First she discovered right-wing lunatics are exactly that. Then she discovered the Christian right was neither.Now she’s tripped over the idea that demonizing working reporters day after day, year after year, causes people to lose their respect for the press:
succeeded in convincing many Americans that they don’t need newspapers.
The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press recently found
that fewer than half of Americans — 43 percent — say that losing
their local newspaper would hurt civic life in their community “a lot.”
Only 33 percent say they would miss the local paper if it were no
longer available.
Certain quarters? Seriously, chica, certain quarters?
Likethese, where your columns are happily housed next to such lights of liberty and press freedom as Tony Blankley and Dennis Prager? Where those hardworking reporters you now laud are referred to as the “mainstream moron media” and are subject to gigglefits from clowns likeDouglas McKinnon, who calls the newspapers they work for “indoctrination sheets?” Would these be the “certain quarters” to which you refer?
I mean, I’m sorry, I’m sure it’s nice for all of us that Kathleen’s arrived at the party but should we really be expected to ignore where the fuck she’s been for the past nine years?
understanding or appreciation of the relationship between a free press
and a free society. Pew found that just 27 percent of Americans born
since 1977 read a newspaper the previous day.
Sigh. Yes, by all means, let’s bash the kids, since they’re the ones conflating “a free press” with “newspapers.” They’re not the same thing. And by the by, college kids especially seem really into newspapers, at least newspapers that are into them:
college students surveyed had read their college newspaper in the past
month. Readership was highest at campuses with daily papers, where 92
percent had read a student newspaper in the previous month. By
comparison, just over one-third of students reported reading their
daily community paper at least weekly.
p>So maybe not so much with “kids today just don’t care about the news.” Jesus tits.
Such grim tidings are familiar to the 80 or so editors and
publishers gathered the other day for the annual New England Newspaper
Association meeting, where I was a speaker. But what to do about it?
How does the newspaper industry survive in a climate in which the
public doesn’t know what it doesn’t know? Or what it needs?
This is in no way a new problem. In NO WAY. The newspaper industry survives the way anything survives; by deciding to do what is necessary to survive, by making sound financial decisions and not wasting money on stupid shit. It has fuck-all to do with what the public wants, and blaming the great unwashed’s sudden lack of clamor for real news such as only Parker and her ilk can recognize just shoves the problem off onto those who aren’t responsible.
Which is the point, of course: If it’s about the public’s lack of desire for your greatness, well, then, it can’t possibly be your fault you’re failing. I hate this argument so much, you guys. It’s so fucking lazy I can’t stand it.
And while this is an admirable sentiment for “even the conservative” Parker to express:
Constant criticism of the “elite media” is comical to most
reporters, whose paychecks wouldn’t cover Limbaugh’s annual dry
cleaning bill. The truly elite media are the people most Americans have
never heard of — the daily-grind reporters who turn out for city
council and school board meetings. Or the investigative teams who chase
leads for months to expose abuse or corruption.
She might have wanted to pipe up at any point during the last eight years in defense of Jill Carroll, Bilal Hussein, John Burns, Chris Albritton, or any one of the reporters her conservative pals were demonizing to get their kicks over cornflakes, instead of coming to us now and saying we should all be nicer. As if it’s not incredibly too little, very much too late.
A.