Posted by
Moneyrunner on Sunday, August 10, 2008 10:00:00 AM
Debra,
Please believe that I have sympathy for you as an individual, but no sympathy at all for the industry that employs you. I am one of those who cheer the rapid decline of the MSM. Here’s an example from my blog “The Virginian”
The Old, Legacy, “Drive-By” MSM Mainstream Media and the John Edwards Affair.
You don’t know whether to laugh, cry or cheer.
Me, I'm cheering because it's another great example of why the MSM is dying with such speed.
The story is not John Edwards any more. In fact shortly after the National Inquirer broke the story is stopped being about John Edwards and morphed into a Sherlock Holmes story: “Silver Blaze.” There is a famous dialog between Gregory (the Scotland Yard detective) and Sherlock Holmes:
Gregory: "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."
Holmes: "That was the curious incident."
That is the perfect reflection of the MSM in the Affair Edwards
You are a columnist and your opinions lean Conservative. But think about it this way, if I were selling delicious, juicy, mouthwatering hamburgers would I set up shop in a dumpster, surrounded by rotting food? The question answers itself. The Chronicle is filled with smelly orthodoxies that turn people away.
To your other points, you have fans and they have to decide whether your column is worth supporting that whole oozing pile of garbage surrounding you and they have decided not to. And Debra, there are other places and ways that you can make a living writing opinions. You will find those venues.
You declare that there are people on the Left who believe that the paper isn’t Left enough – a corporate sellout. The writers and editors seem to be catering to those people, trying hard to prove they are not. So you get criticized from both the Right and the Left? Don’t you see what that tells you? Yours is not a “news paper” ... it’s an opinion paper. Every story has a moral wrapped around some fact and that’s a problem. In newspapers opinions are not limited to the opinion page; they grab you by the throat and slap you in the face in virtually every article.
Finally, Debra, you believe that without the MSM, the alternative media could not provide the news coverage it provides today. That may be true if the MSM were to disappear in a puff of dirty smoke overnight. But the internet is beginning to provide its own news sources. War bloggers like Mchael Yon and Michael Totten are really a great deal more credible than AP and NY Times stringers who appear to be part-time jihadist with cameras.
Who’s going to write about city council meetings? It really does not take a rocket scientist to report news and local bloggers are getting that story already. And perhaps we can get less cheerleading in the articles for tax increases.
As a final point, the MSM seems to be one of the few industries where insulting your customer has become an art form. Not incidentally, like the airlines with their strip searches, but as a matter of policy in the opinions written by some of the remaining editorial staff. I have better things to do with my money than pay to have my religion, my morals and my opinions insulted by puffed up J-school graduates with scraggly hair and the belief that the world hangs on their every word. It does not and they can - as the saying goes – peddle their papers elsewhere.