August 23, 2007
Who's reading the paper?
Sippican Cottage explains what's wrong with newspapers -- and why he hasn't read them for ages.
I noticed that there were two sorts of topics in the papers. They were topics I had first-hand knowledge of, and things of which I knew little. And I noticed that without fail, articles written about anything I had intimate knowledge about were absolute nonsense. And I began to notice the little word shifts and shimmies and angles that the authors and editors would use to grind whatever sort of ax they had. And I'm pretty dumb, of course, just like God made us all, but I figured out that it was unlikely that the newspaper was only getting the stuff I knew about wrong, on purpose. And by looking for the method of obfuscation I recognized in things I knew about, I could see what they were trying to fool me with in things I knew nothing about.
You can read the newspaper and find things out, still. But the process is like panning for gold. There's a lot of sand you've got to swish around to get the tiny, glittering pieces of information. And so I abandoned the papers with a heavy heart, because I loved them so. They were the nursemaids of Twain, and Mencken, and Bierce, and a multitude of others that I adore. The people working there now can't even spell, or figure out the difference between nouns and verbs. I wouldn't allow them anywhere near an adjective, even though if they could, they'd print only adjectives. Nouns and verbs lead to the reporting of facts. I think they'd get a rash if they tried it now.
The New York Times et al., like to tell people that the internet is killing their business. Please. I can't be the only one that noticed that the front page is the editorial section now, and the editorial page has the quality and usefulness of unhinged rants. I'm not really in the market for either. And I'm too young to read the obituaries.
I certainly do get my information in glittering pixels every day. But as usual, they're either fooling themselves, or trying to fool you. I buried you, Mr. Newspaper, in a shallow grave, a decade before I saw that magnificent arial text on that tiny little 486 intel computer over a modem. And I'm not interested in whether they're fooling themselves, or trying to fool me, trying to blame the internet.
Because I'm not interested. Period.
Me too, buddy. I long ago cancelled by subscriptions to the Los Angeles Times and the Ventura County Star, not long after I noticed the cat refused to use the litter box when lined with their pages.
I still take the Wall Street Journal, but I get much more news on-line, from a huge number of sources of my own choosing. I read the web version of the local fishwrap, casting a jaundiced eye on the poorly-written articles, the garbled and misleading partial quotes, noting with genuine surprise when they get a story right.
It pains me -- a recovering newspaperman -- to say it, but the papers are truly awful. I can't imagine a scenario where the reportage improves, short of dynamiting the journalism schools and turning it from a profession back into a trade.
Posted by Mike Lief at August 23, 2007 08:30 PM
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