Monday, March 16, 2009

Tossed salad and scrambled eggs

As all of you have heard by now, Tuesday's is the last edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. And the webheads rejoice in the death of another newspaper (don't deny it, note the snarky attitude toward Kathleen Parker, or anyone who feels nostalgic for the printed paper, or anyone who feels they are important to civilized society, or anyone who thinks good grammar and fact checking is a good idea). Seeing as how the P-I is operating without copy editors, I wonder in what multiple of 10 the daily errors would be.

1 comment:

Loud Larry said...

A provocative post I read recently by an undisclosed commenter using the name “notebook M’,
obviously a jaded scribe;
“The masses don't want or need news. They are not primary consumers. They consume in the secondary markets, like Leno and the water cooler. The future of news is in the primary market. What is one copy of the New York Times actually worth to Leno and his writers? A lot. What is one copy of the Wall Street Journal worth to Bill Gates? Same answer. Journalism needs to build a golden fence around itself, with a diamond-studded gate. Only those with hard cash and lots of it get to come in. Information is power and power will pay for information. News people need to become crowned members of an elite whose currency is written on notepads. Shut out the ham-and-eggers. They don't want us. Stop wooing them like some pathetic love-sick stalker. Let them learn to live without information. Let those who buy it make fortunes off the backs of the don't-know-it-alls, who now will have to settle for talking to each other in a great vacuum, after coming home from thankless jobs to tiny apartments and dinners of bland food. We shall lord over those who spurned us and settle in with the rich and knowledgeable. To hell with democracy. Viva the Info-tocracy!”