Not this blog … the LA Times blogs.
I’ve said for a while that it will be easier for newspapers to learn to blog than for bloggers to learn to be publishers. Note that that doesn’t cover the cost-structure overhang that is threatening media companies today, which is what’s going to grind them as institutions for the next few years.
So the LA Times has hired local blog wild man Tony Pierce to run their blog presence. I’m trying to decide on an over/under for his tenure there, but can say with some cofidence it’ll be short.
Now that’s not because he and I butted heads when he laid out some bullshit about Pajamas Media. It’s not because he was just quoted as saying
Huffington Post showed up out of nowhere when no one asked for another political blog and is now getting more hits than Drudge mostly because they are serious about politics and they’re echoing what regular Americans actually believe.
…that’ll fit him right in with the Times folks.
It’s because he’s batshit crazy.
But I say that like it’s a bad thing. Maybe not, eh? We’ll see…
To me he seems to be like the kids at college that never take their work seriously, and end up failing miserably.
so whats you’re over/under? short is a relative word/
🙂
anyways thanks for the love
Thanks for the utterly subpar punctuation and capitalization.
Ha! HAH! I knew that LA Times people dictated all their writing!
Just kidding, Tony. Just like you were kidding about Huffington Post, unless you really think that most regular Americans believe in political assassination (literal as well as metaphorical) and think that Alec Baldwin is an intellectual.
In a related incident…
Patterico has been covering the LA Times not allowing critical posts on their readers’ representative blog.
“See it here”:http://patterico.com/2007/12/04/comments-the-la-times-hasnt-posted-on-the-readers-representatives-blog/
Glen, you know, I get the idea that some people think that everyone should just stop trying to take in news altogether because it is so biased and agenda-driven that it might pollute their brains.
Where do you get your news from, Glen?
Alan –
From the microchip in my head, where else?
I don’t understand the apples-and-oranges comparison of Drudge and Huffington, and I’m not too eager to have somebody explain it, either.
When “taking in news”, you don’t have to worry about bias so long as you learn to recognize it. Slightly more bothersome are bonehead factual errors (AP stories are always suspect), and the occasional outright lies and fabrications.
But what really bothers me, Alan, is not the errors and lies, but the journalists who defend their errors and lies for months on end.
The commenters who defend the errors and lies aren’t very entertaining either.
Fine, good response Glen. What’s everyone so worked up about then? Don’t you think most people already assume or can recognize that there is a kind of bias in the media or in anything people tell each other (although to different degrees and for different purposes)? Who cares what the chattering class says anyway? Perhaps you underestimate the average person’s ability to maintain healthy skepticism.
Don’t you sort of have to feel this way, especially after living in Rush Limbaugh’s America for the past 10 years? Even Brian Williams admits to listening to his broadcasts, a network newsman. So if it were the case that biased messages cast an undue influence on public opinion, wouldn’t you expect the congress and most of the country to self-identify as “Republican” or support Conservative policies in proportion to the greater reach of their views across our Corporate Media-controlled Land? You might already be aware that in fact “the opposite is true.”:http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=312 In my view, the only think keeping us together as a nation in these polarized fratricidal times is the good sense of the average American to recognize bullshit when they hear it.
Damn, Glen, now I got that stupid Boomtown Rats song stuck in my head…