When I was a sprat learning my trade at the Colorado Springs Sun one of my jobs was to strip and sort the wire-service copy from the newspaper’s various teletypes, which supplied news and features from outfits like United Press International, The New York Times, and The Associated Press.
Mostly they’d just grumble along like everyone else in the newsroom, dutifully punching out bits of this and that. But occasionally they’d go wild, ringing bells like Quasimodo on meth, for big-ticket items like Tricky Dick’s resignation or the Symbionese Liberation Army going up in flames.
The teletypes and their bells are long gone, but the wire services remain. At some outfits, anyway.
But the “newspapers” of Gannett and McClatchy will soon be drastically reducing their use of The Associated Press, according to their corporate overlords via The New York Times.
The reasoning, such as it is, came laid out in the sort of grandiose and spurious bushwa favored by the mouthpieces who speak on behalf of that famous First Amendment advocate, Slander N. DeFame.
“Between USA Today and our incredible network of more than 200 newsrooms, we create more journalism every day than The A.P.” That’s Kristin Roberts, the chief “content” officer of Gannett, in a company memo. Anyone purporting to speak for journalism who frames it as “content” is farting higher than his or her arse.
That also goes for Lark-Marie Antón, a spokescreature for Gannett, who issued a statement proclaiming that ceasing to use AP articles, photos, and videos “enables us to invest further in our newsrooms.” Ho, ho, etc. I looked up “investment” in The AP Stylebook and it said nothing about gutting newsrooms, idling presses, and selling the buildings that once housed them both.
McClatchy, a once-proud news outfit based in Sacramento, was snatched up out of bankruptcy four years ago by the hedge fund Chatham Asset Management, ending 163 years of family control.
The new owners subsequently were charged with “improper trading of certain fixed income securities” and took a $19 million hit in fines and disgorgement, a story that apparently went uncovered in McClatchy publications.
But they don’t need the AP, either. Kathy Vetter, McClatchy’s senior vice president of news and audience, said in an email that the decision means her masters “will no longer pay millions for content that serves less than 1 percent of our readers.”
Like the ones who might like to know whose drawers the hedge fund is pulling down, hey? One doesn’t find piano playing of such quality in any old whorehouse. Bravissimo!
Thus our sources of information about the world outside the corporate boardroom — or inside it, for that matter — continue to dwindle. Back to you, Chet.
Mad Blog Media 