Why they hate us

[MileHigh]

Absolutely friend. Throughout my day, I have two co-anchors. “Cindy” isn’t the issue.

Sounds like, like most places, it's f'ing management.

 

[MeanGreenATO]

Every time I see this thread title, I reflexively want to reply "because they ain't us."

 

[HanSenSE]

Thanks for listening, friends.

That's what we do here, hack

 

[goalmouth]

"They" didn't hate us until someone told them to hate us.

 

[Pilot]

"They" didn't hate us until someone told them to hate us.

I always think Palin is an underappreciated pioneer to this ****. Katie Couric exposed Palin as a ****ing clown by asking the most basic of questions, and Palin responded by going all-in against the media. Her fans — not then the whole GOP — devoured it. She never tried to explain why she couldn't name a single book, magazine or newspaper she'd ever read. She said it was a "gotcha" question and a great many people just accepted that.

I'm sure "attack the messenger" goes way back in political strategies, but I really see the blueprints for what Trump does in Palin: It doesn't what you did initially or how stupid and disingenuous you look in your rebuttle. Scream about the media and you'll be fine.

 

[The Big Ragu]

“Annoy the Media: Re-elect Bush.” -- George Bush campaign bumber sticker, 1992

"You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore. ..." Richard Nixon, 1962

Really, politicians blaming the media goes back to the founding of the country.

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” Thomas Jefferson, 1800

 

[Pilot]

“Annoy the Media: Re-elect Bush.” -- George Bush campaign bumber sticker, 1992

"You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore. ..." Richard Nixon, 1962

Really, politicians blaming the media goes back to the founding of the country.

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” Thomas Jefferson, 1800

Eh. Jefferson was definitely dealing with a bit of a different beast than Nixon and Bush, and certainly, the latter two never said "Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. … What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

Being mad at the media certainly isn't a novel idea for either party, but I'm not sure there's a question it's been taken up a notch in the last decade or so. If we end up in Jefferson's world, i.e. politicians writing vicious takedowns of one another under ancient Roman pseudonyms in strictly partisan outlets, well, at least we know we've survived that already.

 

[The Big Ragu]

Yeah, I agree with that. But that was Donald Trump. He'd lie and BS and lie some more, and when he was backed into a corner, he'd obfuscate. "The media" was the perfect BS tool for him, and what we still have is the carry over from him.

 

[garrow]

They were just fine with the media when Hearst, McCormick and Luce loomed large over the media landscape.

 

[maumann]

There's not much I can add other than "amen, brothers and sisters."

If there was ever a "golden age" for media, I missed it, too. The whole idea, as it was proposed to all of us, was work hard in smaller markets, build a killer air check, get hired at a medium market, build an even more killer air check, and eventually you'll get paid what you deserve.

It worked for several people whom I hired, like Vicky Moore, who has been on KNX mornings for years. Or C.L. Brown, who went from Rocky Mount to Louisville to ESPN.com to the News & Observer, covering his first love, the ACC. Or "Martdawg" Smith, who was a kid fresh out of Radford who couldn't write a lick for NASCAR.com, but man, could he network -- and he worked damn hard to make himself a commodity that fits perfectly with whatever ESPN does. Plus, he's frickin' selling Dodges and Frosted Flakes on the TV!

So it can be done. It's just the odds of being in the right place at the right time are incredibly long and getting longer by the day. The Titanic has sunk, and there are fewer and fewer lifeboats that are getting more and more crowded. Every merger, every consolidation, every venture that goes under means somebody else is willing to do almost anything to work your job. And Frederick's "suits" aren't immune, either. It's just an MBA opens doors in other industries where the skill sets are parallel.

In 1980, the median career for a broadcast news reporter was 2.1 years and the median annual salary was around $10,000. In 12 years of bouncing from Florida to California to Florida to California to North Carolina, I never made more than $18,000, which meant Gwen's substitute teacher salary was larger than what I brought in for between 50-60 hours of weekly on-air and production.

I won awards for covering Challenger and Loma Prieta, but never could parlay those experiences into a better gig.

When I finally said "enough" at WPTF (making $6/hour running the board overnights) in 1991 and called up the Herald-Sun to work the agate page, I thought maybe I could climb the ladder in print. It got me six years of hard labor as sports editor of the Telegram, which won me another four North Carolina Press Association Awards, but I was still stuck Down East until I reinvented myself a third time when sports web sites suddenly popped up.

It only took 20-plus years, the invention of new technology and finally being in the right place for once. I'm reminded of the saying, "luck is where preparation meets opportunity." But you can prepare your entire career and never get a sniff of the opportunity.

I had a blast. But knowing what I know now, I'd definitely major in something else in college, and offer to work prep football games or run the radio station as a hobby.

 

[goalmouth]

I worked with mid-management editorial types not much older than I in dailies who never went to college. Newspapering was the blue collar job of the white collar economy.

 

[Jake from State Farm]

https://lessenberryink.com/2021/11/...xxzrLsalIh2fvxpAOkCuloSDc6onV-ZSVNtBnXzEE1H-Y

 

[Jake from State Farm]

If there was ever a "golden age" for media, I missed it, too. The whole idea, as it was proposed to all of us, was work hard in smaller markets, build a killer air check, get hired at a medium market, build an even more killer air check, and eventually you'll get paid what you deserve.

I started at the Hillsdale Daily News, which was rookie ball
Went to Marquette (Class A), then Clearwater (Double-A, small paper in big market), Jacksonville (Triple A) then Detroit
You can’t do that today

 

[Michael_ Gee]

I remember about 10 years ago reading the obit of a guy who'd been the editor of the Philly Daily News. He'd started as a copy boy while in high school, went to WW2, came back, got rehired by the paper and had a full career as a copy editor, then supervising editor, and eventually boss. That kind of career is impossible at any level of media now and has been for decades. But it's tough for an industry if it has Ivy or equivalent college requirements for hiring newbies and pays entry level jobs less than Amazon does.

 

[rtse11]

But it's tough for an industry if it has Ivy or equivalent college requirements for hiring newbies and pays entry level jobs less than Amazon does.

Where I work (rhymes with Lannett) the content coaches are hammering us with "the game story is dead." Maybe it is in the metro but in little East Podunk where they're 30 miles from the nearest TV and radio outlets we're still "the paper of record" and they're reading our gamers and player features more than the "8 ways to carve your tuekey" features they tell us we should be running

 

[goalmouth]

Why do they hate us?

Because too many of us participate in the framing of all new events such that they comport with the status quo preferred by our shadowy corporate benefactors, affirming the world view of wealth and privilege while acting indignantly if anyone accuses us of complicity and intellectual laziness.

 

[playthrough]

Where I work (rhymes with Lannett) the content coaches are hammering us with "the game story is dead." Maybe it is in the metro but in little East Podunk where they're 30 miles from the nearest TV and radio outlets we're still "the paper of record" and they're reading our gamers and player features more than the "8 ways to carve your tuekey" features they tell us we should be running

My local Lannett product is not getting any more of my clicks for their "Three reasons why the (team) won" listicles. I'll find a game story somewhere else.

 

[Jake from State Farm]

We had a meeting once where the powers from corporate implored us to strive for prestigious awards like Best of Gannett
Pulitzer? Nah
Best of Gannett? Oh yeah

 

[superhater]

So many reasons for the hate...but mostly some combination of:

a) Vulture capitalists buying paper chains and gutting staff — especially eliminating copy editors, which lets more mistakes get through, which fuels confirmation bias for people already predisposed to hate us

b) Most people just aren't very bright in general, which makes them easily swayed by cable news/Facebook rhetoric telling them that we're the enemy

c) People now seek out media that tells them what they want to hear, and anything fact-based isn't going to be that

 

[rtse11]

We had a meeting once where the powers from corporate implored us to strive for prestigious awards like Best of Gannett
Pulitzer? Nah
Best of Gannett? Oh yeah

The only emails I delete faster than PR pitches are Best of Gannett reminders