Didja get any onya?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

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.

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?”

Less than zero

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments
Chilly outside, chillin' inside.
Chilly outside, chillin' inside.

Arrrgh. Six below when I arose, a balmy minus-3 at 9:30 a.m. Woo hoo, ain’t nothin’ but a party. Word is we’re in the deep freeze for a few days at minimum, and lemme tell you, Las Cruces, Tucson and Hell are all starting to look pretty nice to me right now. Bibleburg looks not unlike the Ninth Circle of Dante’s Inferno, only with more faux Christians.

Herself has skipped the drive to Mile High in favor of working from home, and I am at liberty, with no deadlines looming. Ordinarily that would mean a bracing ride, or perhaps a run, but not everyone in Bibleburg is as conscientious as I am about shoveling walks, and my idea of a good time is not a shattered elbow, rolled ankle or cracked kneecap, an injury that befell my 83-year-old neighbor Marv, who took a digger after church yesterday and now sports an immobilizer that looks like some bit of gear out of “Iron Man.”

Turkish (a.k.a. Mighty Whitey, Big Pussy, Turkenstein, The Turkinator, et al) still wants outside, weather be damned, but he has a luxurious fur coat for warmth, claws for traction and a brain the size of a walnut. Miss Mia Sopaipilla, wiser despite her tender years, is content to stay inside.

It’s even colder in Denver, where employees of The Rocky Mountain News have launched a blog in a last-ditch attempt to save the paper from oblivion and MediaNews honcho and Denver Post publisher William Dean Singleton has asked unions at The Post and Denver Newspaper Agency to reopen their labor contracts.

Sole brother

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment
Someone's stink-foot nearly put a hurt on The Decider's nose.
Someone's stink-foot nearly put a hurt on The Decider's nose.

Finally, someone in the press corps grows a pair, and size 10s, too. Too bad he wasn’t one of ours. But they’re all too busy blowing kisses at Oprah to throw shoes at The Decider.

Could the Mystery Man have been a Zappatista? It’s not known for certain; it all happened too quickly for me to see whether those unidentified flying zapatos were  brown shoes (they didn’t make it, which may be a clue) or a pair of too-tight, stink-foot python boots.

Then again, he could’ve been a Firesign Theatre fan: “Shoes for Industry! Shoes for the Dead!” Just another returning deceased war veteran hungry for that good-paying job, more sugar, and the free mule he’d been dreaming of. Too bad everything he knew was wrong.