Category: Journalism

News you can’t use

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

If David Wright still had a wife he’d have someone to tell him he is insane for wanting to piss away a few mil’ on Singular, a magazine targeting the single crowd with “advice, travel suggestions and profiles of unmarried people who travel to Tonga, collect vintage sex manuals and play polo when not performing acupuncture.”

The only people writer Alana Semuels quoted in this Los Angeles Times article are over 50. Yeah, there’s a growing demographic for you; 50-somethings with money to burn. How ’bout a sister publication — Shit for Brains: The Journal Proving That Wealth Can’t Buy Smarts?

Speaking of the endless human capacity for self-delusion, Laura Bush and Condi Rice say history will reveal the true greatness of the Bush presidency. Uh huh. Here’s Steve Benen at Political Animal:

It must be comforting for Bush, Rice, and other top officials in the administration to think this way. It’s no doubt frustrating to wake up every morning, and go to work knowing that you’re reviled by most of the public, here and around the world. If you can convince yourself that you’ll be appreciated years from now, it probably takes the edge off.

But that doesn’t make it true. Indeed, wishful thinking about history’s judgment, in the midst of widespread failures in every aspect of government — foreign policy, economic policy, constitutional policy, domestic policy, environmental policy — borders on delusional.

Remember the end of the Clinton administration? How the Repugs were gloating about the adults finally being in charge for a change? Whatever happened to those wise old heads, anyway? This crowd apparently still believes in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny — and thinks all three of them are retarded.

We’re only in it for the money

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments

The decline and fall of American newspapering has been much in the public eye of late, what with the Motown rags going digital, The New York Times tapping its building for a quarter-mil’ in operating cash, and the Rocky Mountain News and other cage-liners either going on the auction block, shedding staff or both.

Now, James Surowiecki has written in The New Yorker something I have been saying all along, that newspapers’ problems extend beyond inept management and the rise of the Internet — the readership bears plenty of blame, too:

The real problem for newspapers, in other words, isn’t the Internet; it’s us. We want access to everything, we want it now, and we want it for free. That’s a consumer’s dream, but eventually it’s going to collide with reality: if newspapers’ profits vanish, so will their product.

Quite right. “Absolutely Free” was a Zappa song, not a business model. Ass, gas or grass, baby — nobody rides for free. Newspapers and magazines have been slow to realize where we and our money were going, but now that they’ve figured it out, we should expect to start seeing virtual paper boxes popping up in our digital neighborhoods.

So keep a few coins handy. You want to hear the Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny delivering its wisdom, you got to give up the em oh en eee why. The alternative is not a good one. Concludes Surowiecki:

For a while now, readers have had the best of both worlds: all the benefits of the old, high-profit regime — intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on — and the low costs of the new one. But that situation can’t last. Soon enough, we’re going to start getting what we pay for, and we may find out just how little that is.

Late update: Here’s a case in point for you. Despite two wars raging, a new president stepping into the Oval Office and a crumbling economy, newspapers are closing or downsizing their Washington bureaus because they can no longer afford them.

Detroit rodents, birds decry press plans

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

The announcement that the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News would shift to an online delivery model, cutting sharply back on home delivery of actual newspapers, drew sharp criticism from caged birds and rodents, puppies and fishmongers throughout the Motor City.

“What, am I supposed to shit on a laptop? An iPhone?” asked Cheepy, a budgie accustomed to crapping on the Freep’s editorial page. “The first time I drop a load on the boss’ Blackberry I’m cat food.”

Added Pooky, a Rottweiler puppy rescued from a Motown shelter: “You ever been swatted with a rolled-up Dell Latitude? Hurts like a motherfucker, I ain’t lyin’. I got worms, I don’t need nobody addin’ to my misery. Couple more reminders from Mr. Dell and somebody ‘roun’ here be pickin’ his nose with his elbow, know what I’m talkin’ ’bout?”

Trouble every day

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

Even NPR is running ’em out the door now. John McChesney and Ketzel Levine are among the 7 percent of staff to be unplugged, along with the shows “Day to Day” and “News and Notes,” as the public broadcaster tries to erase a projected budget shortfall of $23 million for this fiscal year.

“Companywide, NPR is laying off 64 people and eliminating 21 other positions that are currently vacant,” writes David Folkenflik.

The culprit, says NPR? Same sumbitch that nailed the rest of us in the wallet pocket — the Wall Street meltdown, which croaked interest payments from an endowment created from the bequest of the late Joan Kroc, which has typically paid NPR about $10 million a year.

Like the man said, a million here, a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

Late update: That would be a billion here, etc., as Bruce has reminded me. Everett Dirksen. They told me that stuff would damage my brain, but did I listen? Nooooo.

Later update: Almost forgot to wish a happy birthday to one of my favorite authors, poet and novelist Jim Harrison. I was reminded by Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac” on NPR. Harrison mentions NPR now and again in his latest novel, “The English Major,” which the critics love more than I do. But then what the hell do I know? I met Harrison once, briefly, following a reading at The Colorado College, and asked him to sign a copy of “Warlock.” He complied, somewhat grouchily, I thought; later I discovered he hated that novel, which he apparently whipped out at speed for money. I loved it. It seems unlikely that I will be invited to visit Montana for a week of fly-fishing with Harrison and Thomas McGuane anytime soon.

Write on!

~ Patrick O'Grady

In The New Republic, Mark Pinsky calls for the resurrection of the Federal Writers Project as a bailout for laid-off journalists, a less-than-exclusive club to which he belongs:

Gifted FWP alumni who went on to distinguished literary careers in literature include John Steinbeck, John Cheever, Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, and African-Americans Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright. The recent death of Studs Terkel — a FWP veteran who went on to use the skills he developed in the program to chronicle the working- and middle-classes on his long-running radio show and in his Pulitzer Prize-winning books — is a reminder of how valuable this kind of experience can be. Ellison used his FWP research in “Invisible Man,” and Steinbeck and John Gunther relied on the FWP state guides for “Travels With Charley: In Search of America” and “Inside U.S.A.,” respectively.

Count me in. I haven’t been laid off — yet — but I feel that should worse come to worst, I’m ready, willing and able to contribute to some compilation of cheap jokes at other people’s expense. It’s either that or move to Montana to become a dental-floss tycoon.