But Seriously, Folks ...
Earlier this week, Slate gave a little love to "Whoop-Dee-Damn-Doo" – Public Eye's examination of the coverage given to Clarence Thomas' book interviews. So today we give back, to Jack Shafer who discussed Drew Curtis (of "Fark" fame) and his book "It's Not News, It's Fark," featuring this passage:
For all its insight, Curtis' book has gotten scant attention from the mainstream press. Although Salon gave it decent exposure, the Tucson Citizen was the largest American newspaper to review it, and theirs was a mini-review.Since my predecessor Brian Montopoli is no longer here, I wanted to stick up a tad on behalf of this curious media outpost, which straddles the border of Blogistan and Mainstream Media. Montopoli had a great interview with Curtis earlier this year, where Curtis – one of the savvier tour guides of MediaLand – had this to say:Curtis did better on the broadcast side, with segments on NPR, Fox News Channel, and the nerd cable channel G4TV. Perhaps the book got overlooked because Curtis stuffed it with hilarious examples from his Web site, and Dave Barry blurbed it, making critics think it was a humor volume.
Most people treat the news media like the exercise bike they have in their basement. They're glad it's there but they never use it. This is obviously a ratings problem for the news outlets.All that being said, however, two different people – from very different media outlets – suggest that the newsmedia's not doing a half bad job.The number one question I get when I meet people who read my website is "Where can I go to get the real news?" The implication is the major news outlets aren't meeting this need. Most people I've talked to are convinced that they're not getting valuable information from news media anymore. I'm not talking about tinfoil-hatters either, these are intelligent people who believe their news media has failed them.
According to William Powers at National Journal:
This fear of a vast media sellout lives on today, although the specifics of the nightmare have changed. Instead of O.J., the dreadful obsessions are named Britney and Paris.Seconding that notion is Rachel Sklar at the Huffington Post– sounding like she was drinking some Serious News Kool-Aid after attending the News and Documentary Emmys -- who wrote:Newsrooms are cutting budgets, foreign bureaus have been shut down, and, well, everything journalistic appears to be going south. It's easy for journalists to fall into this way of thinking; I do it myself sometimes, right here. But, at bottom, I don't think it's true.
It's too easy these days to accuse news orgs of falling down on the job when it comes to reporting outside the U.S., too easy to dismiss the nets and cablers as being Britney and Paris obsessed (disproportionate airtime for those stories notwithstanding). The fact is, these news orgs — networks and newspapers and newsweeklies — do good work, and lots of it . I see it all the time. Does it mean that things are not sometimes overlooked, glossed over, with points missed? Of course not. All I am saying is, it's a lot easier to tear something down than it is to build something up.I can see that. Earlier this week, I actually was going to write a little something about how – despite our collective worries — the O.J. Simpson story had not been seen or heard in a few weeks. A few weeks ago, we heard the bleeped audio of his hotel room fiasco on the cable networks nearly a hundred times apiece, leading many of us to think "Here we go again."
But since those days where the legal proceedings were clicking along, the media has largely laid off. I wanted to write "See? The media is still covering Myanmar and not Orenthal James Simpson." I wanted to write a dog-bites-man story defending the media, since me and so many others are quick to point out when it wallows in Paris Hilton pulchritude.
Those plans were dashed when I came across an International Herald Tribune story about O.J. memorabilia. And a prominently-placed Washington Post photo about the same topic. I then realized that while the news media is showing some amount of restraint – a suprising amount to this writer – they're always going to cover the sideshows and blow things out of proportion.
But now it's September. Time to get serious. Time to toss most of the silly stuff overboard and move forward with harder news. And since Labor Day – with a few days of O.J. zaniness – the media has acted more like grown-ups and less like rubberneckers at a freak show.