Let me take back my entire argument that I made on my Pew poll post, regarding the demise of newspapers and the lack of sympathy from the public. Kathleen Parker has it all figured out. No, it isn’t Sarah Palin’s fault newspapers are dying in droves, but you’re close.
The biggest challenge facing America’s struggling newspaper industry may not be the high cost of newsprint or lost ad revenue, but ignorance stoked by drive-by punditry.Yes, Dittoheads, you heard it right.
Drive-by pundits, to spin off of Rush Limbaugh’s “drive-by media,” are non-journalists who have been demonizing the media for the past 20 years or so and who blame the current news crisis on bias.
If you’re going to spread misinformation, stab your own base and readership in its back and make an argument so specious as to make some wonder if you’ve ever been in a newsroom, at least attempt at being original. I know she acknowledges it, but given all the high-minded accolades she’s been toasted with lately, how about some originality.
Parker goes on to say Limbaugh unfairly defames lower-rung beat journalists, the vast majority of the MSM. Kevin Williamson of Media Blog thinks otherwise.
That is, of course, precisely the sort of journalism that does not get done often enough. And that’s because so many of the journalists in those roles are so truly awful. City-council and school-board reporters are notorious for being captured by their beats and serving the interests of their sources rather than their readers. (Police beat reporters are the worst on that front.) Most U.S. newspapers no longer have anything like regular “investigative teams who chase leads for months.” These desks have been gutted. Compare today’s Philadelphia Inquirer or Boston Globe to those papers 20 or 30 years ago. The investigative newspaper reporter is, alas, for the most part a character of popular fiction. Parker seems a bit out of touch here.
Harsh. I haven’t been around as much as Williamson, but my experience with beat reporters has been better. Keeping your sources honest in beat reporting is often difficult. If you are adversarial, you won’t get anything. FOIA or what not, they tend to be the gatekeepers and can make life for reporters hell. I’ve been on that end of it and it isn’t easy, especially in small towns where you generally have few staff members and even fewer with permission to talk to the press.
Regardless, Parker has seen the future.
In the not-distant future, says Jones, the news may be delivered via a video game. Forget the Internet. Forget blogs, tweets and tags. Forget Jim Cramer-style infotainment. Millions of people are already living in computerized parallel universes through games such as “The Sims” and “World of Warcraft” (WoW). We may have to toss the newspaper on those stoops — in the virtual world of fake life.
That’s right. Video games. Where can I buy stock in that?
As for Parker, her stock with conservatives is diminishing. She may be a hit in the Beltway, but elsewhere, going native isn’t paying off. Take for instance this note from Williamson.
As Media Blog readers have no doubt noticed, I like to keep up with my hometown newspaper (and onetime employer), the venerable Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, which recently yanked Parker out of its designated conservative spot on the commentary page. The editor says he thought the syndicate might have listed her as a conservative by mistake. (I can see how he got that impression.) “So I called the syndicate to check,” he writes. “Yes, I was told, she’s one of their conservatives. Over the past couple of weeks, that wasn’t always clear.” Apparently there was a little reader-revolt against presenting Parker as a conservative.
Parker had this to say about accusations of media bias with her usual shrug off.
There is surely room for media criticism, and a few bad actors in recent years have badly frayed public trust. And, yes, some newspapers are more liberal than their readership and do a lousy job of concealing it.
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You know, I kept trying to give Parker the benefit of the doubt. Until last fall, I’d enjoyed her writing—she wasn’t the deepest thinker, but she had an engaging style which I enjoyed. I certainly didn’t want her to receive a torrent of hate mail for her disapproval of Sarah Palin, although I completely disagreed with her.
But now she’s made it impossible to continue to hope she will come to her senses. Parker’s decided that her best course, career-wise, is to call herself a conservative and then use her platform to confirm ridiculous liberal pre-conceptions.
If she thinks she can move conservativism to the left with her poorly thought out “insights,” she’s not just off the reservation, she’s off her rocker.
Kathy Parker can (eh, I deleted it myself this morning).
Poor Katheleen. Not everyone can be part of theupper one percent. THere have to be post hole diggers. I mean dilletantes are fine. For about three seconds. THe question for Kathy is whats her use? I ask WHAT IS HER USE? Harsh yah. And I am feeling mellow right now.
I saw what you said,Wankette
My local fishwrapper(the Memphis Commercial Appeal) tries to pass off David Brook as a conservative
Scott… I saw what Wanks said too-such a saucy gal ain’t she?
[wankette mumbles, slightly embarrassed, blaming her temper on a visit by the parents de wank]
[Revised]
I have never comes across this web site prior to this visit…I clicked on this doing a web search (the web site title seemed clever).
My interest is in the Closing of the American Mind. We no longer have people who read (other than web sites?) and are generally not very literate. Literary allusions pass us by. This does bother me as I worry about the future of the country.
The snide comments that I then noted after the main lead-in on this web page has me almost depressed (though it perhaps proves my larger thesis).
Some of you on this page have missed a tree falling in the forest in the midst of your atlas struggles.
As I note in my blog, “The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has published its last edition today (Friday, March 20, 2009). The bloodline of a 146 year old newspaper has been smothered.”
The truth about the dumbing of america is no doubt harsh and hard to stomach. For advocates of threedonia: It is time to get beyond defending purveyors of the school of philosophy that suggest “Stop reading Newspapers, because…”
The death of eposition and the explosion of headlines does have some of us concerned.
See my blog on this Tragedy: The End of Newspapers http://drbs-world.blogspot.com/
I wish you all luck as you struggle with winning the life and death of political battles.
The Sims is a good game. Trying to get a sim to do something important (like eating) and have them constantly say “I don’t feel like it” makes you feel better about your own manhood. (From a guy who likes Nutcracker Ballet)
I was always big on sticking them in a room with no doors, windows or bathrooms. Then just sit back and feel superior.
…and that would be why I’m still single I suppose.
[...] other contributions to the political sphere included blaming Rush Limbaugh for the death of newspapers, which on its own, would be enough to turn the Pulitzer committee on its [...]