Originally Posted by tankdriver

Newspapers are dying because people get their news from other sources, not from dissatisfaction with the paper's content/tone/whatever. That is an effect of technology. It is a problem with the product's form.


Yeah, obviously a business dies if no one buys their product. If no one wanted oil, there wouldn't be oil companies. That doesn't make the consumer a driving force in the industry. Through media (non-news outlet types of media), government influence, etc., the consumer is relegated to a minor position.
They have a free market economy in India. Things may have changed since I was last there, but the consumer has no power in India. An example of this is buying clothing. In India lots of people buy cloth and have clothes tailored because it's not that expensive. Saris are essentially big pieces of cloth. If a woman goes into a fabric shop in India and picks some cloth, especially if it's not in stock, she is virtually guaranteed not to get what she chose. And she can't do anything about it because every store does the same thing. They'll give her whatever they could get their hands on at the right price.

We essentially have the same system with gas. Americans are bound to their cars. And the same system with the newsmedia. The media has the added power of influencing and shaping how we think. They do subtle things like manipulate color saturation in graphics to create affect our perception. They do obvious things like all talk about the same thing, so we end up considering it important.