As IF Times

link Newspaper bane: Nobody reads the stories.

One of the great consequences of the trend towards packaging news and entertainment into bite sized pieces for the modern A.D.D. culture is that much of the depth of information is lost.  Ironically, at a time in history when there has never been as much information, news and entertainment so readily available to so many, people are as uninformed as ever about events that affect their lives.

In the news business, this can arguably be traced back to the appearance of USA Today, a publication that was novel when it first appeared in the early ’80’s.  In many ways, this paper set the trend for the format of how news was to be presented as we see it today.  Up until its appearance, most newspapers were uniformly drab in appearance and pedestrian in their reportage.  When USA Today showed up, there was color on the pages, there were quick headlines supported by only short write-ups.  The paper was made for the hurried commuter interested only in scanning the headlines of news, sports and entertainment on a given workday.

Then the 24 hour news channels started up, the pioneer of which was CNN. All of a sudden, it was essential to fill the airwaves with ‘news’, but in short headline style delivery.  With the advent of the internet, Google, Yahoo and Bing News supplanted cable stations and newspapers as being primary sources of information.  It’s important to note the distinction between the modern news sources and the older newspapers.  Google, Bing and Yahoo are only aggregators of news, they actually don’t create it.   Their role is to cast as wide a net as possible to capture the most eyeballs to their sites.  While this may seem  democratic and in the spirit of free markets, in reality, the editors of those sites wield powerful control over the content which is presented on their sites thereby influencing public opinion as newspapers did in past generations.  The difference is that there are no editorial columns on the sites of the news aggregators; the influence is through the selection of stories that get to be featured prominently in their links.

For example, the influence of Justin Bieber in our culture (outside of the pimply set ) is wildly exaggerated by virtue of regular breathless stories of his exploits on any given day.  Same with Lindsay Lohan, P. Diddy, or any of the Kardashians.  We are bombarded by the inane and insane outbursts by such as Al Sharpton and Al Gore who are given platforms well beyond what they could muster if not aided by a willing media.  I suspect that most people never even bother to read the underlying stories, since the content is pretty much expected given the personalities involved.  Why bother to read the body of the story, since we know a story involving Sharpton involves imagined racism and a story involving Gore involves imagined warming.

The real sea change however is the art of headline writing.  To catch peoples’ attentions, dramatic headlines are the hook by which readers are drawn in.  In fact, headline writing continues as a skill in itself and if done correctly, obviates the need to read an entire story.  I recall years ago when Nikita Kruschev passed away; the headline was: “Top Red Dead”.  Today, we have reportage of Anthony Wiener’s brazen campaign for mayor in New York City offering headlines such as “Weiner support getting soft” or “Weiner support shrinking” and his response which states, “Wiener sticking it out”.   The President even waded into the situation by chastising Wiener.  So of course, the headline is “Obama beats Wiener”.

Perhaps no one today is as adept at the “story in a headline” technique as Matt Drudge in his eponymous  Drudge Report.  From nowhere 10 years ago to inarguably the most powerful media figure today (next to Roger Ailes ) his news site brings the top stories of the day concisely and bluntly.  As an example, the top headlines in today’s Drudge lists the following:

link The Years of Shame – NYTimes.com.

Some may be aware of the writings, or more correctly the rantings of Paul Krugmann.  By profession, he is an economist, yet somehow his unhinged opinions on politics is where he derives most of his notoriety these days.   In the most recent missive published in the New York Times, the true depth of his insanity is on full display for the world to see.

Even as the U.S. rightly commemorates the September 11 bombings from ten years ago, Krugmann fires some vile shots at Messrs. Bush and Giuliani for the heinous crime of happening to be in charge when the terrorist acts took place.   He calls them false heroes who capitalized on the incident to aggrandize themselves.  As I’ve said numerous times, everyone is entitled to their opinions, no matter how out of touch with reality they may be.  The greatest benefit of living in a free society is that any and every idiot is allowed a voice.   Only by comparing these opinions with actual facts can  people determine whether or not to listen to these idiots. 

Years ago, a golfer savant named Moe Norman was recognized for his genius in doing one thing; striking a golf ball.  Other than this very narrow area of human achievement, he was essentially unable to communicate with people.  As long as you didn’t expect anything sage from his unintelligible utterances, you could admire his innate skill.  Apart from his ball striking ability, you couldn’t depend on his opinion on whether or not the sun came out much less on a topic of any kind.  Certainly, no one would seek his opinion on the state of fiscal balances in the economy.

Krugmann seems to fall into this same category.  Although a past winner of a Nobel prize in economics, it’s worth noting that Al Gore and Barack Obama are also Nobel winners, so this in itself is not a validation of other-worldy brilliance.  Unlike Mr. Norman, Krugmann has the soapbox of The New York Times to express his nonsense and that’s where it gets evil.  There are those people out there that still think the Times is a legitimate news organization.  Over the past 30 years and increasingly in the past 10, the opinions espoused in that circular are more conspicuously out of sync with reality.  It’s as if they lived in their own delusional bizarro world where reality is an inconvenient nuisance.  To them, gravity is the product of some capitalist monopoly.

There will always be a market for this kind of ‘journalism’, but increasingly, that niche market of leftist drivel is shrinking as subscription levels prove.  According to their own statistics, the Times circulation has fallen to just about 830,000 in 2010,  a decline of 5% from a year ago which was also in decline from the year previous.   When they publish the opinions such as Krugmann’s it serves to marginalize them more and more from sane people.  Even Moe Norman would wince.