Carlos Alberto Montaner is a Cuban-born writer, journalist, and former professor. He is one of the most influential and widely-read columnists in the Spanish-language media, syndicated in dozens of publications in Latin America, Spain and the United States. He is also vice president of the Liberal International, a London-based federation devoted to the defense of democratic values and the promotion of the market economy. He has written more than twenty books, including Journey to the Heart of Cuba; How and Why Communism Disappeared; Liberty, the Key to Prosperity; and the novels A Dog's World and 1898: The Plot. He is now based in Madrid, Spain.
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Carlos Alberto Montaner
Madrid, Spain
Carlos Alberto Montaner is a Cuban-born writer, journalist, and former professor. He is one of the most influential and widely-read columnists in the Spanish-language media, syndicated in dozens of publications in Latin America, Spain and the United States.
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That's baloney, comparing a little basic history to the major, major unfolding issue of the decline in business of newspapers. Public awareness of world events in newspapers, tv news, etc. has really been pronounced since the saturating propoganda and worry about Iraq started 20 years ago. If looking ahead is warranted, perhaps thinking about what news will look like in peacetime, i.e. when Iraq and Afghanistan are past and not at the forefront of attention, then will people want to be informed beyond the generic AP stories from our e-mail pages? Maybe newspapers, which are conspicuous and easily obtainable, are the key to the eventual restoration of world awareness of current events and opinion, rather than now when doing so is a hobby of people who listen to shortwave radio news broadcasts at 1 in the morning, which allows one to concentrate on individual stories and views rather than wading through repetition on the internet from most news sources? A pronouncement that the internet is the next step in evolution in written communication is a knee-jerk reaction, an avoidance in thinking about what it really is in terms of a news source. If news dissemination is to be meaningful, it should be in a format that reaches people on an equal basis (a newspaper, from which all sections can be read by anybody) versus the internet, where navigating from one page to the next is a chore, leaving the thing mostly unread. The solution for the future of newspapers is for the ones that survive to stand out from the crowd by providing meaningful news and opinion instead of propoganda and generic AP stories; to prove that the internet is not the way of the future for news as an art and as a business.
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All Comments (2)
That's baloney, comparing a little basic history to the major, major unfolding issue of the decline in business of newspapers. Public awareness of world events in newspapers, tv news, etc. has really been pronounced since the saturating propoganda and worry about Iraq started 20 years ago. If looking ahead is warranted, perhaps thinking about what news will look like in peacetime, i.e. when Iraq and Afghanistan are past and not at the forefront of attention, then will people want to be informed beyond the generic AP stories from our e-mail pages? Maybe newspapers, which are conspicuous and easily obtainable, are the key to the eventual restoration of world awareness of current events and opinion, rather than now when doing so is a hobby of people who listen to shortwave radio news broadcasts at 1 in the morning, which allows one to concentrate on individual stories and views rather than wading through repetition on the internet from most news sources? A pronouncement that the internet is the next step in evolution in written communication is a knee-jerk reaction, an avoidance in thinking about what it really is in terms of a news source. If news dissemination is to be meaningful, it should be in a format that reaches people on an equal basis (a newspaper, from which all sections can be read by anybody) versus the internet, where navigating from one page to the next is a chore, leaving the thing mostly unread. The solution for the future of newspapers is for the ones that survive to stand out from the crowd by providing meaningful news and opinion instead of propoganda and generic AP stories; to prove that the internet is not the way of the future for news as an art and as a business.
May 25, 2009 11:48 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on May 25, 2009 11:48
newspapers like wapo that pay money to partisons like eugene and froomkin will go under...
no one wants to read their poison...
May 25, 2009 6:23 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on May 25, 2009 06:23