The Internet, The MSM: The Migration of Failure

Times' Writer Discovers The Internet:
"Professional Journalists" Seek Foundation Funding
Instead of Customers Seeking News

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"They still don't get it, and never will. That's why when their stock value reaches zero, we'll still be here laughing at their demise."
--JammieWearingFool on the New York Times

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Six Hundred Visitors a Day
--and All the Pixels You Can Eat

RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA of the New York Times ($7.00 NYSE, down from $21.14 a year ago) turned on his computer and discovered a non-threatening form of Internet--websites that are run by refugees of failed newspapers.

As America’s newspapers shrink and shed staff, and broadcast news outlets sink in the ratings, a new kind of Web-based news operation has arisen in several cities, forcing the papers to follow the stories they uncover.

Here it is VoiceofSanDiego.org, offering a brand of serious, original reporting by professional journalists — the province of the traditional media, but at a much lower cost of doing business. Since it began in 2005, similar operations have cropped up in New Haven, the Twin Cities, Seattle, St. Louis and Chicago. More are on the way.

Their news coverage and hard-digging investigative reporting stand out in an Internet landscape long dominated by partisan commentary, gossip, vitriol and citizen journalism posted by unpaid amateurs.

The San Diego site gets around 18,000 visitors a month--about 600/day--but it's run by "professional journalists" as opposed to "unpaid amateurs", so it's worth some ink in the NY Times. As Jammie Wearing Fool observes ['This Is the Future of Journalism']

Let's see: Partisan commentary, vitriol and gossip? Sounds like your average day on the Times op-ed page. Or, in some cases, what they run on Page 1.

Well, does the Times ever bother to wonder whether some of us also have newspaper experience? Or is that too much for them to comprehend?

Most of us aren't doing this to pay the bills. We're doing it as a counter to the relentless bias brought to us by outlets such as the Times. And over the past several years, those whom they dismiss as unpaid amateurs sure seem to break more news than established outfits.

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Bloggers Do the Jobs
American "Professional Journalists" Won't Do

It's not that the Mainstream Media--The NYT is the poster child for floundering fishwraps--can't do their jobs.

It's that they have refused to do their jobs.

MSM news customers obviously have tired of paying for psuedo-intellectual socialist drivel masquerading as "news": Times' customers have deserted the paper in droves. In response to declining circulation, the NYT has continued the same policies; NYT customers have continued their exodus.

There's certainly a demand for liberal, left-leaning, pompous, arrogant, sniveling newspapers in America.

Not just a very big one, apparently.

It's noticed that the "professional journalists" hope to eventually finance their Internet operation by one of the Left's favorite funding mechanisms: foundation grants.

That figures.

When their journalistic enterprise fails to attract real, live paying customers, their impulse is to ask some foundation to pony up some money to insulate them from the effects of a marketplace that is a regular "professional journalist" whipping boy.

If the Ford Foundation can't spare a dime, maybe these Brave New Journalists can get in line for some bailout moolah.

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In the Times' mind, it's the medium, not the message that's at fault.

We would disagree.

MSM "Professional journalists"--whether they're pounding the pavement in search of another gig or pounding the keys posting on the Internet--will likely have trouble attracting new customers. There's only so much demand for their product and it's more than met by ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, TIME, Newsweek, NY and LA Times, MSNBC and the Washington Post.

MSM "professional journalists" on the Internet?

Not a lot to get excited about.

Really.

After all, paraphrasing the Times' Fab Fave 2008 candidate: you can put lipstick on the NY Times, but it's still the Times.


by Mondo
image: dbkp

Obsolete? Hula Hoops, Buggie Whips and Newspapers

Are Newspapers Going the Way of the Hula Hoop?
by Rhonda Roland Shearer
StinkyJournalism.org


Will newspapers follow the Hula Hoop in obsolescence? South Carolina Press Assn. wrote a canned Op-Ed for its members in honor of National Newspaper Week that says "No." The late Richard Knerr, on right, and Arthur Melin, left, co-inventors of the Hula Hoop, were shown in happier times

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Will newspapers follow the Hula Hoop in obsolescence? South Carolina Press Assn. wrote a canned Op-Ed for its members in honor of National Newspaper Week that says "No."

It was “ National Newspaper Week ,” Oct. 5-11, 2008, according to the promotional material orchestrated by the Newspaper Association of America. South Carolina newspapers chose their theme -- “Newspapers ... still going strong” -- for their statewide campaign. Among the bromides, such as “newspapers aren’t dead yet,” Dianne Owens, SCNow.com, website for a SC media group, wrote, “ As one S.C. newspaper consultant and co-owner said in an opinion piece about newspapers ‘Newspapers aren’t going the way of the hula hoop.’ ”

Turns out the quote was taken from a stock Op-Ed offered-up by the SC Press Assn. for its members. The canned Op-Ed was titled, " Newspapers aren't going the way of the hoola hoop." The unnamed "consultant" was Jerry Bellune, a past president of the SC Press Assn. and co-owner of the Lexington County Chronicle & The Dispatch News. The SC Press Assn. page instructs , " To receive the text of the following [Op-Ed] pieces, please highlight, copy and paste the text.
"Continuing to celebrate National Newspapers Week".

WANT MORE Rhonda Shearer and Stinky Journalism.org? Try these recent posts: * Alabama's Monster Pig Hoax, one year later * STEALTH REDESIGN After splitting its website from the MSNBC.com site and reclaiming its copyright, Newsweek also removed the MSNBC and Microsoft logos from its print masthead. Why? * J-School Confidential A grad student's glimpse into Columbia University's School of Journalism

by Rhonda Roland Shearer
image: Stinky Journalism.org

Page Three Girls, Boobs, U.K. Papers: British Know What Sells

A Tip for the New York Times?




DBKP, in order to keep the public properly informed, scans many dozens of articles, papers, and news referrals a day. As such, we here at DBKP are in a particularly good position to note patterns. And an interesting pattern has emerged: the English media are obsessed with Boobs.

No, not idiots.

Boobs as in breasts.

Yes! Another Boobs story!

Everyone, I would guess, is aware of the English tabloids "Page Three" girls. These are partially nude women within the papers, designed to attract male customers who do not wish to read, but whose vision is normal. It must work because the models are paid well and the Tabloids move off the stand. It is an approach the New York Times might try. It sure beats photo shopped pictures of Obama with a halo.

But we have noticed something else.The English newspapers, under the bare pretense of breaking news,also write about boobs . A lot. And the bigger, the better. As an example, this trio of leads in The Daily Mail, which is a very good paper, caught our attention,

Bra bust as M&S accused of 'levying tax on bigger breasts'
I've got to get this off my chest!


The treadmill test that measures the bounce in your bosomThis treasure trove of boobography was compiled from a selection of articles from a mere two weeks or so, and is representative rather than exhaustive. In other words, there is a lot more. And all articles, which are long and generally well written, are heavily pictured to help us understand the problems of women with large and very attractive busts.


--from Tax on Bigger Breasts


Speaking of a lot, that is something all the articles have in common. They seem to fixate around large breasts. Hardly a thought is given to the As and Bs of the British citizenry. Whether it be the poor attitude of bra peddlers, as in the first cited article:

"...Marks & Spencer has angered those customers with a lot of cleavage... by starting to charge extra for bigger-sized bras....

But members of a new group on the social networking site Facebook called Busts 4 Justice have stopped buying full-priced bras from the store in protest.

Its founder Beckie Williams, a 25-year-old children's writer from Brighton, said: 'It is like having a tax on bigger breasts. I hover on the brink of where the bras get more expensive so I noticed the difference in price.'I started trying to cram myself into the smaller sizes and realised that it was ridiculous..."

Or

Shopping for bras as in the next, the full chested girls lord it over the rest in a sort of backhanded way.

All women want a big bust, don't they? You must be joking, says ERIN KELLY. Bigger busts need bigger bras, and shopping for them has always been a nightmare. And now it's more expensive, too...I take a 32G, the same bra size as the pneumatic model Jordan. My breasts just turned up, almost overnight, when I was about 13. Ever since, they have increased incrementally but constantly, like rising sea levels."

"I don't see them charging extra material for the inch-thick wedge of foam that pads the AA cups, so why should I pay more for the extra lace on my plus-size bra?"

Heh, heh,heh.

Speaking of Erin Kelly, she is the official specialist at the Daily News. The resident Cleavologist, as it were. And she knows of what she writes.


(Erin Kelly and her 32 Gs)

So we were pleased to read that Erin would be tackliing the last story.

The treadmill test that measures the bounce in your bosom

It seems that there is an academic department called the Breast Biomechanics Team at the University of Portsmouth. And Erin decided she would see what pointers they might have for her. so...

"I was going to put my money where my mouth is and offer myself as a guinea pig to the department, taking their infamous 'treadmill test', whereby women run on a treadmill and high-tech cameras, linked to computers, measure the distance that their breasts move as they run...A treadmill stands before a backdrop of a black curtain, five cameras pointing at it. This high-tech 'bounce-o-meter' is where 50 other women have run before me, and where I'm about to go for the most unusual - and possibly humiliating - jog of my life."

"I already wish I'd never come here, but the knowledge that 50 other women, many with boobs bigger than mine - 32G since you ask - have already taken up this challenge, spurs me on. I strip to the waist and clamber onto the treadmill. The only shock absorber I'm now wearing is the gel in my trainers"

So Erin bravely tackled what is known as the Jiggleometer here at DBKP and no matter how often we called Erin refused to share any of those 5 tapes with us.

But we are confident that Erin will again take on this challenging subject. And when she does, we shall helpfully report on the same.

Oh, and , if the New York Times had any brains whatsoever, they might learn that scholarship sells papers, not rank opinion.


by pat

sources:
All images from source articles.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1034417/Bra-bust-M-amp-S-accused-levying-tax-bigger-breasts.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1038145/Ive-got-chest-Why-having-bigger-bust-better.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1038145/Ive-got-chest-Why-having-bigger-bust-better.html