The death of newspapers.

Newspapers are dying. They are dying much in the way humans die when starved of oxygen, for newspapers are being starved of readers. Quite simply many people seem to be abandoning them.

Now, most people have heard rumours to the effect that newspapers are in decline – but few, I think, are aware of how rapidly that decline is taking place. Today, I stumbled across some statistics from ABC (the circulation assessor), on the Guardian’s webpage. I was stunned by what I read. The figures held the morbid fascination of a car crash and, indeed, are no less dramatic.

I would like you to guess by how much a typical newspaper’s readership has declined between December 2010 and December 2011? Just try to calculate, or intuit, depending on your style, what proportion of people might be abandoning their newspaper.

Well here are the figures: from December 2010 to December 2011, every single British newspaper exhibited a decline in readership. In a comparison between the circulations of December 2011 and December 2010, The Sun lost 6.85 % of its circulation; The Daily Mirror lost 3.64 %; The Daily Star lost 13.61%; The Daily Record lost 5.42%; The Daily Mail lost 1.78 %; The Daily Express lost 4.37%; The Daily Telegraph lost 7.01%; The Times lost 8.79%; The Financial Times lost 14.44%; The Guardian lost 13.11% and the Independent lost a phenomenal 31.69%.

I invite you to consider those figures. To understand them better, imagine if they represented a reduction in your personal income over the last year. How would you feel? Well, each newspaper has lost revenues in proportion to its lost readers. Imagine further, that these losses are going on year in, year out. It is easy to see that newspapers cannot live long, under such declines in readership. What we are seeing here, is, quite possibly, the beginning of the end for newspapers as a medium for the transmission of information – at least in their present form. It won’t take many years of these declines, for newspapers to be unable to support themselves. When that time comes, they will fold, one by one. Perhaps a few will remain after the shakeout...but even that is not guaranteed.

I am left to wonder what kind of world we are building, personal decision by personal decision, such that it may not have newspapers in it, anymore. If not enough readers want newspapers, we simply won’t have any. I am not sure that a world without newspapers is a better one. The Internet, which will, no doubt, be their successor, does not seem to offer the same quality of writing. We could be in for a future in which thoughtful writing of quality is much more difficult to come by. Is that really an improvement?

The future is ours for the making. All we need to do is to buy today what we want tomorrow. If we want our newspaper to exist in years to come...we really should seek it out and buy it, today. Unfortunately, so many people, each year, stop making that decision. Will you?

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

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If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

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Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

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Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

The Star, Malaysia: opposing abortion.

The Star of Malaysia, a leading national daily has, today, published a letter from me, opposing the pro-abortion stance taken by a Doctor in its pages, last week.

So that my letter remains on record, indefinitely, I am reproducing, here, the original text that I sent the editor of The Star. Note that their version has been foreshortened with certain passages edited away. This is normal for the letters page of newspapers, since they have strict space limits. However, it was pleasing to note that their version preserved the essential meaning of what I had to say and changed none of my words. All they did was trim away what they viewed as unnecessary passages.

Here is my original version:


Don’t forget the value of a baby’s life.

By Valentine Cawley.

Dr. S.P. Choong’s letter of 16th February, advocating abortion as a solution to “regulating fertility”, filled me with both alarm and sadness. Nowhere, in his promotion of abortion, was a single thought given to the well being of the unborn child, or the intrinsic value of its life to come. His extensive appeals to authority, to support his argument, obscures the fact that neither he, nor any of the bodies he has called upon, have reflected upon the innate value of human life.

It doesn’t take much ethical or moral reflection to come to the realization that it is almost always wrong to end a human life, before its time. In many contexts such an ending is called murder. Abortion is morally and ethically equivalent to the murder of an unborn child, no matter how you choose to colour it. The child has a moral right to life and should be allowed to live. This understanding makes a nonsense of his use of such phrases as “safe abortion services”. Abortion is, by definition, far from safe for the unborn child – indeed, it is always fatal.

There are many tools, in the modern world, to regulate fertility. There is no absolute need for abortion to be one of them. Contraception is easily achieved and readily available in most parts of the world. If a woman really does not want to have a child, she can use many different methods to prevent one, successfully. Rather, therefore, than sanctioning abortion, society should widen access to contraceptive services. Make contraception FREE and easily obtainable to girls and women of all ages, should they require it. Do not restrict access, for instance, to teenage girls, who may not listen to society’s wish for them to wait for marriage before having intimate relations. To do so, is to make teenage pregnancies a certainty.

This ease of access to contraception, should also be complemented by equally easy access to adoption services. Ten to fifteen per cent of couples, worldwide, are infertile, so there are many potential parents who cannot have a child of their own. Let them save unwanted children, from abortion, by adopting them. That would be the humane, moral and ethical solution.

Society should not let Doctors dictate whether abortion is practiced or not. Doctors have a financial interest in practicing it and will tend to promote it simply because it enriches them to do so. Society should not forget that Doctors of Medicine are not inherently competent in understanding ethical issues. A different kind of thinker is required to grapple with ethical issues, competently. Let ethicists, from outside the medical profession, advise on abortion – and not those with a vested interest in it.

Abortion is the solution of a moral pygmy, to unwanted babies. The moral solution is provide a combination of contraception and adoption. Let Malaysia take the moral choice going forward. Incidentally, all the world’s major religions disagree with abortion, including Islam. Would it be right for Malaysia to ignore those beliefs?

---------------

The Star of Malaysia's version is here:


Tuesday February 22, 2011

Unborn child has moral right to life

I REFER to “Early abortion much safer than full-term delivery” (The Star, Feb 16), advocating abortion as a solution to “regulating fertility.” It filled me with both alarm and sadness.

Nowhere in the writer’s promotion of abortion was a single thought given to the well being of the unborn child. It doesn’t take much ethical or moral reflection to come to the realisation that it is almost always wrong to end a human life before its time.

Abortion is morally and ethically equivalent to the murder of an unborn child, no matter how you choose to colour it. The child has a moral right to life and should be allowed to live.

This understanding makes a mockery of the writer’s use of such phrases as “safe abortion services.” Abortion is, by definition, far from safe for the unborn child – indeed, it is always fatal.

There are many tools, in the modern world, to regulate fertility. If a woman really does not want to have a child, she can use many different methods to prevent one, successfully.

Contraception is easily achieved and readily available in most parts of the world. There is no absolute need for abortion to be one of them.

Therefore, rather than sanctioning abortion, society should widen access to contraceptive services. Make contraception free and easily obtainable to girls and women of all ages, should they require it.

This ease of access to contraception, should also be complemented by equally easy access to adoption services.

Ten to fifteen per cent of couples worldwide are infertile, so there are many potential parents who cannot have a child of their own. Let them save unwanted children from abortion by adopting them. That would be the humane, moral and ethical solution.

The moral solution is to provide a combination of contraception and adoption.

Incidentally, all the world’s major religions disagree with abortion.

VALENTINE CAWLEY,

Kuala Lumpur.

The link to the published article on The Star, Malaysia, is here:

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/2/22/focus/8108796&sec=focus

You may have noticed, over the past year, that I have published several letters in Malaysian newspapers, since we moved here. This is a new development in my life. I have decided to become more involved in the societies we live in, as we make our way around the world, in pursuit of what we need for our children. My aim is to make a positive contribution, by nudging the societies in beneficial directions, through making helpful suggestions and proposals in the pages of newspapers. It has been heartening to note the open-ness of Malaysian newspapers to my letters and comments. Of course, not all of my letters have been published - I would say about half of them have - nevertheless it does indicate a willingness to listen to my views and to allow them to be entertained. This is refreshing. I am not sure whether we will receive a similar welcome in any future country that we might live in. I don't have enough experience to judge the situation, since Malaysia is the only country in which I have tried to publish letters in newspapers.

Thank you to The Star, Malaysia, for publishing this and my other letters. Thanks, too, to the New Straits Times, for publishing past letters.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)