So the way my world works is I wake up and I check my BlackBerry, which is a uranium mine of information. The reason it’s so rich with information is I have the benefit of all my legacy brokerage and financial research coming into it, I have all the current NBC clippings and headlines (from tsunami coverage to Casey Anthony to the White House) and I have my Twitter feed, which is probably the best monitor of what’s breaking. For my first pass, I look at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and all the major news organizations’ Twitter feeds. On the second pass, I’m looking at the financial universe: the price of oil, currency pricings, etc. Then I’ll log onto my computer and check the homepages of The Huffington Post, Politico, Zero Hedge, The New York Times and Financial Times and I’ll read Naked Capitalism just to see what Yves Smith is saying about the banking system. I don’t subscribe to any print media. I wouldn’t read a newspaper now unless you put a gun to my head and even then I would really try to negotiate with you. It’s not that I reject the content, it’s that I reject the format.
He rejects the format. Gotcha. And therein lies the problem, since it’s the format that pays for the way Ratigan and others like him consume their information. It also doesn’t help a newspaper such as the New York Times, which it still hasn’t figured out a way to keep people from accessing their online content for free, with its Maginot Line paywall.
I hope he realizes the format we will reject next is cable news. Personally, I haven’t found anything on any cable news channel helpful for years now. If I had Ratigan’s proverbial gun to my head and I had to choose between the New York Times and cable news as my source of information, I’d pick the Times, with all its faults.