All the news that fits, we print
I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every morning – well knowing that I shall find in it the usual depravities and baseness and hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization and cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of the human race.
- Mark Twain in a letter 1899
In fact, Mr. Twain ran hot and cold on the papers of his day, depending on how pissed off he was at any particular time. He didn’t really want to bite the hand that gave him his start in the realm of words. At the same time he was distressed by the dreck that was pushed on an unsuspecting public on a daily basis.
I feel pretty much the same way. I have devoted much of my life to being a scribe and newspapers are very much part of who I am. The old timers used to say when I started that “newspapering gets in your blood,” and it surely does. At the same time I, like Twain (not for a moment suggesting I dwell in the same pantheon as he did) am often distressed and offended with what the papers have become.
I detest their pandering, I loathe their political correctness and refusal to waver from accepted, government prescribed party line – all papers were abominations during the Bush years – and their cheap tawdriness and flavor-of-the-moment catering in which they try to suggest, ‘Aren’t we trendy? Aren’t we hip?’
Let me suggest from my experience in the trade, daily papers are the antithesis of hip, and are invariably at least six months behind in virtually everything. They have to be. It keeps their advertisers satisfied and remember always that papers are first-and-foremost businesses and their primary obligation is not to you, the reader (because you are so insignificant to their bottom-line) but to the advertiser.
“Editorial content is the stuff that goes between the ads,” said old Lord Thomson of Fleet, and in that (cynical as it was) he was being honest.
So, I look at my weekend paper this morning – weekend papers are the worst in terms of crap content – and I am left disquieted. Nothing much there to cheer up any distressed soul.
The economic news is as depressing and distressing as it could be and you can see that we all are damned to an eternity of poverty. Nothing with a positive spin and the papers seem to have developed a fetish for assailing us with negativity on our tailspin into the abyss. That is so they can then write the headline (and accompanying story of sorts): ‘Consumer confidence loss hits the markets’ Uh –what else could it be?
Then there is the beginning of a series decrying the squalor of Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside. offered in a sort of fundamental style suggesting that nobody has heard of how bad it is.
Inside we find stories on the pending Olympics and stories on the pending Oscars. I cannot decide which one interests me less – Oscars or Olympics? Probably the Oscars interest me less only in the sense I will end up paying for the damn Olympics if they lose as much money as anybody with any common sense knows they will. Ask the residents of Montreal if you don’t believe me on that score.
Other pieces include a profile of a lacklustre UK singer named Lily Allen who is, I believe, better known for her alcohol fuelled shenanigans (a fine role model for young females, not that it matters since most young people either won’t or literally can’t read a newspaper, leaving one only to wonder why the article on Ms. Allen even exists in the paper since most people over 30 would have no interest in her whatsoever) than any musical styling prowess.
There is also a piece on very expensive sex toys for rich broads. Nothing like a bit of suggestiveness to take a body’s mind off the recession despite the fact the article – replete with pictures of the gadgets – is appearing in a family newspaper.
Good, now that I’ve vented that bit of spleen I feel much better about the world. A feeling that was enhanced by a fine walk in the sunshine on this late winter day, and to realize that the world of news garnering and purveying has changed very little since the day of Mark Twain.
- Mark Twain in a letter 1899
In fact, Mr. Twain ran hot and cold on the papers of his day, depending on how pissed off he was at any particular time. He didn’t really want to bite the hand that gave him his start in the realm of words. At the same time he was distressed by the dreck that was pushed on an unsuspecting public on a daily basis.
I feel pretty much the same way. I have devoted much of my life to being a scribe and newspapers are very much part of who I am. The old timers used to say when I started that “newspapering gets in your blood,” and it surely does. At the same time I, like Twain (not for a moment suggesting I dwell in the same pantheon as he did) am often distressed and offended with what the papers have become.
I detest their pandering, I loathe their political correctness and refusal to waver from accepted, government prescribed party line – all papers were abominations during the Bush years – and their cheap tawdriness and flavor-of-the-moment catering in which they try to suggest, ‘Aren’t we trendy? Aren’t we hip?’
Let me suggest from my experience in the trade, daily papers are the antithesis of hip, and are invariably at least six months behind in virtually everything. They have to be. It keeps their advertisers satisfied and remember always that papers are first-and-foremost businesses and their primary obligation is not to you, the reader (because you are so insignificant to their bottom-line) but to the advertiser.
“Editorial content is the stuff that goes between the ads,” said old Lord Thomson of Fleet, and in that (cynical as it was) he was being honest.
So, I look at my weekend paper this morning – weekend papers are the worst in terms of crap content – and I am left disquieted. Nothing much there to cheer up any distressed soul.
The economic news is as depressing and distressing as it could be and you can see that we all are damned to an eternity of poverty. Nothing with a positive spin and the papers seem to have developed a fetish for assailing us with negativity on our tailspin into the abyss. That is so they can then write the headline (and accompanying story of sorts): ‘Consumer confidence loss hits the markets’ Uh –what else could it be?
Then there is the beginning of a series decrying the squalor of Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside. offered in a sort of fundamental style suggesting that nobody has heard of how bad it is.
Inside we find stories on the pending Olympics and stories on the pending Oscars. I cannot decide which one interests me less – Oscars or Olympics? Probably the Oscars interest me less only in the sense I will end up paying for the damn Olympics if they lose as much money as anybody with any common sense knows they will. Ask the residents of Montreal if you don’t believe me on that score.
Other pieces include a profile of a lacklustre UK singer named Lily Allen who is, I believe, better known for her alcohol fuelled shenanigans (a fine role model for young females, not that it matters since most young people either won’t or literally can’t read a newspaper, leaving one only to wonder why the article on Ms. Allen even exists in the paper since most people over 30 would have no interest in her whatsoever) than any musical styling prowess.
There is also a piece on very expensive sex toys for rich broads. Nothing like a bit of suggestiveness to take a body’s mind off the recession despite the fact the article – replete with pictures of the gadgets – is appearing in a family newspaper.
Good, now that I’ve vented that bit of spleen I feel much better about the world. A feeling that was enhanced by a fine walk in the sunshine on this late winter day, and to realize that the world of news garnering and purveying has changed very little since the day of Mark Twain.
posted by Ian Lidster at
11:57 AM
12 Comments:
Our local paper is a thinly veiled Republican mouthpiece. The onelocal liberal editorialized was pressured out. I get it because I feel like I need to stay informed about local events, but I don't like it.
I mean liberal writer. I'm not sure what happened with that word.
Well said. Sadly true.
I don't know if it's the case in your neck of the woods, but here the paper is getting thinner ... and thinner ... and thinner. My husband's claim is that the readership is dying out, advertising dollars are drying up, and the papers are desperate to attract younger readers.
If so, publishing the likes of Snuffy Smith and Mallard Fillmore probably isn't the way to go about it.
It's not just the papers - it is all media that follows the flock and is just so damn depressing to view. Sometimes i think the programming on TV is just one everlasting episode of "E! now and forever" - everything you never wanted to know about people who have nothing to add to the wisdom of the world.
Not all newspapers were riding on the Bush administration's good graces. At least according to all the morons here that write letters to the editor. Such phrases as "left-leaning" and "liberal media" were constantly thrown with rabid furor at my paper. I didn't see it. Our newspaper was just reporting the news and apparently those hard core conservatives did not want to hear it. They even complained about war casualty reports like it was supposed to be kept secret. Except for the ridiculous over-coverage of the Dallas Cowboys, you'd probably like Fort Worth's Star-Telegram.
I don't know which sounds worse - articles about Lily Allen or sex toys for older women.
We subscribe to a UK paper called The Guardian but it is not the UK daily version but a weekly international issue - and, guess what, it actually contains interesting news articles about worldwide events, not just local rubbish news. Because so many of the articles it includes are not daily titbits stuff, we can spend the whole week leisurely reading it and attempting to do the cryptic crossword.
Newspaper ink did get into my blood and I loved newspapers, working for them and reading them, but I do feel that these past few years the ink has seeped out of my veins somewhat.
I don't buy a daily paper anymore, just a Sunday one but even that's optional really. I read what I need to online - and it's free.
Times change, I guess. I don't see my children reading newspapers at all. Full stop. Gone are the days when a household would have at least one national newspaper every day plus an evening paper and a weekly local paper.
Ah well, it was fun for me while it lasted!
Funny that, Mr. Jazz and I were wondering just the other day if nothing had been learned from the Montreal Olympics - which were held in 76 and we just finished paying for a couple of years ago.
And now they're way over budget; what is Vancouver thinking?!
true enough, ian... but at least rim, maker of blackberrys, is hiring
I grew up with daily papers, weekly papers, and on Sunday, the NY Times and the Herald Tribune were both delivered to our abode.
It was a weekly treat which I have tried to preserve with decreasing success because it is faster and easier to read news online.
I fear that newspapers are yet another anachronism like trolley cars and hoop skirts.
Don't you wish you could get Mark Twain's words on the sex toys?
That would be worth the entire Saturday's paper...
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