In recent months, increasingly more people are saying that they no longer read the daily newspapers, including the New York Times. They are gaining their news or information from the internet and television. The rationalization is that they “don’t have time” to sit down and read a newspaper.

This is of great concern because this is not an isolated sentiment and is in evidence in the apparent thinness of several editions of the New York Times. Because advertisers have dramatically shifted from print to various recent and trendy technological outlets, the daily print media is evaporating.

The once bulky classified ad section of the Times, just a decade ago, has nearly vanished. Job and apartment ads, to say nothing of car sales, are winding its way elsewhere. The economic reality is that newspapers across the country are folding or looking like Jenny Craig graduates. The death knoll of daily papers is increasing and those remaining are in serious difficulty, the pages fewer and smaller.

What is the fallout from this?

Let’s start with the New York Times, my major source of news and enlightened opinion for half a century. There is a substantial difference between the thoughtful columns of the Times and the glib talking heads inflicted on us while viewing CNN and Fox News. The columns of Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, and Gail Collins at the Times, along with the daily editorials and the provocative and often informative letters to the editor, provide political nourishment that is not matched elsewhere.

Television news slant seems calculated to shock and to hold our attention. They’ll do almost anything to avert your finger from going towards the television remote. Advertising dollars are based on ratings and the remote control is television’s continual challenge.

During the last week, any casual viewing of television news saw relentless, often tasteless coverage of Michael Jackson’s life and death. The reports were excessive, intrusive and often self-serving for the reporters who seemed to be in an endless contest to locate people who were measuring their closeness to the late performer. Or they wanted to convey how he influenced their lives. These pointless features had less to do with Michael Jackson and more to do with using his celebrity to position themselves. Then, of course, came the speculation about his death with implications of sinister or criminal aspects. Anything to keep you focused on the station…

The New York Times certainly gave appropriate space to the life and death of Michael Jackson but not at the expense of everything else happening in the world. Stories about a proposed national health plan, congressional debates on the energy bill, and stories of Iraq and Iran held their place in the paper of record. Television news seems to have captured and cemented the worst of tabloid journalism and made it the means to inform and misguide the American public.

Twenty-first century technology has brought an avalanche of gadgets for providing news, but as the woman in the New Yorker cartoon noted, “If this is the information age, why doesn’t anyone know anything?”

When “BREAKING NEWS” flashes before us it usually means that a crime took place somewhere, anywhere, with the implicit “If it bleeds, it leads” that is yellow journalism’s mantra.

I recall a time not so long ago, when sitting in a subway car you could watch New Yorkers reading – mostly newspapers, sometimes a book. That sight hardly exists today. The earphones are plugged in and the toes are tapping. Information is not relevant and I suspect that there are power brokers who prefer it that way.

An uninformed vox populi is easier to manipulate than a well-informed public. There are pockets of enlightenment on TV: Jon Stewart provides it with humor on “The Daily Show” and Charlie Rose, Sixty Minutes, and Bill Moyers offer an alternative to the daily nonsense from cable news and the locals at 6 o’clock.

What happens to a nation with an uninformed population? Ask friends, relatives and yourself about who represents you locally and nationally. Do you know where your elected officials stand on various bread-and-butter issues and deeply complex matters such as campaign reform that can determine the outcome of all issues before the legislatures? CNN charts rarely go there and Fox pundits are so determined to protect the world of Reagan, Bush and Cheney that they are irrelevant…dangerous, but irrelevant.

Stations like WBAI have an increasing responsibility – as do the few outlets of civility and commitment that remain. But most are not up to the task as they are either financially strapped or caught up in their own internal maze.

I am deeply concerned about the media trend in our country and see the most sinister aspects of corporate American delighted that less and less information is forthcoming. Albany’s recent senatorial antics have been painted as a circus in the media, but as Tom Robbins points out in the Voice this week, it is a well-choreographed smokescreen that allows landlords a means of blocking progressive legislation that benefits hundreds of thousands New Yorkers…just one example of how misreported information intrudes on the democratic process.

Unplug your earphones America or suffer the consequences.

I’m David Rothenberg…out on a limb!