Archive for January, 2009
Well, enough for my footballese. What I’m getting at is a new twist at the Los Angeles Times after a couple of years of being "in the tank" for Barack Obama. (Go to Google and type in "in the tank," and it will fill in "for Obama" and show you 843,000 results, so the Times is not alone.)
I read somewhere that editors at the Los Angeles rag, er, newspaper would not, so to speak, give Obama a free pass (which they had faithfully done up until about 48 hours ago).
I saw some evidence the past couple of days that they might actually be trying to be more balanced. For instance, a second-tier headline yesterday said, "The cuts by firms such as Caterpillar, GM and Home Depot aren’t like to reverse under a stimulus plan." Of course, the president could be Green, GOP, Libertarian or socialist, and the same conclusion could be drawn.
Today, another drophead notes, "The president wins praise for reaching across the aisle on the stimulus plan, but he sways few Republicans." Of course, the intent here could be to paint the Repubs as intractable and intransigent (how’s that for redunancy?), but I didn’t read the full text of the article to find out. (Like many readers, I stopped at the jump line, too lazy to go digging inside for the remainder of the article.)
We’ll have to wait and see after the media-induced patina of instant greatness wears off Obama how the media will portray the man. So far, it’s been nothing but a gushing love fest, better than the Second Coming for these socialistic pagans in the mainstream media.
France has unveiled a plan to give free newspaper subscriptions to teens when they turn 18, a move to help the ailing publishing industry in that country. The nation is also ponying up some $90 million to help subsidize the delivery of publications, a more than tenfold increase from the previous year. France is also buying more than $25 million in print advertising.
According to the Associated Press report, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is taking the measures to ensure the French press is "independent, free and pluralistic."
Critics, however, content he is just buying support for his regime in the media through these bailout measures.
The incoming Obama administration is already paying back its union allies with a host of pro-labor laws and a stimulus package that, in its spending aspect, benefits only unions, so why not bail out its propaganda mouthpiece, the New York Times?
The venerable publication is hugely in debt, and when its $400-million line of credit runs out in May, it might be the end. Speculation was rife on CNBC last week that the NYT was set to fold in May.
Actually, though I don’t agree with the paper’s politics (tax high, spend high, deport all Republicans, etc.), I admire the New York Times for its high journalistic standards. But is is cash poor.
Catch this dilemma if you think you have it bad:
"The Times Co. has about $46 million in cash and $1.1 billion in debt as of the end of September. It has a $400 million credit facility that expires in May, $250 million in notes due in 2010 and another $400 million credit facility due in 2011."
Reportedly, ownership is currently seeking a cash infusion from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim (the $60-billion man), who already owns a little over 6 percent of the company.
Here’s the full Wall Street Journal report.
I remember when I was studying journalism at the University of Southern California, the editors of the Los Angeles Times would take turns coming over as guest lecturers. The foreign bureau editor, whose name slips me, voiced supreme pride that his newspaper was vigorously staffing every major capital in the world with its own people.
Not anymore. Reality (lack of advertising dollars and huge debt) has caught up to the once-proud (but now I would say haughty) Los Angeles Times.
The parent Tribune Company, according to the Wall Street Journal, is busy cutting a deal with the Washington Post to pay them for all foreign AND national news coverage. All I can say is, "Wow!" That’s going to cost a lot of people at the Times and the Chicago Tribune their livelihoods. Maybe the senior people can bump those below them, but still, "There will be blood," to borrow a movie title.
As I said in my title, this is a sad day for American journalism.
(The Tribune papers are not alone. The New York Daily News has signed onto a service called GlobalPost that uses PART-TIME foreign correspondents who already live in the capitals.)
The Bubble Economy (i.e., Dot Com, Housing, Oil) has found a new home–in the English language.
A group called the Global Language Monitor is busily adding words to the English tongue at a rapid pace, something like one new word every 98 minutes.
Now, if you think about it, if you’re adding one new word to any language every hour and a half, you’re just playing games. Witness one of its latest English additions–ginormous. It sounds cute, but it’s not English–it’s texting or BSing.
Anyway, the combined BS coming out of the ersatz Global Language Monitor has even fooled–Bernie Madoff style–publications as otherwise prestigious as The Economist and The Christian Science Monitor into predicting that 2009 will usher in the English language’s one millionth word.
My take? More than 900,000 of those words (maybe more like 970,000) are ridiculous slang and weird constructs. If I grunt, is that a word? Probably, according to the Global Language Monitor.
In the photo above, Nazis exult over a pile of burning books on May 10, 1933, which this Web article explains more fully.
Now, with the advent of the CPSIA (Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act), which takes effect this Feb. 10, many are worried that there will be massive book burnings in America.
Reason?
The CPSIA bans lead from all articles intended–or perceived as being intended–for children under 13. Books can and do contain lead, so this ban could lead to massive book burnings, critics fear. It also renders any books you have in your collection, even rare ones, unsellable unless you test them and prove they’re lead-free.
Problem is that "perceived to be intended" since many books look like children’s books when in fact their audience is adults.
I don’t know how serious this threat is (and most laws passed by our government screw up more things than they solve and hurt more people than they help, which is why we should stick to the Constitution and dissolve most government initiatives)but I’ve also read where many children’s clothing retailers fear that they’ll go out of business after the law takes effect.
Good going, doofae in Congress. You’ve done it again.
A local rag out where I live (I guess I shouldn’t call it a rag since the paper does try to be somewhat fair) ran an interesting editorial today about best-selling author Neil David Walsch, who just got caught plagiarizing–unintentionally, of course. (The same edition also carried a note about how "an unspecified number" of employees had just been let go the day before in a cost-saving measure.)
Read "Not writing, but stealing." It’s quite revealing.
The author, by the way, is famed for his Conversations With God series. I wonder which god he’s referring to.
"Great Caesar’s Ghost" Daily Planet editor Perry White was heard to exclaim from the grave. Journalism as we know it ceased to exist as of Monday, Jan. 5, 2009.
The end came as the New York Times, that bastion of all things journalistic (and they would say of all things just and politically correct), ran a four-color advertisement from CBS on its front page. The culprits in charge explained that it was okay because the ad appeared at the bottom of the page, and thus "below the fold."
I see.
0 Comments
