The Decider has finally turned the money hose on Detroit, and don’t I wish I were standing nearby with a bucket. One of my paychecks has mysteriously gone walkabout again and Visa would like nothing better than to get me by the plums with a downhill pull.
Meanwhile, in the spirit of the holiday season, there’s a fresh rant up at VeloNews.com. No charge. Think of it as my little gift to you this Zappadan.
Interesting concept, eh? I get paid (or don’t, as the case may be) to dash off my little online japes. The editors get paid to read and post it. And the publisher has to write the check (or not). But you, you lucky devils — you get off scot-free. Except for having to notice all those bloody ads for this and that in your peripheral vision, which does tax the eyeballs, does it not?
Not only is my stuff free to you, it’s easily accessible. Couple clicks of the mouse and there I am in all my pointless, content-free glory. It’s a pretty specialized delivery system, when you think about it. If all you care about is reading me, or Lennard Zinn, or Bob Mionske, you don’t have to thumb through a wad of other stuff to get to us. Click, click and off you go.
(More on this later. Herself is screeching that I look like a coconut and am in dire need of a haircut.)
OK, I’m freshly shaven and back to deep thought. I click the mouse for my national and international news, coverage of fringe sports like cycling, leftist political commentary and expert advice I can use to make my life richer (investment advice, recipes from elite chefs, and so on). I know where to go and how to get there.
I would like to read local news, too, and plenty of it, without having to wade through a wad of other stuff that is more easily available online: the aforementioned national and international news; pointless coverage of mainstream professional sports already covered to excess by TV; and the endless smelly pile of treacly features keyed to days of the week (Food, Life, Money, et al). But I can’t get local and regional news — not a lot of it, anyway, and certainly not reliably — with a click of the mouse.
If the Gazette were to do without all the trappings that defined the Newspaper v1.0 and become a strictly local news source, I might subscribe again. But if it keeps trying to be all things to all people, I’ll continue to withhold my pennies and watch it die a slow, lingering death.
Late update: Incidentally, if this post seems even more scatter-brained than usual, it may be because the cats were dancing on my head at 4 a.m. and set me to thinking creakily about some of the excellent comments in an earlier post.
Mad Blog Media 
Pretty sharp-edged Rant, Patrick.
We have been in danger of degenerating into a nation of knuckle-draggers, Limbaughites, and loudmouths. Do we need major and minor penalties in ‘cross now? A penalty box?
A friend of mine stopped refereeing kiddie soccer because the parents were out of control. He nearly needed a police escort one day when he called a forfeit on account of egregiously poor parental sportsmanship on one side. Finally said the hell with it.
In the long run, the pen or oration is still mightier than the sword of uppercut, but it doesn’t help in the short term if you are picking yourself up off the floor.
Senior O’Grady:
Merry Christmas, Happy Janukah, Happy Kwanza, Happy Holidays, and Happy Zappadan!
Excellent Rant at VN. So all I have to do for fame is to be a raging asshole in public at an otherwise totally cool event? Oh and do some expensive collateral damage? And not take any responsibility? I’m sure the dude feels totally justified.
May your paycheck find you soon. (We must get you signed up for direct deposit.)
It’s 80F and overcast in the PetroMetro. The air smells like a refinery. (Maybe because this is a refinery.)
Cheers,
Jeff in PetroMetro
Great Rant. Don’t know why VeloNews doesn’t hire you for more.
I’m kinda new to this reader comment thing, so bear with my somewhat unstructured writing.
As a marketing guy, I’ve been quite surprised how easy it can be to influence news coverage by the local newspaper. They don’t have squat for a staff budget, so they’re pretty open to news that is given to them. A press release and a followup phone call have worked pretty well for me with the local paper. Plus it galls them when people call up the editor and ask about some local news that they didn’t know about. So previous writers like SteveO’ are quite correct, and I get the local paper delivered, but there’s more we can do.
Re the bad behavior in cycling, its been around for a while. As a long-time (and now former) cycling referee I can say that the trigger for me to give it up was bad behavior at Superweek in Milwaukee. These guys in the rant are the latest, but my introduction was a spring training race in the late 70’s, where I watched one guy jump off his bike onto another rider as the field rolled down the road, and then proceed to roll on the ground in the ditch, the both of them flailing away at each other. I still remember being dumbfounded that both of them could be so stupid.
So happy holidays, and keep the rubber side down.
Ah, a hockey fight at a bike race. Gotta love it!!! If that happened more often I’d give a flying fig about cycling again. But more L.A. and I’ll…..zzzzzzz………zzzzzzzzz