No shit.  Of course, no layoffs in sales or marketing.  Well, I imagine whatever the Corporate Right wants to have happen without our knowledge, will happen.  To our detriment.  Thus proving that life is, indeed, a shit sandwich:  The more bread you've got, the less shit you've gotta eat.

choad wrote:

What happens when the dinasnores are gone, and no one's covering the council, courts, cops, schools, libraries, zoning, financing, water, public works, sewer, sanitation, or the state house?

I hear your thoughts and I know where they're coming from.

I'd say, off the top of my head, that very few people have ever paid regular attention to "the council, courts, cops, schools, libraries, zoning, financing, water, public works, sewer, sanitation, or the state house"--except in very rare instances when they are directly affected. 

Well, you counter, fine; but that information resource is about to disappear.

Well, I reply, there will always be that hard (if tiny) core of democracy-minded nutbags who care deeply about these things, and who take the time and trouble to attend meetings/find out what's going on.  I posit that many of these nutbags are already on the Web blogging about their passions, and that in the future more will do so.

If this marvelous Internet works the way it's supposed to--and I'm pretty optimistic that it will--it's entirely possible that the nutbags' nuggets of news will reach more people--at least the most relevant/interesting/inflammatory ones will, because every webster on the net is constantly on the lookout for interesting content--there is never enough content--and will find the good nuggets and link them on their sites, where other websters will see them and link them, and on and on as you've seen for yourself about a bazillion times.  It isn't all starlet crotch shots and Dimitris making the rounds.

The newspapers are/were made up of pandering, slant, lies, spin, tons of advertisements and the occasional fact.  Truly, really, it's only the mode of delivery that is changing.  It is still up to us to sift through it all and make up our own minds, just like always.

The problem goes a little deeper than journalism: On Campus, Liberal Professors Retire

Paging Mr. Hearst.  Paging Mr. Hearst.  Your reprehensible lack of responsible and independent journalism calling.

How soon we forget.

Last edited by whosasailorthen (2008-07-03 09:50:18)

square wrote:

The American concept of objective news reporting is what, less than a century old?  We should probably be surprised it lasted this long.

True and yeah, I guess.

Taint wrote:

We will be hurt by the continuing degradation of daily journalism. When I was a journalist, I covered exactly those things you mentioned, Choad. Borough assemblies and legislatures in Alaska, boards of supervisors and legislatures here in California. I covered utilities, planning issues, and education. People read it. I heard from them all the time. Politicos sought me out because they wanted to make sure their slant got out to the public, and the public sought me out because they wanted to know what the hell the politicos were up to.

I loved what I was doing and I had the wonderful privilege of knowing that what I did mattered. When government transparency is lost, we're all fucked. Kinda like now only more so.

And of course, such coverage is only as good as the journalist covering it.  Here in my 'burb the reporters are lazy.  They go to the same people as sources who spout the same old B.S. on both sides of the issue. For example, every time there is an issue at the local high school they go to this 60 year old lady who has no children in the school, has only a high school education, and considers herself an activist.  She makes a few inflammatory and incorrect comments that miss the core of the issue, and that's what they print.

The same is true of other local issues...they go to the person with the loudest voice and don't even bother to check that the facts are correct.  In much of the country, local news is a joke.

choad wrote:

The damage is real and it's painful to watch.

Yep, that exactly the type of high-schoolish journalism that I was talking about.  Actually, I've seen better articles in high school newspapers.

MSG Tripps wrote:

Damn Northside, them taxes for nothing starting to get to you?

I'm here for the schools.  7 more years to go...

I remember when the tiny Point Reyes Light won a Pulitzer.

Hereabouts, at least this led to this.

choad wrote:

Know what? Fuck the fourth. Let's do up a High-Street Bastille Day instead!

Hey, I'm "with you," man.  Of course, as a Marxist revolutionary who has been calling for a less than "civil" over-haul of this broke-ass, so-called republic for a few decades now, I'm likely not exactly the endorsing voice which you sought.

(Yeah, I know; But, it really is a much better tune than "Bastille Day")