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Who Killed the Great American Editorial?
Townhall.com ^ | January 25, 2014 | Paul Greenberg

Posted on 01/25/2014 7:06:00 AM PST by Kaslin

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1 posted on 01/25/2014 7:06:00 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

You can’t make a purse out of a sow’s ear and you can’t take a food or theater critic and make him a smart political polemicist. Especially when neither seemed all that good at their original jobs.


2 posted on 01/25/2014 7:10:55 AM PST by miss marmelstein (Richard Lives Yet!)
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To: Kaslin
Wasn't there a time when the country had great newspapers with great editorials that regularly thundered and whispered, sighed and screamed, were outraged or outraged others? Where did they all go?

They went to the front page. And then, along with the dinosaur media, into the dustbin.

3 posted on 01/25/2014 7:12:01 AM PST by Alex Murphy ("the defacto Leader of the FR Calvinist Protestant Brigades")
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To: Kaslin

Because of their tremendous circulation, the editors thought that people actually CARED about their editorials.

What the internet has proved is that they were mostly buying the paper for the funnies, the entertainment, the stock market prices and the ball scores. With those things now on-line, no one needs the editorials, and they never did.


4 posted on 01/25/2014 7:13:51 AM PST by babble-on
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To: babble-on

Some do, some don’t. *shrug*


5 posted on 01/25/2014 7:16:19 AM PST by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: Kaslin
"Roy! Take an editorial: 'The only way we'll ever have law and order in the west is to take out all the (add profession here) and shoot 'em down like dogs."' --Henry Hull, "Jesse James"
6 posted on 01/25/2014 7:17:26 AM PST by onedoug
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To: Kaslin

I’ll tell ya who ... “news entertainment” and a gazillion blogs where anyone with a cpu toss around their opinion. That’s all there is in the news industry ... opinion. And when it’s all opinion then why should an editorial matter? Quite frankly, why should pundit’s opinions matter? (they shouldn’t).

News entertainment is manipulative, propagandist dreck. And it has not only killed news reporting, it (along with it’s lesser cousin the blog “news entertainment”) has killed the editorial.

All people do anymore is sit around and go “yeah, yeah, yeah!” about the opinions of others. There is no analysis, there is no research, there is just ... yeah, dreck.

So why would anyone read an editorial when they can turn to “news entertainment” and be told what they want to hear whether or not it is true?


7 posted on 01/25/2014 7:18:06 AM PST by RIghtwardHo
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To: Kaslin

They were replace with stenographers writing and then reading white house script.


8 posted on 01/25/2014 7:19:09 AM PST by Mr. K (If you like your constitution, you can keep it...Period.)
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To: Kaslin

Editorial writers hav e been black mailed and coerced in submission. They also don’t want to end up like Breitbart or the dude who’s Mercedes was smoked by a drone.


9 posted on 01/25/2014 7:21:37 AM PST by Old Yeller
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To: Old Yeller

Check out Wes Pruden at the Washington Times.


10 posted on 01/25/2014 7:30:33 AM PST by Dalberg-Acton
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To: Alex Murphy
They went to the front page.

Absolutely true. I read so many news stories which are just aimed at pushing a position, persuading the reader, defending a political ideology. That's not what news stories are supposed to do. But it's the 21st century, and my front page isn't giving me facts -- it's telling me what to think.

Meanwhile, I recently saw a TV Editorial which basically said [paraphrasing]: "Obamacare could be a good thing ... or it could be a bad thing. Some people are going to like it ... and some people are going to dislike it."

Thanks so much Mr. Editor.

11 posted on 01/25/2014 7:37:58 AM PST by ClearCase_guy (Anti-Complacency League! Baby!)
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To: Kaslin

What’s a Newspaper?


12 posted on 01/25/2014 7:46:39 AM PST by justrepublican (Screaming like a "Vexatious requester" at a Wellstone memorial...........)
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To: Kaslin
Who Killed the Great American Editorial?

Why, the marxist control of the MSM. is there really any question????

13 posted on 01/25/2014 7:48:02 AM PST by Vaquero (Don't pick a fight with an old guy. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.)
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To: Kaslin

A friend and superb writer showed me a letter to the editor he’d written on concealed carry. The original was a marvel of compact, lucid and persuasive argument. The published letter made him sound like a lunatic. I was, at that time, selling articles to the paper and knew the editor of the editorial page. So, I asked him why they’d edited the original the way they did. In all seriousness he said, “The original was so well written, how else would the readers understand that the guy was an extremist nut case?”


14 posted on 01/25/2014 7:49:07 AM PST by Gen.Blather
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To: Kaslin

Because opinions are like, well, you know the rest.


15 posted on 01/25/2014 7:49:31 AM PST by P.O.E. (Pray for America)
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To: justrepublican
What’s a Newspaper?

inexpensive paper used to wrap fish or to line non-discriminating parrots cages....

16 posted on 01/25/2014 7:50:50 AM PST by Vaquero (Don't pick a fight with an old guy. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.)
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To: Gen.Blather

this is a lesson I learned early on. don’t even try to write a cogent argument in response to a leftist editorial.

they will rip you a new one with your own (severely edited)words....


17 posted on 01/25/2014 7:54:38 AM PST by Vaquero (Don't pick a fight with an old guy. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.)
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To: Kaslin; humblegunner

The internet killed the newspaper editorial with all its blogs.

Humblegunner is working on the rest.


18 posted on 01/25/2014 7:56:11 AM PST by Delta 21 (If you like your freedom, you can keep your freedom. Period.)
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To: Kaslin

Funny. All that writing and they conspicuously missed the root cause: Øbozo. Øbozo is the reason why they’ve gone so milquetoast. Editorials are there to castigate and cajole, to criticize and occasionally condemn. And there’s no shortage of topics to be outraged about. But every single one of them leads straight to Øbozo’s doorstep. And the very last thing that any of them dare to do is speak ill of the ØbaMessiah.

Instead they mindlessly intoned the idiotic “Bush’s fault!” long after the pull date and focused all their energy on the internecine warfare within the pubbie party.

Now they’ve got nothing....unless one of them grows a set and calls out the monster.


19 posted on 01/25/2014 8:04:34 AM PST by rockrr (Everything is different now...)
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To: Kaslin

I remember newspapers.


20 posted on 01/25/2014 8:16:15 AM PST by Jeff Chandler (Obamacare: You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.)
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