The death of American journalism: The horror of modern American journalism is on display wherever you look.
Examples:
In the next few weeks, citizens will look on as the “press corps” pretends to examine the new Ryan budget plan. (To watch Drum fight with the opening rounds of the nonsense, just click this.)
At Slate, Tanner Colby takes a punishing look at the way Bob Woodward was doing business as early as the 1980s. Was this great man always a fraud? To examine that question, click here.
Last night, O’Reilly’s recent wave of lunacy continued apace on Fox. Last Friday, Scarborough and Sachs published that ludicrous op-ed column—and the Washington Post allowed it. And let’s be honest:
If you watch MSNBC, you’ll see a lot of open clowning on that pitiful channel too. After a long time away, we watched a bit of Sharpton last night. It was a deeply disappointing return. For years, we were fans of the man.
Pseudo-journalism is big money, or potential big money, especially on TV. You shouldn’t trust a single person who’s snarfing that money up.
This brings us to the latest stage in Salon’s rolling act of self-destruction.
Rather plainly, Salon has decided that it can’t support itself in the manner to which it’s accustomed without printing a lot of truly ridiculous crap. This culture is especially strong on the weekends, although it seems it has started to spread.
To see Salon’s latest descent to the ocean floor, read every word of the pitiful piece which appeared this Sunday. “I was a comedy groupie,” the eyeball-grabbing headline thoughtfully said.
This is the way Elianna Lev began her confession, a few words of which may be true:
LEV (3/10/13): “Hold your ass apart and don’t move.”We’ll assume that we all can agree that this sort of work exists for one reason—to attract a large number of low-grade eyeballs. Plainly, Salon has decided that it can’t survive unless it hands us fiery liberals insightful work of this type, work in whuich we get to ogle the author's “self-worth issues.”
The rewards have become very great in this world. The rats have been scrambling after the cheese for quite a few years at this point.
Look around you! Almost everything you see in the press is an imitation of life. You see imitations of interviews and imitations of news reports. You see Lev’s imitation of a spread-apart ass, inviting us liberals in.
This is the shape of your national culture. It has been this way for a very long time. Career players know not to tell.
While the press is clowning, there are stories of enormous importance that receive little coverage. E.g., see this amazing talk by Allen Savory on desertification.
ReplyDelete“Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,” begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And it's happening to about two-thirds of the world’s grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes -- and his work so far shows -- that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.
A propos:
Deletehttp://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/ezra-klein-gets-it-very-wrong-031113
Btw, the last was not really a reply to David in Cal but a comment on the OP. For some reason the system would only allow me to comment in the form of a reply to D in C. Some sort of Ground Hog Day nightmare.
ReplyDeleteIt's indicative of my surprise and disgust that I'm saying that I don't think that you're being fair to the rest of the media.
ReplyDeleteNot in this comparison.
Poor Glenn Greenwald.
Regarding Salon, you must remember that tey have gotten rid of all of their writers who were being paid to write. One gets what one pays for.
ReplyDeleteHas Salon started putting in pics of female celebs in low-cut tops, like Huffington Post? I think the marker for the start of Salon's decline was Glen Greenwald's move to The Guardian. They'll hit bottom when they're indistinguishable from HuffPo. Almost there.
ReplyDeleteSalon has always engaged in this kind of sexy time fun. As with the Oscars, the real issue is vulgarity, some people can't get enough.
ReplyDelete