Want to sell more papers? Make your paper useful!

Quick note, I'll post a better and more complete article some time in the near future on Medium.

Newspaper circulation has fallen to, well, let's be honest, pathetic levels over the course of the past few decades. When I was a kid, the nation's newspapers sold some 60,000,000 copies weekdays, and that was when the population of the United States was just 180,000,000. That's one newspaper for every three people, including old folks, little kids, multiple adults in each household. Today, daily circulation is more like 20,000,000, with a population of 330,000,000. That means circulation is only a third of what it used to be, while the population has nearly doubled.

I'll save you the math -- for every 6 people who used to read the newspaper when John Kennedy was the new President, when they could get their news from the television and from radio (sounds wierd now, but it was a real thing then), only 1 person bothers to buy a paper today. If you're in the business of selling newspapers, that puts you in the same league as people who sell horse saddles and barrel hoops. Still around, but not worth a whole lot.

Anyone who cares about newspapers at all already knows this. It's nothing new. It's not news.

How did things get this way? And is there any way the situation could be turned around?

Conventional thought that I see expressed is that people don't like to read, that they have no patience for the lengthy articles in the newspaper, that they don't like to think deep thoughts, and so the vast majority of the simple-minded, lazy members of the general public get their news from television, from web sites or from social media. Easy sources of snippets of information dumbed down and chopped up into tiny snippets people are willing and able to glance at while they go about whatever else they're doing.

Lots of highly-credentialed and well-respected people believe this. I respectfully disagree. It's nonsense, it's the product of lazy minds mired in muddy ruts of stale thought. Respectfully.

Newspaper circulation has fallen because they have treated the news as a form of entertainment. If it bleeds, it leads. Crime. Corruption. Gossip. Sports and recipes. So what.

People pay for things they find of value, and they pay fair price for the value they perceive in what they want to buy. They don't find anything of particular value in the newspaper, so they don't buy it.

If you want to sell newspapers, you need to provide value, value in the eyes of the people you want to buy your newspaper. You need to provide a service, make yourself useful, and useful in a way that people will pay for.

It's actually fairly easy to say what, in concept, would be of value to the public: solid coverage of all the things people need to know about because of it's impact on their lives, presented in a way that is thorough, meaningful, useful, relevant and timely -- particularly 'timely.' That means coverage about things on a routine, predictable basis that lets people see potential problems when they can be dealt with calmly and intelligently, not after they've already exploded in your face.

And thoroughly. That means you find out everything that a person needs to know about a situation, not just what is exciting, or controversial, or that someone is making a fuss about, but also the odd and crazy things that flow into it or and tied to it, the direct and indirect effects it can have, all the people whose lives are impacted by it, in one way or another. It means your coverage is not glancing over some things while obsessing over others. It means your newspaper is motivated by the concern that you may be missing something important that people need to know, and not just what happens to support some agenda or undercut another, even if the one agenda is good and the other evil.

If you can't depend on your newspaper to get you everything you need to know, then you're left with whoever you happen to talk to, or whatever other place you go to find out what's up. The reality is that most of the time, you're going to people who don't know any more than you do, or people who think the way you think. You're getting only a slide of the world, not the whole thing.

So, where's the value in the newspaper? Why bother? Does it tell you anything you really need to know in order to make decisions? To fix a problem before it becomes a disaster? To know what your government is doing -- other than gossip and slander and puffing about superficial political nonsense?

People pay good money all the time for things they find useful. They're not buying newspapers. That should tell you something.

The Supreme Court and Sales Tax -- Issue a Decision but Miss the Real Issue

July, 2018: The story was big on all the news programs as soon as the Supreme Court released its opinion: states can collect sales tax from online purchases! And like usual with Supreme Court decisions, the decision was reduced to a question of winners (brick-and-mortar stores) and losers (web-based stores).

But there is more to what the Court decided than who won or lost as a result of the decision, and there is even more to the decision than what the Court itself considered.

The case was South Dakota vs. Wayfair, Inc., and the big news was that a majority of the Justices decided that states have the authority to tax sales transactions conducted over the internet between state residents and out-of-state sellers. This reversed a 1992 decision, Quill Corp. vs. North Dakota, in which a majority of the Court held that a state could not tax transactions with sellers that have no physical presence in that state.

Like many other decisions the Court has made over the past two hundred odd years, though, the decision reaches firm conclusions without ever actually showing that the Justices actually understood what issues they were dealing with.

First of all, you need to understand that the label “sales tax” is a misnomer. It’s actually a “purchase tax,” assessed against the buyer and collected by the seller as the state’s fiduciary, or agent. It’s no better when it’s called a “use tax,” assessed against the buyer and payable by the buyer directly to the state.

The point it, it’s not a tax on the seller. It’s not payable by the seller. The sales tax money collected by the seller is never the seller’s money. The money the buyer pays to the seller for whatever was bought and sold has nothing to do with the sales tax money — other than to determine exactly how large the tax is that the buyer must pay for the transaction.

Why is this important? Because you need to understand that sales taxes are imposed on the purchaser, not the seller, and the seller collects the tax on behalf of the state, it does not pay it out of its own funds. The seller acts as an agent of the state. Sellers must register with the state in order to collect sales tax, since they are acting as an agent of the state.

To put it a different way, a state can require buyers to pay a tax, require sellers to collect the tax, and prohibit anyone from selling taxable goods or services unless they first register and get a state license to do so. If you do not get your sales tax license, you can’t sell anything a buyer would need to pay sales tax on.

There are many, many aspects to business, sales, delivery, contracts and so on to complicate matters. Indeed, the Justices themselves argue in dissents and concurrent opinions about such things, and how different decisions from the Court seem to pull the Constitution itself one way or another on how they should decide the case.

But when you cut through all the intellectual bramble, you’re left with a few fundamental issues that someone — probably Congress — needs to think through carefully and make some well-grounded decisions.

First, can one state force people in every other state to obey its laws? The Supreme Court seems to think so, at the moment, with regard to forcing sellers to collect sales tax on goods and services sent elsewhere. So, if I’m in Delaware, with no sales tax, South Dakota can force me to get a license to collect sales taxes on whatever I may deliver to someone in South Dakota, and to file sales tax records in Pierre along with a check for whatever amount I may have collected. And South Dakota can presumably audit my books and tell me I have to come on up there to talk to its tax department if they don’t like what they see. Same with Hawaii and Alaska (for the communities that have a sales tax), Minnesota and Texas.

This would be different, at least for most people on a practical scale. I live in New York, which has an income tax. If I go to Florida, which has no personal income tax, and take a summer job, I know I’ll need to pay New York income tax on what I earn in Florida — but can New York require the Florida employer to withhold New York taxes from my pay while I’m there? Should it be the call of the New York legislature whether the Florida employer should have to? Could New York prohibit employers in Florida from hiring anyone from New York if they didn’t agree to withhold New York taxes?

Second, sales taxes are anything but simple. What’s subject to tax is not always clear, even in the place where you live. Groceries and medications are often exempt — but what about nutritional supplements? Snack food? There can be carve-outs for things like clothing — up to a certain value, on specific dates or for limited periods of time. Cities and counties may have their own add-on rate — and you don’t necessarily know where a person lives just by looking at their zip code. If you’re the Delaware seller, how comfortable are you with exposing your business to the exact details of South Dakota’s sales tax practices? Or with paying someone else to tell you what’s going on in each and every jurisdiction you may get a customer from?

Third, there are costs involved in registering as a sales tax agent in even one state, much less the 45 states that have a sales tax. Each has its rules on what I need to do, including requirements and prohibitions like posting the license on the wall of my place of business. Lots of wall space for 45 certificates, eh? And if I’m a small business, a start-up selling socks on-line, for example, or a free-lance writer peddling my self-published books, how am I supposed to get all these licenses? Spend a week or two getting forms from all over, filling them out and waiting to see whether I filed them correctly? Pay some on-line law firm to do the work for me? How much work will I need to put into making sure I collect the correct amount of sales tax on each sale? Keeping records for each state, even if I don’t hit the floor set by one or another for collecting its sales tax? Tracking what rules I need to comply with, right now, next year, last year?

Fourth, what impact is there on interstate commerce if businesses are forced to decide whether to get properly registered and licensed to collect sales tax in states where they do not have a physical presence, or to avoid making any sales to any resident of a state which has not licensed them? None? Some? Depends? A majority of the Justices currently on the Supreme Court seem to think not — I should think otherwise (but that’s just me!).

The Court has stated repeatedly that Congress could solve this problem by exercise of its plenary power to regulate interstate commerce, but I don’t believe that to be the case. If the federal government has no authority to make state or local government enforce its laws, how can it claim authority to make state governments enforce other states’ laws?

Congress could, I suppose, impose its own sales tax, distributing the net proceeds to state governments according to some formula, like total income of all state residents, etc. In order to avoid double taxation, it could limit participation to states that eliminate their own sales tax. There are potential nightmares of epic proportions flowing from this kind of program, but it would be clearly within the authority of Congress to impose taxes and to spend money as it sees fit.

Or, states depending on sales taxes could turn to other ways to fund their operations. A sales tax is about the simplest kind of tax a government can impose, to be sure, in terms of administration for the government and of execution on the part of the people who pay it, collect it and send it along to the state. This makes it easier than income taxes, with all the forms to deal with all the rules dealing with all the complexities of finance in the modern world, or even property taxes, which are based on values of property that are anything but easy to ascertain or maintain.

But sales can be regressive, imposing more of a burden on the poor than on the wealthy. This burden can be shifted a bit, by exempting food, medicine, clothing and housing from the list of taxable sales, things that may well make up more of what people buy when they don’t have much money to spare on other things — like cell phone, telecommunications, transportation, entertainment, and so on, things that are actually necessities for everyone in the modern world.

No matter the wisdom or error in the Court’s analysis of the problem set, legislators and the public that elect them really need to put a lot of thought into these fundamental issues, evaluate them from many perspectives, and decide on actions that will make things as fair and reasonable as possible in the world we now live in.

Thoughts?

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Gossips?

Just a quick thought -- if a newspaper just prints what various people say, isn't that just a gossip column?

During a political campaign, it's common for the media in general just to quote the candidates, to tell readers what the candidates (or their advisors) have to say about each other (most commonly) or some issue or other.

When the editorial staff wants to show some responsibility and respectibility, they do a "fact check," which is often little more than a scandal check against assertions the candidates have made.

No analysis of the positions or proposed programs.  Do they make sense?  Do they have good internal sense?  Are they based on reality?  What do they gloss over?  What do they assume?  Are those assumptions valid?

If a newspaper just gathers statements, then it's not much more than a conglomeration of opinions -- and opinions are pretty cheap no matter the source.

If people are just presented with a mass of opinions, they're bound to turn more towards those they like and away from those they don't like.  It's the nature of opinions, none are any more valid than any other, it's just a matter of taste and preference.

So, in this way the front page of a newspaper differs little from its op-ed page, and a newspaper differs little from talk radio.  No matter that the reporters and staff think better of themselves...

Sagging newspaper readership

Just a quick one -- I've been skating on my writing...

I read (quickly) an article in The Atlantic saying that newspaper articles are too long, that they have too many words because the rely on old style conventions, and so on.  Pithy reading.

But I doubt that newspapers (or any other written news source) are losing readers or losing money because of the number of words used in their article.  It seems to me more of a matter of the words not containing news, that is, useful information or insights.

It's that facts and assumptions thing.  Most of what is reported is little more than a compendium of quotations from various individuals somehow involved in the matter, often loaded with unstated assumptions of questionable (but unquestioned) validity, and lacking any real substance.

Do I get any useful insights about the quality of my local schools from an article written after a school board budget meeting, in which the reporter quotes a representative of a teachers union about the need for more money to be spent on education, and throws in a quote from a school board member about sky-high local property taxes?  Every reader already knows what each side has to say, so this is not news.

Questions about how this districts' teachers work with this district's kids, about how they use school time, about how parents relate to their kids' education, about how well buildings and vehicles are maintained -- such questions aren't addressed in such quicky articles.

It's like a courtroom in which the witnesses determine what testimony they want to present.  Reporters should have at least enough understanding of the subject to get to some substance, and not be satisfied with what is presented to them.

Readers today may no longer have the time or patience of their ancestors, and don't care to read empty articles -- unless they find them amusing confirmations of what they already believe (without actually having any good basis for that belief), or annoying propoganda pieces they only want to tear apart (again, based on little more than their own sentiments).

If news media want to gain some readers (and make some money), they should get out of the rut of being little more than the community gossip, and also do some soul-searching to find that self-doubting, selfless investigator lurking deep inside them.  They need to ask questions -- not just of the people they may interview but also of themselves and of other knowledgable sources. 

They need to search out facts and identify assumptions, and then attempt to confirm or validate their findings.  And they need to follow their findings where they go, no matter that they may lead to contrary or uncomfortable conclusions, or betray a complexity denying simple conclusions.

I think readers would respect those writers and flock to those sources.  Respect our intelligence, respect reality, report what you find faithfully.  The product of this work ethic will have value.  Sound good?

Scribes and Pharisees?

It seems to be as easy as rolling out of bed in the morning to counter criticism of opinions by attacking the person voicing that criticism.  It may be by referring to some position that person may have held at some point which may run contrary to their own criticism -- making them hypocrites -- or the counter may be based on association with others whose motives are ostensibly contaminated by self-interest or some brand of idology.

This kind of name-calling, no matter how satisfying it may feel to the person calling the names, doesn't really help clarify matters.  The intellectual falacies in these defenses and attacks have been well known for centuries, and they are no more valid just because they are put to use in support of a particular cause.

In this day, though, unlike those past centuries, a growing mass of people are adequately educated to see through such flimsy dodges and are thus being increasingly impatient and intolerant of their use.  If you want to see your cause go down in flames, whatever it may be, just keep using those rusty weapons!  Like a bayonet charge in the age of the machine gun, running off at the mouth in the age of the internet is doomed to defeat...

What do you think about theories of climate change?  Economics and finance?  Health and nutrition?  War and peace?  Are you interested in achieving progress for humanity?  Or just making noise?  No one likes noise makers (except perhaps as entertainment!)...

The only intelligent way to proceed.is to abandon those age-old, greasy tactics and instead investigate the truth of every matter of concern to you objectively, independently, dispassionately.  Identify the facts and assumptions, both what you think you know and what others may claim.  Validate the assumptions, no matter their source.  Evaluate their relationship to reality -- are they sound or speculative?  Are they built on good observation?  Are they consistent with all available data?  Do they make sense?

Remember, this investigation cannot be adjusted one way for views you already hold and another way for views advanced by people you don't like.  Think about it -- is it more important to stick to what you believe, or to attach yourself to what is true?  If you happen to have glommed on to something you found attractive but was actually flawed, is there any honor in sticking to the flaw?

As Baha'u'llah wrote, it is essential that one "so cleanse his heart that no remnant of either love or hate may linger therein, lest that love blindly incline him to error, or that hate repel him away from the truth."

That is the standard.  And it's a personal standard, not a political or philosophical standard.  It's about freeing your judgment from prejudice or ignorance, seeing the world as it is rather than how you may have thought it to be.  A doctor cannot make a good diagnosis without examining the patient to see exactly what is going on -- can anyone else make a diagnosis about what's right or wrong in the world without examining the situation as it actually is?
But some of the better-educated people I have talke with over the years hold this standard to be impracticable.  They say it's contrary to "human nature."  This perception supports cynicism, the idea that they're all a bunch of frauds, that some approximation of truth can be found by coming up half-way in between contending factions because none of them are any more or less valid than any other.

Talk about an assumption!  This is the standard we try to apply in our legal system, in scientific investigation, in every question of fairness and justice.  We try to get to the "ground truth," rather than sticking to ignorant first impressions or prejudices.  So, contrary to the idea that public figures and public debate must always be dominated by the half-truth, by spin, by ideology and by interest, people can and should put such childish squabbles where they belong and act like adults.

And perhaps let the people with the big mouths know they're not fooling anyone, that they should be ashamed of themselves for their foolishness, and that if they're serious about anything they should start acting like responsible, mature adults.

Put the facts and assumptions out there for everyone to see.  In the end, there can be widely differing views on issues based intelligently and fairly on differing assumptions, and it's up to leaders to choose the ones they find stronger.  But more on that in later posts...

Opinions, polls and pols

Anyone can have an opinion about anything, and nearly everyone does.  That's a fact, and it's a fact essential to polls.  Polls are nothing more than a way of measuring how opinions are distributed among a population.  So many head are counted expressing a preference towards one proffered opinion, so many the other way, and assuming that with a sufficient number of heads in a certain category you can predict what all heads of that type would say if asked the same question, the pollster announces the distribution of opinions among those heads.

And that is then presented by the press as a fact bearing somehow on the merits of the subject of the opinion.

However, since opinions are only as good as the judgment of the persons offering them, and that judgment is only as good as that person's familiarity with the underlying facts and assumptions, the opinion of most people on most topics is essentially worthless -- other than as a measure of sentiment, or the effectiveness of public relations campaigns.

If you ask the typical 4,000 random people whether carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere by combustion of fossil fuels is a driver of climate change, you will certainly get their opinions.  But what do those 4,000 people base their opinions on?  Have they studied the CO2 record of the Vostok ice cores?  Are they current on the transport of latent heat in storm formations?  The absorbtion bands of various gasses in the atmosphere?  The operation of Henry's Law on partial pressure of CO2 in sea water?

I think not.  Instead, their opinions are largely based on haphazard, almost subconscious responses to tone and context, be it towards the environment or the economy, towards the global community or global government.  But not on the facts and assumptions in the science itself.

Politicians, unfortunately, try to ride the horse of public opinion towards their own ends, often in even greater ignorance of the ultimate wisdom or folly locked into their views.  Which is worse, higher taxes or higher debt?  Which is better, lower taxes or reduced services?  What drove the financial crisis of 2008?  What is right and what is wrong with the American health care system?  Do they have a clue?  If so, I see little evidence of it...

More on the role of the media in a future post, but for now, it is an absolute necessity to get away from mere opinions, postures, policies and debate.  People need to develop a sense of humility and insecurity in their own opinion, and instead seek out firm ground for reason and understanding of the issues attracting their attention.  I should not offer an opinion on a topic which I have not studied in sufficient depth, nor should I seek out opinions from individuals appealing to my sentiments.

Instead, I should see out facts and identify assumptions, and then validate those facts and assumptions against their underlying data and observations.  If there is controversy among the experts, I should not simply go with the one that seems more confident, or who has a louder voice or stands in front of a larger crowd.  Instead I need to investigate their assertions, and the questions and challenges posed by other people involved in the controversy -- even if their numbers are small and the rich and famous tell me to ignore them, tarring them with insults.  And even if I find myself satisfied with a particular understanding of the issue, I should be open to and carefully consider new divergent or contrary views when they arise.

The truth stands on its own against contrary claims, it does not need popular support, its worth is not determined by surveying public opinion.  Everyone knows this to be true, and it is to their underlying shame that we often claim the contrary.  People may at various times and to various degrees stroke their own egos, stuff their own pockets and honor their own superstitions, but not everyone, not everywhere, not always.  The human spirit is made of better stuff than that!

Admin note

I appreciate anyone reading my modest little blog -- if you've gone back this far you show me far more respect than I likely deserve!  I am still very low on the learning curve, technologically speaking, but looking forward to learning how to toss in links, and graphics (like Honest Abe)...  We'll see what kind of creativity I can come up with!

Bear with me -- I hope to make it all worthwhile!