NPR’s On the Media has a great segment this week on the history of yellow journalism, and whether it really deserves its tawdry reputation. The answer: not so much. But the money quote for me comes near the end, at the 4:48 mark, when historian W. Joseph Campbell is asked whether modern American broadsheets might benefit from getting a little yellower:
“The energy and effervescence of yellow journalism certainly could be adopted in many respects in daily American newspapers; a lot of newspapers today tend to be staid, boring, predictable… and those are the features that you would not typically associate with yellow journalism as it was practiced 110 years ago.”
Listen to the whole segment. It’s worth it.
[audio:http://audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm040309e.mp3]As I’ve written before, there are a lot of factors contributing to the recent collapse of the daily newspaper industry, many of them outside the control of the editors and reporters themselves, but I think it is past time for a little introspection as to whether delivering a staid, boring and predictable product is a recipe for successfully competing in the 21st century media market.
Brad deLong has an interesting exchange with the NY Times’ Patricia Cohen about her coverage of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Depression Conference that strikes a bit of a chord here.
If there’s one thing that’s led to the downfall of print journalism, it’s this notion that a “journalist” is restricted to covering what the various sides of a controversy have to say, and that journalists are not allowed to call out clearly false statements in this so-called “balanced” reporting.
When are newspapers, both in print and on line, going to start calling bullshit for what it is?
Print newspapers certainly need something to spice up their image and get people’s attention, but nowadays the public is inundated with sensationalism as it is.
They could try doing what the British tabloids do and put nekkid ladies on Page 3, but since the Internet’s also awash with porn, that might not help much either.
The only thing that might be a greater threat to democracy than in uninformed population is a misinformed population. With all the bullshit over the last few years over where the economy was heading, the only thing a lot of people have been able to believe about it all is the pink slip they just got. Now there’s some concrete evidence that something’s screwed up!
AF–
You have made it clear to all of us that anyone who every disagrees with YOU is misinformed.
God Help Us if you are the standard-bearer for The Truth.
@4 Just keep doing the opposite of Art, Mr. C! You can’t go wrong by assuming the liberal standing beside you on the edge of the cliff doesn’t know what he’s doing! If someone yells “Jump!” and the liberal doesn’t jump, you do the opposite!* Then everything will be fine!
* Heh! Just kidding — this is kind of an inside joke for folks who understand Republican code phrases!
Too damn funny…
————–
Misguided Legal Theories
Yeah, good luck with that.
The Associated Press and its member newspapers will take legal action against Web sites that use their articles without legal permission, the group said on Monday, in a clear shot at aggregators like Google.
In a speech at The A.P.’s annual meeting in San Diego, William Dean Singleton, chairman of the group, said, “We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories.”
Absurdly, most of the article is about Google which doesn’t even have ads on its google news page and which already has a deal with the AP.
-Atrios 14:35
News won’t go away even if newspapers go away. People will get their news somewhere else. There will always be news.
4 Some of ’em may be merely “misinformed”, Mr. C
You, on the other hand, are bat shit crazy.
No one practices the art of “yellow journalism” more often these days than Goldy’s fellow drunkard Joel Connelley in the Pravda-Intelligencer on line. His fat head is so obsessed with the Palin’s that it borders on the creepy. His latest article today is even further evidence that this guy is both a drunk and an insipid dolt. Not two qualities you look for in a columnist committing random acts of journalism these days, but hey, this is the cowtown of Seattle, that’s the way they like it.
Today, for almost the first time in almost two decades, the coffin of an American soldier comes home from Iraq/Afghanistan with flashbulbs flashing.
Two or three weeks ago, NPR’s On the Liberal Media reported the coffin photo ban as a sinister Bush 1.0 plot hatched by Darth Cheney.
You had to go to Leonard Pitts (whose column yesterday was insane about Joe McCarthy) to learn what the early 1990’s ban was about. Our professional responsible mature news media back then had split screened photos of a yuk-it-up GHW Bush next to photos of coffins coming back from Gulf War 1. The laughing Bush wasn’t laughing about dead soldiers, but unbiased neutral down-the-middle media made it look that way.
In other words, situation normal. Typical squalid leftist hypocrisy and dishonesty then and now. NPR should be as hated as Limbaugh is hated, and for some of the same reasons. But being left means never having to say you’re wrong or sorry.
You have better trolls than you deserve, starting with Troll and Truth. Show some respect, or we’ll kick your poufy pink asses.
Vacuous and vapid: “Poor households” in WA pay 17% in taxes. Affluent households? Only 4%. Everybody knows that, just as everybody knows that 50,000,000 American children are homeless or that 5,000,000 American children go to bed hungry. Ted Kennedy told us so, so it must be true.
A few years ago in Real Change (aka Spare Change, the Stalinist street paper), a poor WA woman claimed that — from an income of only $20K/yr — she, a victim of our regressive unhinged tax system, paid over $5000/yr in sales taxes. A quick ballpark using Seattle’s high sales tax in the bullpen showed that Real Change Woman was spending multiples of her income each year. A neat trick without a Goldy trust fund.
Like most WA or Kansas conservatives, I know way more low lifes than high rollers. I know that many or most low lifes here pay taxes not at 17% but at 0%. And when our transfers trickle down, many of our deserving and undeserving poor are net gainers at our expense.
If you find among a higher stratum of the poor a poster child who is paying taxes, and who is paying taxes that equate to 17% of a meager income, that tax bite probably represents taxed property. In most of the real world having property means not poor.
That’s why throwing out or throwing up scare numbers like 17% v. 4% give vapidity a bad name, and make statistics lie. Better unfrocked lawyers, please.
“Trickle down”….a term that surely originated with some male political “leaders” old enough to be dealing with prostate trouble.
11:
You’re clearly an idiot. Have you met Roger yet?
BTP @ 11
The Gates Commission Report has been around long enough, cited around here often enough, that it shouldn’t be necessary to point out the source of Roger Rabbit’s numbers.
Which covers the “vacuous,” but what about the “vapid” part? Let’s see:
That’s why throwing out or throwing up scare numbers like 17% v. 4% give vapidity a bad name…
Somebody needs to look the word “vapid” up in the dictionary.
@12: Anyone else a bit baffled and bewildered by the following commercial? “Hi, I’m Ron Reagan. Your spray and stream not what they used to be? Having trouble with your libido? Then maybe you need Master Beta Prostate …”
Our Ronnie, come back from the dead to push patent medicine to old men who drip? Oh, wait. That’s Mr. Reagan’s wastral son, the ballerina …
“Unfrocked lawyer” should either be defrocked lawyer or unflocked lawyer, depending on your bias about the Winter Solstice.
Cool. Broadway Jow and Don Joe on my case. Vapid sort of means dead air or hot air, right? Not totally vacuous, since vapor has molecules, but not enough molecules to count among friends.
Gates Commission? The (President) Reagan-era report about wasteful procurement by big government? Where does Gates describe Washington State regressivity?
Since everybody (but moi) is familiar with Rabbit’s sources and rationale for citing numbers without their citations, why don’t you educate us. Spell things out very slowly for us slow learners. 17% of what? Derived from what? Used for what taxable purchases or property assessments?
AF @ 12
“Trickle down”….a term that surely originated with some male political “leaders” old enough to be dealing with prostate trouble.
As Galbraith said, trickle-down economics is the “doctrine that if sufficient oats are fed to the horse, a few grains will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”
Vapid Joe the Plumber with the Vacuous Head @ 16
Dude, I gave you a link–that despite the fact that you haven’t politely asked for a source since you showed up impolitely assuming that our Resident Rabbit pulled those numbers out of his ass.
Now, kindly pull your head out of your ass. Please.
Mr. C.
If ArtFart is “misinformed” about the economy, then give us specific details as to why the “fundamentals of our economy are strong” as it pretained to the period Dec. 07 thru Dec. 08.
That is the approximate period of time he’s referring to about the misinformation that led to Americans getting their pink slips.
The quote above, as you well know, was espoused by both former President George W. Bush and presdential hopeful John McCain.
Oh. That Gates. Seem to have seen the name on the side of a law-school building. If a filthy liberal plutocrat like Gates Sr. has defined ‘poor’ to your satisfaction, then it’s settled. We’re all satisfied.
Except for wondering why Mr. Gates and his son don’t demonstrate their liberality to the liberal state that made them liberal plutocrats.
Believe one of our excellent trolls provided an address for Washington State’s Dept. of Revenue. If Gates and Gates take a little of their unearned increment of surplus value and send it to Chrsitine the Slime Queen, her problems — and ours — are over.
Problem solved. Next?
@18: And Chicago’s Mike Royko said the only problem with American beer is that it was brewed through a horse.
Assuming you’re talking about John Kenneth, he and Royko must be doing tag-team comedy in the sky.
Which, come to think of it, has much in common with modern journalism.