Jonathan Kay, listen my canuck "friend"... as long as you write columns like this: Bring Khadr Home, there will be a need for an alternative to your leftist drivel.
Posted on 08/06/2008 2:39:53 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
With media stocks plummeting, a noisy army of pundits is predicting the imminent extinction of print newspapers and magazines. I hope they're wrong--for two reasons.
The obvious reason is self-interest: If freebie blogs and news aggregators kill off the National Post and its ilk, then I'm going to have to go back to my high school job, manning the drive-thru at McDonald's.
But I have a more noble reason, too: a genuine, altruistic desire for an educated citizenry. Not to be old-fashioned, but there are certain kinds of important stories that simply cannot be covered, except by deep-pocketed traditional media organizations employing professional journalists.
This thought struck me with particular force on Sunday, as I read "Malwebolence," Mattathias Schwartz's extraordinary article about Internet trolls in this week's issue of The New York Times Magazine.
You probably have met an Internet troll -- even if you don't know the term. They are the juvenile cretins who infest Internet message boards, taunting the earnest types chatting away about Gossip Girl, or Barack Obama, or Scientology. Their method is to post willfully ignorant, insulting messages, then sit back and enjoy the righteous, impotent fury aroused among the true believers.
Trolling is an inherently nihilistic activity -- which is why most trolls tend to be adolescent males, the sort of specimens who would otherwise entertain themselves by using bathroom graffiti to libel the sexual habits of high-school classmates. But there is a small elite that has turned trolling into a full-time calling. They congregate on anonymous Web sites such as 4chan.org, and informally tally the "lulz" they've earned by humiliating others.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalpost.com ...
The media has only themselves to blame for their situation.
They chose to stop reporting the news impartially.
Let ‘em wither on the vine!
And could I get a large Coke? Light ice.
What Jonathan wants to say is that there is no other way defeat neocons “except by deep-pocketed traditional media organizations employing professional journalists”.
Ah, the dark, evil Internet... look out!
Jonathan Kay, listen my canuck "friend"... as long as you write columns like this: Bring Khadr Home, there will be a need for an alternative to your leftist drivel.
> They chose to stop reporting the news impartially.
It’s an obvious problem that would be so easy for them to fix — but they won’t.
“Investigative” journalism spelled D-O-O-M for the reporter’s profession. Watergate was the hi-tide mark, and the waves have been receding ever since.
What an idiot.
When I first arrived in Newport News we had two good daily newspapers - the Daily Press for mornings and the Times Herald for afternoon.
The Chicago Tribune bought the Daily Press and soon after bought the Times Herald. They became known locally as the Morning Mistake and the Afternoon Correction. The Times Herald was shut down and published its last edition in 1991. The Daily Press launched a drive to educate us poor dumb Southern Rednecks. They had to teach us that President Bush was evil and that only the Democratic Party could save the nation. We had to learn that firearms were evil and only police officers should be armed. Southern Tradition was evil and backward and only Yankees were civilized.
I cancelled my subscription. Today, with subscriptions still dropping they’re still trying to “educate” us.
Senator Craig's foot taps - HUGE STORY!
John Edwards concubine - *crickets*
Either report both stories equally or ignore them both equally Mr Kay.
Sounds good. But what the author seems to fear (and I would tend to agree with him on this) is that there will be no new impartial media out there to replace the flawed Old Media. As he mentions, the news websites that are most popular at the moment, are anything but impartial. Blogs are almost invariably partisan. Is impartiality doomed?
The print media leaders, The N.Y. Times, L.A. Times, Washington Post have for years bent the truth or outright lied to meet their ideals.
We don’t want to be lead by these papers, we just want the news truthfully presented. These papers refuse to do so. They constantly are found to have made up stories completely or lied in others. They keep these unethical practices up, they deserve to be driven out of business.
Hell the N.Y.Times alone has lost 60 percent of its value in the last 18 months. A rather nice beginning if ya ask me.
Have it your way.
I don’t know. We’re Americans. Inventive. Heads would rise above the crowd. I’d buy an impartial newspaper. I’m 54. I’d love to SEE an impartial newspaper for once.
Actually, the raw AP news website is fairly impartial.
When one can’t discuss their own attributes, they instead bash their competitors.
This guy HAS to be a troll. How the hell else could he write:
“Not to be old-fashioned, but there are certain kinds of important stories that simply cannot be covered, except by deep-pocketed traditional media organizations employing professional journalists.”
..And then proceed to get his facts all messed up in the article?
lol
Part of my government training was to be a PIO (Public Information Officer)
It was interesting to sit in on press conference of facts that I knew very well. The press briefing kit had been well crafted. The briefing was precise and informative. Yet, at the briefing, "reports" (arbiters of the truth) would ask leading questions as if there was some hidden fact the government was withholding.
When the news articles were published, often we could not recognize what was reported with what they had been told.
I have since learned not to believe what is printed in a newspaper because it was often written by someone who could not take a set of facts and properly digest them. The PIOs were often on the telephone, after the fact with the reporters using the opportunity to correct their stories, and sometimes to add something that none of the other papers had yet understood. It would have been easier if the paper would have just quoted from our press briefing. Yet they want to put the facts through their magic filter as if the masses can only understand it better that way.
Instead newspapers have become havens for unhappy liberals who want to use their forum to reeducate the masses.
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