Now known amongst intimates as “Toeless Bronstein”
At least he seems to have a sense of humor about it. :o)
Posted on 03/02/2009 12:42:17 PM PST by SmithL
The wind sheer, hypoxia, and rapid decompression of the newspaper business. The mad scramble for frantic answers, like a meth freaks' weekend convention in Vegas. The lost jobs, dirgeful despair, and sometimes mean sniping over tradition and the present day value of big rooms full of journalists.
The whole thing. My bad.
After all, Will Hearst, friend and then-boss, explained the internet to me back around 1992 when I became editor of the old SF Examiner. I then swiftly snagged Sun Microsystems braniac John Gage to demonstrate this emerging phenomenon to a roomful of Hearst newspaper colleagues. I think he showed us how you could tap on line into Russian satellite images that were eyeballing Washington, weather in Florida and other nifty digital information. The potential for journalism was big, but it probably struck some of us as more of a cool circus act than the actual future.
Tech-illiterate as I was, I also got a colleague around that time to piggyback me onto The Well, the pioneering social networking site out of Sausalito, to participate in an online debate about a story we'd done.
But I didn't understand then. Even with those clues and sitting square in Silicon Valley's bedroom, I really didn't know what was charging down that cliched superhighway right at us like a huge, flaming truck bomb filled with a million electronic ball bearings. And I should have known. I should have helped much more than I did to figure out
. . .
Plenty of people, including some associates past and present, and blog commenters, blame me anyway for the general decline of serious civilization. I won’t quibble with wrongheaded detail. The Day of Atonement was months ago, but here it is:
I'm sorry. It was a failure of imagination.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Isn’t he the ex Sharon Stone buddy who thought it would be cool to play barefoot with the Kimono dragons?
Now known amongst intimates as “Toeless Bronstein”
I'm supposed to read an article by an EDITOR who can't even spell "wind shear" right?
My local paper keeps shrinking. I may have to go to the internet for the baseball scores.
Yes. Mr. Sharon’s Stones, as Drudge used to call her.
The salvation of newspapers is obvious. Become an on line, 24 hour news and feature service... Whoops, that’s already been done.
Whoa - there's an awesome idea! We could probably have this whole network connecting all the computers together - almost like a huge spider web...a worldwide web...and we could have people sharing their opinions, and reading literature, and learning.....no...wait..it would just get taken over by porn and cute kittens.
never mind...
90% of “reporters” are liberal d-bags.
Too bad they are incapable/unwilling to honestly report the news.
Buh bye!
Maybe it was a commentary on the relative opacity of the wind?
...
Naw, I guess not. He's a twit.
This douche bag answered his own editorial.... He had "all the clues" for YEARS and didn't see it coming.
Now ask yourselves this. When you went to college, what were the majors that slackers and morons usually gravitated to?
Education
Journalism
Psychology .......
now there are so many niches for the losers to slumber at the university level.... "women's studies, lesbian/gay studies, (insert racial/ethnic)minority studies, english lit, etc...." It's a joke.
But they all take the required "Hate America" history 101, Communism is Kewl Poly.Sci. 101, and Do Not read dead white men like Hayek, Franklin, Socrates, Plato, Smith.. Literature/Economic 101....
Then they wonder why they are failing.
Why isn't the press reporting what the stock market and the economy has done since the democrats took over congress in 2006.
What about the FACT that every city run by democrats in democrat states is a 3rd world clone.
Cause they're stupid, envious and pathetically lazy.
Sharon left him soon after.
LOL. Pure self delusion.
The pace of technology certainly hurried things along, but newspapers have been in a death spiral for a long time. I attribute it to the fact that it's no longer respectable in the business to be a good reporter. A good reporter works the phones and sidewalks and his sources to dig up facts that aren't widely known and then writes an article that educates the reader without insulting him. But good reporting has become a lost art.
Nowadays we have "journalists" instead of reporters. "Journalists" want to be either: (1) The next Woodward & Bernstein, or (2) Columnists. To be W&B of course you need to be investigative, you need to advocate, to inflame, to accuse! To really be W&B you need to take on "the man" and hound him from office. Of course, most admirers of W&B are liberal Nixon-bashers who only want to hound Republicans out of office, but that's another issue. And, of course, actual investigation is hard work. And really, it's beneath the dignity of your average journalism school graduate, don't you think? So let's put investigation aside and just go with advocating, inflaming, and accusing. That's what passes for journalism these days. Surf the web, attend a press conference or read a press release, then regurgitate it wrapped in political advocacy.
Of course, most readers of newspapers recognize that type of journalism for what it is and refuse to read it. "Give me the facts and I'll make up my own mind, thank you very much."
If you can't be Woodward & Bernstein, then with any luck at all your genius will be recognized and you'll become a columnist! Paid to spout whatever drivel is swirling around inside your addled brain! Heaven on Earth! As one wag once said "indoor work, no heavy lifting."
The problem with columnists of course is that they are basically being paid to voice their opinions on matters of public interest, which the internet allows legions of hobbyists and enthusiasts to do better for free. Like belly buttons, everyone has an opinion and they'll share it with you if you'll only agree to look. No charge.
So newspapers have abandoned the one field where they actually have a competitive market advantage (collecting and reporting actual news) and have instead drifted into a field where they are at a decided market disadvantage (editorials and advocacy). The typical blogger can't compete with the New York Times in the collection of political news. The blogger has a day job and lives in Truckee. The NYT has paid professionals working in the White House and all over Washington DC. No contest about who gets the inside scoop. But the blogger can readily compete with the NYT when it comes to analysis, commentary, and opinion, and his or her overhead is really, really low. Hard for the NYT to compete with that.
Newspapers, if they want to survive at all, need to get back to news. Collect it and report it. You know what news I have a hard time getting? The truly local stuff. Local weather, city council updates, high school sports news. Instead of actual news that I would read, my newspaper gives me recycled AP news stories that I read on-line yesterday. Not helpful.
Now known amongst intimates as “Toeless Bronstein”
At least he seems to have a sense of humor about it. :o)
Actually, they are Komodo Dragons.
A Kimono is a dress worn by Japanese women.
A Kimono is a dress worn by Japanese women
Oops, my bad, that would make Sharon the Kimono Dragon Lady.
Is that anything like a Lounge Lizard?
You're joking, right?
I haven't read a newspaper in a decade, but I check out every box score, recap, and video highlight of nearly every baseball game that interests me, right here on the internet.
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