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Our business

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by SF_Express, Mar 5, 2007.

  1. SF_Express

    SF_Express Active Member

    There are a lot of good threads here right now, so I probably should save this, but there's a timely entry to discussion: 10 days or so ago, sitting in a sports/bar restaurant in which every local station -- on huge hi-def TVS -- was full into Anna Nicole Smith, I actually was feeling pretty depressed about the news business -- to the point that the bartender actually asked if something was bothering me.

    I didn't start a thread about it, but along comes Carl Hiaasen's column today:

    http://www.miamiherald.com/424/story/29482.html

    I'm on the Web now, but have a long print background. June will be my 30th anniversary in the biz as a full-timer.

    Part of me kind of says, "Oh, well." And part of me even says, "Boy, if they think WE were the toy department ..."

    But part of me sees the whole Anna Nicole thing and just wonders if we've gone over some kind of edge -- as Hiassen does.
     
  2. Riddick

    Riddick Active Member

    I think that Anna Nicole crap bothered all of us. I coldn't believe that is SHARED coverage on CNN with the Bluffton baseball team crash. Unbelievable.
     
  3. jgmacg

    jgmacg Guest

    OJ took us over the precipice thirteen years ago. Since then it's only been the fall, and the things we see, like Paris and Britney and Jon Benet and Anna Nicole, as we gather speed on the way down.

    Race to the bottom? Maybe there is no bottom.
     
  4. Carl Hiassen is such a good writer.

    I can only hope he puts this experience into a new novel.
     
  5. Mystery_Meat

    Mystery_Meat Guest

    When I clicked on the "show unread posts since last visit" link, here's the first two thread titles I saw:

    Our Business
    Should it be THIS bad?

    That pretty well trumps anything I'd come up with.
     
  6. BYH

    BYH Active Member

    Perfectly said.

    Anna Nicole didn't start this, and when Britney finally kicks it, coverage of her death will make Anna Nicole look as somber as Watergate.
     
  7. alleyallen

    alleyallen Guest

    We recognize as a whole the kind of trouble the business in, and we're seeing it's a mixture of faults ... the public and the media's.

    So now the question is how do you fix the problem?
     
  8. kleeda

    kleeda Active Member

    I was at a newspaper run by a corporation Hiaasen himself loathed when I thought I witnessed the death of solid journalism. Too much to detail here, but we have been headed down this path awhile. I am happy I cover sports and I doubt I will ever go back into "news."
     
  9. alleyallen

    alleyallen Guest

    The problem is, it's infecting sports, now, too. As the lines become more and more blurred, our perception of "news" will become less clear.
     
  10. kleeda

    kleeda Active Member

    Tell shareholders to F off and be happy with five percent profits.
     
  11. SF_Express

    SF_Express Active Member

    By the way, as kind of an aside: During the whole cable scramble over Anna Nicole, one of the networks had one of those standing graphics kind of things, and this was the text:

    Anna Nicole Smith: America's Rose

    America's Rose!! ::)
     
  12. Mystery_Meat

    Mystery_Meat Guest

    One of the established posters has something in his siggy busting on that.

    Could be worse. Could be "America's Sweetheart" *ahem* JonBenet Ramsey.

    This isn't Ramsey bad. At least Anna Nicole and Britney are legal. The only demo that benefitted from the JonBenet coverage was the pedophile ones.
     
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