Another Darwin Award Winner!
Posted on 12/02/2019 7:49:05 AM PST by EyesOfTX
Great, but don’t go making promises you can’t keep. – Political fantasy writer Michael Wolff, the author of the anti-Trump fantasy “Fire and Fury,” promised in a Friday interview with Spectator USA that he plans to say no more about President Donald Trump.
“Every magazine I have ever worked for, and I have worked for them all, is dead or will die shortly,” he explained. “For another thing, Donald Trump is the one consuming subject, sucking all views and opinions into his void, and on this issue I have nothing left to say.”
“Still, even with the collapse of so many journalistic enterprises, many of my former colleagues still go on at great and constant unpaid length on social media or, scrambling for a pay-per-appearance contract, as desperately willing pundits on cable television. Why? People are afraid, it seems, to say nothing,” Wolff proclaimed. “I’m looking forward to trying.”
Ok, so, what this most likely means is the spinner of fables has a new book coming out early next year and has begun his promotional tour early. But really, who gives a damn? He’s a fantasy writer, and not a very good one.
What caught my eye about his comments, though, was this part: “Every magazine I have ever worked for, and I have worked for them all, is dead or will die shortly.” Bingo. And why is that?
Well, we had a wonderful example of why that’s the case just this past weekend, didn’t we? That would be the incident with near-dead Newsweek publishing a false report by Jessica Kwong that the President planned to spend his Thanksgiving Day “tweeting” and “golfing” when in fact he was in the process of making a wearying trip to Afghanistan for a surprise visit with the U.S. troops there.
Kwong was fired as a result, but the name of the specific reporter who filed this specific is not even relevant anymore, since her false report was just another in an unending procession of this kind of intentionally false report over the last four years, all designed to damage the President’s reputation. It is seriously as if every newspaper, magazine and TV outlet in America is in a competition to see who among them can abandon all pretense to journalistic ethics the most quickly and abhorrently.
In other words, the disgraceful hackery taking place at Newsweek is just a symptom of an industry on its death bed. Newsweek is just the magazine version of the New York Times and the newspaper business, or CNN and the TV “news” industry. They are all dying along with the profession of journalism generally
The journalist hacks like to blame the slow-motion death of their industry on the Internet, and the sucking up of all the advertising revenues by Google and Facebook, but that’s a cop-out, an attempt to deflect the blame away from their own failings.
The print industry awoke to the threat posed by the digital space a quarter of a century ago. It is incumbent upon any business that becomes faced with a sudden existential threat to adapt and work harder to improve its product offering and become more competitive.
But by and large, newspapers and magazines not by becoming more competitive and improving their product, but by repeatedly laying people off, cutting their product to shreds and raising prices. With every subsequent cut and price increase, the quality of the product grew worse.
Any sense of journalistic ethics were gradually tossed to the winds along with the jobs of researchers, copy editors and other quality control functions. Thus, we end up with today’s situation at most of these publications with a single person who was poorly-educated in some J-school to do one of these jobs trying to do all of them in a mad rush to get something, anything posted out on the website that might attract some clicks.
And that’s how you end up with a Jessica Kwong – although the name makes no real difference at all because it could have been any one of thousands of people doing the exact same thing every day – becoming the sacrificial lamb at Newsweek for doing nothing more than following that fake publication’s current business model.
The magazine industry is in fact dying a death by slow-motion suicide and Michael Wolff, a guy who made his living by penning highly-sensationalized fantasies in order to maximize clicks, is in fact one of the major culprits. If he can now really make himself “say nothing” on any subject as promised in that interview, he’d be doing his industry – and everyone else – a huge favor.
That is all.
Funny, what that woman did to get fired..saying Trump would be tweeting and golfing..it was a stupid comment but I’m pretty sure the trip was kept secret and a lot worse has been said about him.
But to hell with her. :)
Unfortunately a Trump hating publication will pay her double to hire her based on this.
“For another thing, Donald Trump is the one consuming subject, sucking all views and opinions into his void .....”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I used to ride horses a lot. One of the lessons I learned was when to get off when a horse is “misbehaving” badly. Normally, you ride it out because if the horse “wins” by bucking, etc. you lose control & respect. You bail OFF when the horse is so crazed with whatever is going on, that it will inflict harm on itself (examples from experience: throwing itself down a ditch, slamming against trees, etc.) and thus, on you ... being dead/maimed is not worth sticking it out on a horse like that. This is where the Trump haters are .... so crazed, eaten up & blinded by hate, that they will destroy themselves to try & rid themselves of Trump. The non-crazed people in this country, voters, newspaper/magazine readers, cable TV watchers .... we’re all bailing off.
Because more people have abandoned the print medium in favor of quick answers through the internet. Many good magazines are dying, and this is a shame.
As for the fake news mags: newsweek, us snooze and world report and time, I wish them a speedy extinction. I see them in doctors’ offices but would never buy one.
Sounds like a crack addict.
It is the media that has made Trump the only subject talked about 24/7
They all can’t go bankrupt fast enough for me.
All of them.
Absolutely, the entire industry, well at least a good majority, are pandering to those who think like them. Problem is the real numbers prove that they are not pandering to the majority, but indeed the minority. Excellent piece DB.
Dying? They’ve been dead inside for years, it’s just taking a bit extra for the corpse to stop moving.
Hot Rod and Super Chevy will be the last man standing !
For at least 50 years, there has been very little "sense of journalistic ethics" in the fast majority of the Media.
What we are seeing is their desperation. For 50 years, the (Progressive) media essentially ran the nation as a Mediacracy.
As technology changed and awareness of their meddling took hold, we have reached a critical point where they do not have the power to keep control of politicians.
Donald Trump won because he did not fear the Media, and fought back. Many other politicians are learning that lesson.
A Republic, not ruled by a Mediacracy, will be much different than what we have seen for the last 50 years.
Every Magazine including National Geographic, and Smithsonian have turned hard left. My wife cut subscriptions to her Women’s magazines including Good Housekeeping when they turned against President Trump. Who needs to pay for that left wing crap?
I get my every so often copy of American Motors Owners Association magazine.
All very nice except for the fact that the sequence is out of order.
There were pretty damned few fact checkers left by 1986 and that was long before the Internet was grabbing revenue.
Last 4 years? More like the last 60 years. “Dewey Defeats Truman”, anyone?
This is true and it means all paid/salaried/contract writers are being pushed out into the ‘pitch for your lives’ world of content marketing. A few will be able to land long form assignments and all will be pitching their editor buddies for a book and most will end up in Amazon indie-world, hoping they have enough friends &/or name recognition to make some money.
I do believe they may experience real want, deprivation and fear. It will not awaken most, who will spew hatred at the very society they have helped create.
Welcome to the party....
If every mag or paper this clown has worked for has gone broke, maybe prospective employers should take that into account.
HE’S POISON!!!
Another Darwin Award Winner!
“Every Magazine including National Geographic, and Smithsonian have turned hard left. My wife cut subscriptions to her Women’s magazines including Good Housekeeping when they turned against President Trump. Who needs to pay for that left wing crap?”
Years ago, when I began cancelling and not renewing subscriptions to mags, I had subscribed to for decades, my wife said how will you keep up on what’s happening.
I told her Free Republic and the internet. She just grinned.
Since, we elected President Trump and actually during the 2016 campaign, she stopped renewing the subscriptions to her mags.
Now, she is at zero subscriptions like me.
Besides her internet searches, she has 3 SIL’s, two nieces and a lot of conservative friends, who ping or copy her when they feel that she might be interested in an article or news.
We cut the cable 3 years ago and never watch any fake news.
Also, we have nixle and weather alerts to inform us if anything is happening that might involve us. Family, friends and other close people to warn us if PG&E may cut our power.
SHAME, at onetime both Nat. Geo. & Smithsonian were pretty decent
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