Thanks Gene Park for your t-shirt and inspiration to blog (blab) about…
Journalism is dying. Well, its been dying for some time. Why? Young people are gravitating towards their iPhones/Blackberrys for news and up to date information. Its quicker, easier, and its all in real time to get info off the net than to read day old news in a newspaper or week (month) old info in a magazine. There’s the Drudge Report, Craiglist, and Facebook for all your needs. Rense, luminous-landscapes, etc…just so much ready-at-hand info so quick to get.
Or could it be that journalism has been deceiving the public for years. Whether its CNN telling us the pro-Obama (lets bawwwwwww like sheep for four years) babble or the Rush Limbaugh right is right doctrines. I think journalism has truly killed itself. There is no truth in media. How can Sam Donaldson be replaced by Nancy Grace? Much of CNN has become Entertainment Tonight. News casts have all been MTVed.
But maybe we are the unwashed masses Obama and the media speak to. American Idol did garnish more viewers than Obama’s Inauguration.
Yet, newspapers are dropping readership, magazines readers are loosing interest, and in general, he media is really loosing their influence on the people. For me, I tire of the incessant bull that streams out of New York in a New York point of view. Now that I live in the furthest western state of the US, I sometimes take offense the media doesn’t represent me. Much of the national news represents itself and cares little to leave the island of Manhattan.
The Star Bulletin recently let go 17 full timers…journalists that is. The Advertiser union negotiated a 10% pay cut for two years. Two years…what the hell is this about? Would Exxon, the gas company, or T Mobile cut their profits 10% to make it easier for the unwashed masses? I can’t understand why a union would do this to its own workers. Well, maybe its better to keep a job at a lower pay than to loose a job all together but the Advertiser guy who is renting can’t just turn around and ask his landlord to cut the rent 10%, can he?
I am not sure who is to blame for the layoffs or pay cuts…it hurts. I think we killed ourselves. I am not nor do I really consider myself a journalists but I do see how there is no one else to blame for the layoffs and the decline of news watchers. I would love to dedicate my life to writing, documenting, and capturing the ills, joys, injustices, and fantastic life around me but the unwashed masses have spoken. There just isn’t any interest.