Kinsley: Whistling In The Media Darkness
While somewhat right on the implications for style, Kinsley's basic premise is still a farce. Ultimately, it amounts to little more than re-visiting the broadsheet versus the tabloid debate that belonged more to last decade, than the one we're in now. And he takes no real establishment bias to heart.
Keep on whistling Michael, eventually you may get the right tune. But by then, you'll likely only be performing on the Internet, as opposed to in print much at all. Raise your hands if you ever went to a computer store and told them how desperately you needed one, as your newspaper was just too long. People will still buy them. Some accommodation has to be arranged for the old dog, after all. But making print popular again is beyond any trick any writer can dream up, on line, or off.
One reason seekers of news are abandoning print newspapers for the Internet has nothing directly to do with technology. It’s that newspaper articles are too long. On the Internet, news articles get to the point. Newspaper writing, by contrast, is encrusted with conventions that don’t add to your understanding of the news. Newspaper writers are not to blame. These conventions are traditional, even mandatory.
Hey, Dan, great new year!
About Kinsley’s premise… One would rather have expected Camille Paglia to make such an argument.
“Some accommodation has to be arranged for the old dog, after all. But making print popular again is beyond any trick any writer can dream up, on line, or off.”
I am not sure that is actually true. People still like the paper medium, there are countless magazines, and still some papers that are increasing volume. The failing of the medium, at least for me, was when I had to start fact checking the paper via online as opposed to my earlier having to fact check online via print. When it became apparent that the vast majority of print media stories that I needed factual information on were in fact incorrect or egregiously biased, I stopped dropping two quarters in the slot on my way to work. Papers like the Wall Street Journal are still worth the investment in, papers like the New York Times, not so much. What the print media needs to do is fire all the idealists and hire some actual reporters who want to get to the truth, even if they only break one great story per week, if all the rest of the paper’s reporting is unbiased, accurate and at least entertaining, then I would bet that people would be willing to drop a few dollars a week for a daily delivery, or more to just grab it on the way into work as I used to do.
Nothing makes a customer angrier than being lied to by the people you are paying money, and as more and more people have woken up over the last decade to the blatant bias and lies being fed to them by their news sources, it became more and more likely that the bill for the paper was going to be sent out around the same time someone was very upset with having been lied to and decided to keep the money and use it for a broadband internet connection instead.
When I was 7, McDonald’s was caught selling hamburgers in third world countries made from kangaroo meat. I never eat McDonald’s. When I was 13, my favorite restaurant stopped serving Pepsi products, particularly Mountain Dew, and when I asked why, I was told it was because Coke threatened to raise the price of their product if they continued to serve Pepsi products, I never buy Coke products anymore. I am perfectly happy to boycott companies that I feel are immoral. I hope more people are like me, or become more like me.
As I grew up in the 1980s, I read three papers every day: Dallas Morning News, NYTs and WaPo.
I stopped reading when I discovered I might as well be reading fiction. So I switched.
Its still entertaining these days to compare them to the net. I followed the ACORN and CRU scandals very closely the first week they broke. I was at a relatives house who still had Wapo and NYTs delivered. It was hysterical to watch how diligently they censored by omission. Like children putting on their first magic show. “Yes Maureen, the rabbit really vanished! Wow!…”
Newspaper writers are not to blame. These conventions are traditional, even mandatory.
I forget the author, but some b-school textbook contained this quote (paraphrased): All failed companies have said exactly the same thing: “But this is how we’ve always done it.”