As we continue our death of pulp coverage, former newspaper writer and current tech pundit John C. Dvorak did a postmortem on the death of the print mews industry on the most recent Cranky Geeks program. Click here to view an excerpt focused on newspapers. Most interesting is how guest John Markoff, Senior Writer of The New York Times defiantly defends the incredibly poor decision making of his company’s management.

Here’s a shocker for you: The embattled L.A. times is merging web and print operations. Redundant staff to be released. Why would any rational person operate them separately to begin with? Rational is the key word. The irrational refusal to to evolve and learn to work in an interactive world still plagues print journalism. When the world changes you adapt or die. Clearly, the LA Times has chosen a slow and painful death. I predict their  furloughed employees will blame bloggers for their misfortune at the hands of inept management.

The LA Times also plans to merge its Web and print departments into one operation with a single budget.

Editor editor Russ Stanton was quoted as saying: “We’re great about putting out a paper; we’re getting a lot better at putting up a Web site. We’re not very good on TV or radio, and we don’t do mobile at all. We need to do all of those things going forward.”

And how are they going to do that with less of a staff? I’m not sure that old-line print media ever will “get it.” It is still virtually impossible, for example, to enter reader comments on news articles on major newspaper sites. People want to talk back, to have a say, to join the conversation. (Poynter Online)

It seems that NPR only supports diversity in programming if it is diversity by their definition and broadcast on their licensed frequencies. For now FM spectrum has become scarce, and NPR wants to grow. When FM transitions into digital, it will be possible to offer more programming in less spectrum, but NPR wants to grow now.  Easiest for NPR to target with their search for new frequencies are a few low power FM stations that also offer diverse community oriented programming.

NPR is quite plain about the matter in its FCC filings: it stands opposed to the Low Power exceptions, even though it might help keep FM offerings diverse. NPR charges that the FCC is putting feel-good policies ahead of the laws of physics.

“The laws of physics have not changed, and a system of full power broadcast stations serves many more listeners with less interference compared to low power broadcasting,” NPR told the FCC this month. “While LPFM stations may advance the interests of localism and diversity, the Commission cannot assume that LPFM is inherently better than full power service.” (Ars Technica)

No commercial broadcaster would be successful in bumping the low power operators off to open new turf for themselves. Only elitists feeding at the public trough are arrogant enough to try. There is no way that NPR’s east or west cost centric banter can serve local communities better than programming that originates - in the local communities. Bad show NPR!