher, and her focus on personal peccadilloes trivializes the pressing matters of state she pretends to care about.

This is my problem, not Dowd’s. I’m expecting too much from her. Think of her not as a leading pundit but a stand-up comic with the best gig in America and her work can hold your interest for a few minutes twice a week. She might even make you laugh before you reach the end of her column and all memory of her words vanishes. Poof!

Posted by Don [Luskin] at 11:57 AM | link  

* One of the other James Bowmans, this one of the East Coast, remembers the movie “Elvira Madigan” as what caught raw, young fancy in days gone by.  This Bowman’s a kid, but the Bowman whom you know from these pages worked with kids in those days and imbibed their enthusiasms.  See here: http://www.nysun.com/article/24896

* Meanwhile, the other Journal, Wall Street (as opposed to our esteemed Wednesday J. of OP&RF), is glad the judges called the White House on the Padilla matter.  Key judge in this, btw, is Michael Luttig, who was on the short list for recent US Supreme Ct nominations.  He’s one of them, in other words, but spoke sharply to WH.  See here: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/?id=110007720

more more more before the creeks run again . . .