Thursday, May 7, 2009

Great Article by Joe Weisenthal

The article is titled "You idiot, of course there's going to be a newspaper bailout".

Here's the link:

http://www.businessinsider.com/you-idiot-of-course-theres-going-to-be-a-newspaper-bailout-2009-5

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Another Newspaper Columnist who Got it Backwards

I can't even tell who Rick Holmes really writes for.

Newspapers have so blurred the lines between opinion, fact, columnist, reporter, and blogger.

Here's his column: http://www.wickedlocal.com/watertown/news/lifestyle/columnists/x1194151696/Rick-Holmes-Why-newspapers-are-in-trouble-and-whats-at-stake

He seems like a nice guy, but he's another media insider who doesn't realize that Americans recognize lazy biased journalism, and we pulled the plug on it.

Rick says:

Opinionated writers are easy to find, and a lot of them blog for free. What's expensive is hiring someone to report the facts on which we base our arguments, and if there's no one to pay professionals to do it, we'll only have the facts those with a vested interest want us to have.

Sorry Rick. We figure you do have a vested interest, at least on the national level. Lots of us watched bitterly while CNN, the New York Times, and Boston Globe buried the facts and pitched biased stories at us, until we finally canceled our subscriptions and turned the channel.

Rick says:

A newspaper does more than make money by transmitting information. It builds a healthy community. It connects people to their neighbors. It helps set community priorities and guide public debate. It serves as an invaluable watchdog on government, business and politics.

That's the problem Rick. Newspapers don't even transmit information any more. It's like all the editors and reporters want to do is get home for dinner on time. They don't care about the news -- except the "big news", and we get that in multiplicity, redudantly, from TV, radio, local newspaper and national newspaper.

Rick you want the public to mirror your pro-Newspaper cultural bias. And when we don't mirror your bias you want to cast us as uneducated yokels who are too stupid to appreciate what you have done for us. Did you ever hear of "last ink"? That's the phenomenon, typically in a local newspaper, where the editor orchestrates one or two reasonably factual stories about an issue or political candidate and then pours on the hate juice. It used to be that the candidate's only recourse was to send out his own mailers or just suffer. The internet has changed all that, and we're never going back again.

And here's a guy who got it right.

http://business.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090416.wreynolds0417/BNStory/robColumnsBlogs/home