Bloviating Zeppelin: Newsrooms

Bloviating Zeppelin

(in-ep-toc'-ra-cy) - a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Newsrooms

It would appear our national news rooms are filled with tears and snot.

"Journalists" (and I use that term loosely -- I am every bit as much a "journalist" as 95% of the writers in today's newspapers) are upset that they are actually being asked to work. They are angry because there is competition. They are angry because they're having to do more with less (welcome to the real world, pal). They are angry because they are being fired. And, of course, they are angry with me -- because I hold little value to their Left Wing, Socialist "Mainstream Media" views, I don't read them, I don't subscribe, I don't trust them. Newspapers are bleeding readers and ad revenue.

Boo-hoo.

And they have a site where they may all cry together, at AngryJournalist.com.

Newspapers say: this is nothing more than a profession in transition.

I say: you are finally beginning to reap what you have cast about and sewn for so many years.

7 Comments:

Mark said...: These clowns shit in their own nest, the loss of sales in papers, magazines, and the rest of the MSM is all their own doing. if I could get a semi accurate report of the days news I'd buy their rags. I hope they are thinking about this but I'll bet before I even look at that site, they are blaming the Internet, Drudge, Breitbart, bloggers, and their own customers rather than looking in the mirror at the real problem.; Wed Apr 02, 06:54:00 AM PDT
Anonymous said...: Forget that they dont "just tell the story" with no bias. Most of them cant write well enough to hold a readers attention past the headline.; Wed Apr 02, 07:29:00 AM PDT
Bloviating Zeppelin said...: Mark: yes, they certainly did their own fouling. All are to blame but themselves.

WMD: On the other hand, what are we expecting from our public schools -- that emphasize emotions, esteem over production and competence?

BZ; Wed Apr 02, 08:18:00 AM PDT
TexasFred said...: Bloggers, yeah, US, we come a hell of a lot closer to the truth than the MSM, and we do it by reading as many news sources as possible and gleaning info from ALL of them, because they ALL contain at least a few gems of truth, as rare as it may be, but if you're an astute blogger and not just some Bush Bots asshole that thinks FOXNews is the ultimate authority, remind you of anyone, IF you're able to think, reason and assess, you can find the truth, IF you're willing to work and not just parrot some 'party' mantra...; Wed Apr 02, 10:35:00 AM PDT
Rivka said...: BZ,
Yep it is coming home to roost. It is a universal principle God has put into motion that we humans can't avoid. You fool people and lie for so long, you always pay somehow. Sin has a consequence.. I guess you could call it sin misleading people for so long and refusing to tell the other side or the truth.

I guess secularists say 'whatever comes around, goes around'. Anyway, that is my 2 cents.; Wed Apr 02, 11:00:00 AM PDT
shoprat said...: They became journalists to change the world and instead their profession is becoming semi-obsolete. No tears in this corner.; Wed Apr 02, 06:11:00 PM PDT
A Jacksonian said...: Their arrogance was manifest in the early 1990's. Go to any print media forum for the printing industry and the one group that always promised they would 'figure out the internet' was the MSM. I do remember folks from NYT, WaPo, CBS, and others saying, one and all, that the then current decline in readership/viewership was going to 'turn around' and they would 'provide the services they always did in new forms' via the internet.

To anyone who remembers, the onslaught on the broadcast networks was via cable and on print... well newspapers and magazines have been on a downhill ride since the late 1970's and the consolidation of the newspaper and magazine industry. In my old home town of Bflo we had two newspapers: a morning and and evening one. The morning one was uniformly decent and had great commentary. The evening one was all over itself and skewed far away from the more conservative community around it. It *won* and the decline in reporting was phenomenal.

CNN was the *first* to do around the clock news and have to fill up airtime, and I remember when it was *just* news reporting, not glitzy 'shows' of dubious content and quality. That was groundbreaking and still *is* if any 'news channel' could just stick to it. Instead the strange idea of 'value added commentary' gets put in and the ideologies are the focus and soon, very soon, it is unwatchable. FOX, too, has gone down the 'populist path to glamor reporting' and is, itself, becoming a mockery of what it contends to be.

Journalists are out of work? Do they report the news or just use their views as 'a prism for reporting the news'? That has been a continuous problem for news reporting since... oh... the invention of the printing press. The one-penny broadsheets of England and colonial America see that, and the actual language used by the press to attack politicians from their own political stance would make even Randi Rhodes blush. We should be so *lucky* as to have blatant and open, pro-American 'yellow journalism' that would, at least, try to get some of the facts *right* and not cover them up. They would slant them but at least you had honesty of where they were coming from.

Today? 'Unbiased media'? Heh. And anyone who spews that obviously took the 'white pill' of soma to put themselves into a narcotic trance to believe anything that was handed to them. Unfortunately they also took it when signing sub-prime mortgage deals...

What the NYT tried to do was to provide roughly unslanted coverage, way back in the 19th century. PT Barnum said it was a 'gimmick' but 'just might be an angle to play'. He did, indeed, see through such coverage as it is impossible to get 'unbiased coverage'. You can, however, require honesty from reporters and news organizations to put their biases up front and be transparent about them, and not try to hide it via 'objective reporting'.

Give me openly partisan news outlets, I can, like my forefathers, figure out the truth of events if I can figure out the spin. News, itself, will continue to be reported, but the grand days of 'setting the agenda' and being a 'gatekeeper' are over. They are still at the gate, but the fence is being removed. I now trust someone who has lived in an area to give me straighter reporting than any 'journalist'... and that is the harbinger of something not seen before as 'disintermediation' takes place for news, analysis and opinion. We still have bricks and mortar stores, but they now co-exist in a much wider commercial space and news (et. al.) is just the same.

Next thing you know they will lobby government for 'protection'... just like the record companies did. And to the exact, same, effect, which is to say: none.; Fri Apr 04, 05:32:00 AM PDT

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Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Newsrooms

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