Igor is right again “pathetic”

Not only are newspapers getting thinner, they are disappearing. Even well-established publications such as the Rocky Mountain News are proving to be vulnerable. I expect to see new media and the economic downturn bury a few more MSM icons in the days to come.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1883345,00.html

First a nuance. It wasn’t really CBS, but “The Weekly Standard”. The WS site dates the piece as Feb 28th, the same day as Barry’s Big Picture post “Rick Santelli’s Planted Rant?”

I find it most amusing, the thought that we could be part of a neo-con disinformation effort to hide some of Carl Rove’s more intriguing post-retirement activities.

Heaven forbid the downturn might result in some real populism.

The second plan, the one with the subsidy, is not really that big. The plan will pay on average over a five year period $4,000 to the servicer, $5,000 (in principal reduction) to the borrower and about $8,000 towards mortgage payments, again assuming a full five years. The $8,000 is calculated by the 3.5% subsidy times the average American household income of $3,800 per month times 60 months.

Now comes the hard part: qualifying for this will be like jumping through a dozen flaming hoops. On top of this the servicers will be so backed up with applications that it will take years to work through. Each loan essentially has to be re-underwritten and processed with new data. Given that banks spend on average about $300 to underwrite a typical loan, what will be the break-even cost for the servicers? If they modify one in ten applications (doubtful) AND those mods stay current for three years then they may make their money back. But, if there are a huge number of denials, and remember a denial qualifies the borrower for money from the government to execute a short-sale, then the servicers will lose money. If fact, quite a few have said that they will not be staffing up to handle this unless they get paid per application, and not per successful modification. The ONLY lenders that have come out cheerleading this plan are the TARP-ladden banks. What else would they say? Stay tuned…

Bloggers have now established themselves as the “go-to” source of authoritative information in their respective spheres.

I’m always surprised how often the MSM does use the material of bloggers. Sometimes they credit us, sometimes they don’t. Occasionally we hear from them. With their budgets slashed though, we are the cheaper alternative.

There’s another layer beyond that though. A number of the best stories that we do are a result of the work or readers, or silent contributors like L and M. My thanks to everyone who pitches in. With luck our politicians are dropping by now and again as well- maybe they’ll learn something!

Thanks for the kind words. Ever since the early 1970s I’ve been inspired by Ivan Illich and his promotion of the possibilities for informal education and lifelong learning without professional management and control. However, that hasn’t stopped me from periodically bugging the guys who are paid to cover these issues for a living (Igor’s “mad,” but I’m just frustrated and mostly ignored ) CBC for one seems to be on a Richard Florida kick these days. George Stroumboulopoulos had him on Wednesday night, but he’s been popping up all over the Mothership.

—————————- Original Message —————————-
Subject: Greetings from your local blogger
From: john@housingdoom.com
Date: Tue, March 3, 2009 5:53 am [that would have been PST]
To: infomorning@halifax.cbc.ca
————————————————————————–
Hi Don & Elizabeth,

This responds to your interview with two journalism veterans on the future of newspapers (just before or after the 8AM News on Radio 1 90.5 Halifax).

Perhaps I’m one of the “enemy.” I co-blog with Debi Averett’s Austin TX Housing Doom, where I look (askance most of the time) at housing finance and the macro-economic impact of the subprime crisis. Indeed I was one of the team of bloggers who dug up the problems of subprime in late 2006. We’re a mid-tier blog in the sector, hitting about 4,000 unique visitors a day in a good week.

I sympathize with the plight of print newspapers, but feel that they’d be doing better if they’d dug into the truth of the matter on some issues like the various wars in Islamic countries, where taking official releases with more skepticism at the time might have conserved precious credibility.

That being said, the Chronicle Herald, as one of Canada’s last significant independent daily papers, has a lot to be proud of. I sure miss Bob Chambers, though!

Cheers, John McLeod (not the old Daily News guy)

Actually, anyone can be a journalist. It requires no special talent but many of the housing bubble bloggers had extensive backgrounds in finance, accounting, economics or some other specialized field of knowledge. While MSM journalists wrote puff pieces on home ownership, the blogosphere resounded with warnings of impending doom.

Just as public school teachers are trained in technique but lack substantive background in most of the topics they teach, so too are mainstream journalists little more than pedantic scribblers.

Bloggers have now established themselves as the “go-to” source of authoritative information in their respective spheres. Declining readership of newsprint dailies is an indication of this development.

A sea change is upon us. The livelihood of MSM journalists is threatened! I look for them to demand new restrictions on entrants to the world-wide web, perhaps as an addendum to the newly-resurrected “Fairness Doctrine”.