The Newspaper Bubble
In 1950, newspapers sold twenty billion dollars worth of advertisements. In 2000, that amount had more than tripled, when adjusted for inflation, to a little over sixty billion. In 2011, newspapers had dropped back to selling twenty billion dollars worth of ads a year.
The bubble, while it hasn’t completely broken, has certainly shrunk to the point of near-collapse. The internet has replaced print and paper with electrons. A similar process has affected, and does affect, every human activity.
When we look at the Book of Revelation, 18:10, we read about the destruction of Babylon: “Mourn, mourn for this great city, Babylon, so powerful a city, doomed as you are within a single hour.”
Like Babylon, is Collapsing
“Babylon” is not simply a “city”. The accursed place is representative of any collective human activity that has become corrupted. Therefore, we may see that the section of economy known as “Big Newspapers” are one kind of “Babylon”.
How have they become corrupted? Nearly all major-city newspapers tell two lies. The first is a “lie by omission”: First, they fail to mention the inevitable prosperity that comes from cutting government expenses and lowering taxes. Their second type of lie is more obvious: all governmental activities are praised while their ongoing funding is endlessly justified.
The flood of those two kinds of lies is a powerful indication of how the world’s “city” of big, metropolitan, money-losing newspapers is infected with corruption. When that corruption reaches a tipping point, a following passage, 18;16 is instructive: “Mourn, mourn for this great city; for all the linen and purple and scarlet that you wore, for all your finery of gold and jewels and pearls; your riches are all destroyed within a single hour.”
The “single hour” is the tipping point of corruption mentioned in Scripture. As the graph shows, it may then take a decade for a Babylon to collapse. When big newspapers that hide or twist the news collapse, can big TV be far behind?
