Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/11/25
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>These new owners, with far-flung and diverse economic interest, have >little commitment to local communities. It is possible that they are not >likely to be committed to journalistic (watchdog) traditions. >The news shouldn't be defined primarily as one of the profit making products >in a conglomerate's portfolio. While this is true, and the trend for newspapers is to chains (Thanks FCC for selling out) and for Wall Street portfolios to look at papers as profit centers rather than the fourth estate, the journalists who work in them are often at opposition to this trend, and do whatever they can to be subversive to the diluting of content. Not always successful. The small papers are most vulnerable to the bean counter syndrome. I, on the other hand, am quite lucky to be at a locally owned paper that cares about quality and as long as it earns the owners a good profit (somewhere in the 30 percent range right now, though for the next year it's a negative because we're dropping $7.5 million for new presses) we won't be sold to the chains. But what does this have to do with Leica? Photojournalism as a profession is quite cost conscious, and that has a lot more to do with choice of cameras used rather than performance of those cameras. So the fact that they are, or aren't used by photojournalists has more to do with that. Many of the ones I know would choose Leica if they could afford it. They are subversives like me. :-) - -- Eric Welch St. Joseph, MO http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch "I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you're doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years." - -- Thelonious Monk