Bangkok Post - Why Is It Getting So Lousy?

[pkspeaker]

Just finished reading all the apologetic columns in todays Bkk Post, they claim the paper is being 'reorganized'; and that the DB section is going to be replaced with a 'LIFE' section ..which is bullshit because they already have 5 different 'life' sections.. a life section is just a bunch of mundane trivial crap about a national park or this weekends concert or health tips.. i suspect what they are really doing is eliminating any kind of depth, being cheap, laying people off and making the paper thin and useless ..

[jfchandler]

Traditional print newspapers are going down the toilet...and have been heading in that direction for many years. It's hardly a new phenomenon..... Bless the Internet and cable TV...

[pkspeaker]

I still prefer a newspaper than to carry a laptop or tablet everywhere i go;i like to have a paper and read it while when getting coffee or lunch; when they lower the quality of the paper because of the internet, then its a downward spiral when even people like me are forced to abandon the paper because they have turned it into useless shit.. the database section was something unique to this region as far as IT and you could not go onto google and get the same news.. and I guess they even had to cut the tv listing section because they were paying someone like 200b a day to copy the tv listing into an easy to scan daily list..

[Soi Sauce]

Maybe The Post wants to go the way of The Nation.

Once the best paper in the country, though difficult to read due to its layout, The Nation changed to become a bizness paper and now nobody reads it unl;ess THe Post has sold out.

Thais love to copy, but isn't it best to copy a winning formula?

RIP another good paper. No doubt the Life content will be worse than the crap Brunch supplement at the weekend.

Congratulations BKK Post, I'm lost to the net now.

[jfchandler]

I posted earlier on this, but somehow it disappeared from here...

As I was saying, I'm by no means advocating the death of newspapers.... Heck, I spent most of my professional career working as a daily newspaper reporter in the U.S. But traditional newspapers by and large have been in a death spiral for a number of years now, courtesy of the Internet and cable television, mostly.

Print newspapers, as we know them, are headed toward disappearing. Most things are heading online. But the problem is, few if any newspapers have found a successful economic model for making money in an online mode. Paid subscriptions to newspaper sites haven't worked particularly well. And newspaper companies just haven't been able to get the same advertising revenue online that they used to be able to pull from their print editions, which could include special ad inserts and such.

But here's the rub - most of the real news content you'll find out on the internet, as opposed to opinion stuff masquerading as news, originates with newspaper or news magazine reporting and reporters. It may get rewritten or repurposed by others or picked up by TV news, but the original core reporting often still comes from print folks. And as they dwindle, the question becomes, who's going to pick up that role of actually being an "independent, impartial" source for gathering and reporting the news...

Or, we'll just wait for the daily news releases from the Thai government and its various entities to learn what's going on here.

[Tropicalevo]

I have been a reader of the Bangkok Post for over 10 years now.

I was pretty gutted when they stopped 'The Trink'

Sadly, it has become something that my staff use to clean windows. All I use it for is the crossword and other bits that keep my attention for more than 3 seconds. Yep I am paying 30 baht a day for the outlook and the Database section once a week.

Oh well back to .....

PS Sorry Crutchley is also worth some time. I read his sections as well

Edited January 5, 2011 by Tropicalevo

[jalansanitwong]

The Bangkok Post died the day they got rid of the Night owl column some years back (penned by bernard trink) everyone bought the Post on Friday for Trinks column. The paper now gets thinner and thinner every year. They had the nerve to sell the paper for 30 b when it had basically nothing but a front and back page the day after May riots. Why bother. I only buy it now for the editorials (USA) and the cartoons, puzzles etc. The sports section is absolute garbage. When i first arrived here in 1999 they would print alot of Aussie rules football and the ladder. But not anymore.. These days its all girly soccer ,stories about Fergie...who???? and american helmeted college goons throwing a ball to each other. Unreadable.

[jfchandler]

So Aussie football goons are somehow better than American football "goons"??? Interesting perspective... Back to your cartoons and puzzles, please...

[Ulysses G.]

And don't forget Trink!

[JWJ]

The censorship of articles must have something to do with the demise.

For example, the most expolsive story in decades has not even been mentioned.

Ambassador to the USA leaves town due to the Julian Assange leaks.

You will only find that on the web.(and they are trying to block this too)

Austrailian Broadcasting Company had to leave town after some honest reporting. And what about Jonathon Head, Dan Rivers etc..

All gone for reporting the truth.