At the Nieman Journalism Lab, Martin Langeveld digs into the catastrophic newspaper numbers. Every six month increment for (weekday) newspaper circulation has gotten worse than the one before it. The latest: a 10.6 percent plunge from the year-earlier six-month period. The previous three ABC reports: weekday declines of 7.1 percent, 4.6 percent, and 3.5 percent.
Meantime, Alan Mutter calculates that newspaper circulation is now below WWII levels (when population levels were less than half what they are now). Up next: Crimea, War of the Roses, and then on to the Peloponnesian War.
— BusinessWeek asks “Can Main Street Catch Up to Wall Street?” The answer to that, as always, is no.
— The New York Times catches up with Neel Kashkari, the young Goldmanite who ran the TARP bailout under the old Goldmanite Hank Paulson. He’s retreated to a monastic-sounding-but-probably-not life chopping wood at his secluded California mountain cabin. With the benefit of distance, he says Wall Streeters are not “patriots” and that they’re full of “bull” in saying they didn’t need the bailouts. (h/t Heidi Moore and Dealbreaker)
Ryan Chittum is a former Wall Street Journal reporter, and deputy editor of The Audit, CJR’s business section. If you see notable business journalism, give him a heads-up at rc2538@columbia.edu. Follow him on Twitter at @ryanchittum.