Monday, June 5, 2006

Bloggers are Broken

It is interesting to note that this blog entry has attracted 34 responses versus only 4 for your last 10 entries. Conclusion… your reputation and wisdom is respected in your field of expertise. Take this as a vote of confidence in striking new ground and setting different standards in the world of jounalism. Submit a paper for academia to dedate.

Alternate conclusion: it made boingboing and many commenters thought it was dumb enough to add a comment.

The title's a cliche and it goes downhill from there, confusing the selling of journalism with the journalism itself, and I suspect not even considering the work-a-day journalism as most people use it: opinion doesn't make a lot of difference or sense if someone wants to find out about the bank-robbery that happened in the mall, or whether or not the hotel tax passed, what the weather's likely to be and so on.

The five Ws and an H still have an enormous constituency, whether in print, on-line, or on TV. They also make money. If this audience is being eroded due to other options, that's the way it goes, and it's not a death-knell or even a surprise, but it shouldn't be taken as a given that the basic enterprise of journalism - attempting to deliver unvarnished facts - is unwanted or unwise, especially when you consider that opinion-based journalism - that fabulous Fox News everyone should seek to emulate - helped gull the US into an idiotic war.

I await an article entitled Boys are Broken in which tampering with the brains of males is advocated because girls are doing better on tests.

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