the newspaper business

Jim Waters, former editorial writer for the Daily News, had an op-ed piece about the Kentucky Governor’s race in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal.

Jim is now working for the Blue Institute for Public Policy. The Journal (subscription) called him for his take on the race.

Regardless of who wins in November, a campaign that turns on inflaming the passions of relatively few voters will produce little political capital to take on the pressing problems of the state. The Tax Foundation, for example, reports that only 14 states have a worse business climate…

On Saturday, 10/6/07, my Dilbert comic will only be slightly amusing. It would have been highly amusing but I had to change two words for my editors.

thought I could get away with “turtle head” because the naughty meaning isn’t universally known and an actual turtle’s head would fit Dilbert’s analogy just as well. So there was a degree of deniability built in. And turtles are cute, damn it!

Did you know that turtle head is a slang meaning for turds peeking (peaking?) out your butt?

Here’s how the comic ran today in case you missed it.

Scott Adams is right of course.

Ask your editor if he knows the slang meaning of “turtle head.” Then offer $5 cash to the first person in the newsroom who can tell you the correct answer.

Twice in a week he has censored himself, leaving the best jokes on the drawing board.

The “grand poo-bahs of citizen marketing” - according to another marketing blogger wrote this today:

Seventy-eight percent of the people Nielsen polled trust the recommendation of a friend. That’s 15 points higher than the next ranking, newspaper ads. Coming in second must surely be good news for worried dailies.

Look!

Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, is often asked about the future of newspapers.

He responds today in his blog.

People often ask me to predict how long newspapers can survive in the Internet age. Ten years ago I believed newspapers would last another five years. Clearly I am not qualified to make this sort of prediction. But being unqualified has never dampened my enthusiasm for publicly embarrassing myself. I think it’s time to take another run at this prediction.