Poll: What will be the next big newspaper to fold?

bookmark.

 

If there were a rash of robberies in your neighborhood, would you go on the community bulletin board and start a thread called, "Whose house will be robbed next?" And start a poll?

After all, it's what people are talking about in the neighborhood, right?

Of course you wouldn't, because the people affected are people you had to look in the eye. Pretend the people here are people you have to look in the eye, who are facing the loss of everything. Because some of them are.

 

*analogy foul, 15 yards*

 

I never thought I'd say this, but what about the Sun-Times and all of its publications.

 

I'm with Rick. And 15 yards isn't enough. Is there a game misconduct for bad analogies?

If the whole neighborhood-robbery deal did play itself out, I would vote for a guy's house, then immediately go rob it myself, so as to elevate myself in the caste system of the community bulletin board. "That guy's freakin' Kreskin!" they'd say.

 

bullshit. he made a point. you just don't happen to agree with his point.

 

Honestly, I thought it was kind of stupid when the Pentagon was pressured to stop studying the use of prediction markets to predict terrorism events, for the same sorts of reasons people find these polls morbid.

If it bothers them, I'm not going to tell them they are wrong for being bothered, but I certainly can't say I understand it.

 

OK, not a great analogy (you should hear the one I thought of first), but maybe the point gets made -- put a human face on it, put it in your own back yard, and you'd think again about speculating on a subject and (in mediaguy's case) making light of it.

Case in point: I (for a couple more weeks, at least) work at one of the papers in the poll. I am about to lose, professionally, everything after almost 20 years. If you were talking about this subject around the water cooler, and I walked up, I would hope you would probably stop. There are a lot of people around this water cooler in the same boat who deserve a little consideration.

 

maybe we should learn to cut people a little bit of fucking slack on these types of threads ... would that be so wrong?

edit: you didn't owe any person here that post, babar.

 

No, he surely didn't, Tom ... but maybe that's what it will take to get a couple of people to reconsider their cheap attempts at humor.

 

I probably wouldn't unless you asked me too.

But since you did, that's /thread for me.

 

Philosophical question: Is this thread any better than if someone, today, started a poll asking who will get the ax in Fort Worth? Hey, we're all talking about it. We know it's coming. What's wrong with trying to figure out who's out?

Isn't that the defense of this thread?

Of course I don't want to see a poll like that. I'm only asking people to see that both kinds of polls are about people, real people, who will lose their jobs. Those of you who are far removed from having to worry about that, especially if you left the biz months or years ago, might not understand. But, try to see it from their desk.

Best wishes and prayers to everyone in Fort Worth and elsewhere.