Kathleen Parker illustrates why traditional media is Fail.
by Urizenus Sklar, at the This is So Stupid I Had to Come out of Retirement Desk
In today’s Washington Post there is a monumentally inept essay by Kathleen Parker that both bemoans the death of the print newspaper and aptly illustrates precisely why it is dying, thanks to the article’s delightful combination of factual error, failed analysis, and ugly condescending elitism. The main thread is that blowhards like Rush Limbaugh are destroying good hardworking newspapers (who knew his 20 million listeners were more damaging than the loss of add revenue to Craigslist -- a factor which was not even mentioned). The money quote for me was this one:
In the not-distant future … the news may be delivered via a video game. Forget the Internet. Forget blogs, tweets and tags. Forget Jim Cramer-style infotainment. Millions of people are already living in computerized parallel universes through games such as "The Sims" and "World of Warcraft" (WoW). We may have to toss the newspaper on those stoops -- in the virtual world of fake life.
More brandy, please.
Brandy? Anyway, someone should tell Ms. Parker that The Sims Online closed last summer, and that news delivery in a video game is here and it involves either an RSS feed or opening an window that is connected, by tubes, to the interwebs. I swear, is Ted Stevens this woman’s technology adviser? For more Parker ineptitude see below the fold.
Parker inverts the actual relationship between traditional media and those hardworking journalists that actually dig up facts. She thinks that newspapers protect the reporters that find out new stuff and that the blogs (and in world newspapers?) just amplify the noise. In point of fact, investigative reporters have been drummed out of newspapers and take up shop covering their beat by blog and freelancing stories to traditional media outlets on those rare occasions when those outlets feel inclined to cut a few paragraphs out of their Lilo coverage. But it’s apparently not enough for this Post writer to be merely inept, it seems she also needs to add a gratuitously misinformed analysis of the sociology of video game culture:
For those who have been busy with real life, "The Sims" is apparently popular with women who can create a virtual doppelganger and live happily in the suburbs. For millions of guys, WoW is a role-playing game that combines fantasy with mythology. One can't help noting that males and females acting out fantasies are drawn to roles frowned upon in real life: suburban homemaking and warrior-hero play. Hmmmm.
I would comment, but sometimes things speak for themselves.
Kathleen Parker is a twit, pure and simple. She feigns being some sort of right-wing ideologue, when her columns do nothing but attack the very people she claims to support. She's upset that the internet and radio are stealing attention away from her beltway elitist wine and cheese cocktail party crowd, and she follows it up with some good old fashioned ignorance of what the hell she's talking about.
Truly the epitome of today's media, completely disillusioned with the lives of normal people and reality.
Posted by: George Zimmer, Founder and CEO of Men's Warehouse | March 15, 2009 at 05:54 PM
The reality is that SHES NOT a JOURNALIST, but a "OPINION COLUMNIST" and thats about 1 notch above a blogger like yourself and an opinion rag like the Herald .
Her "non researched", "opioniated" "non journalistic" approach to speading what you also spread pretending as news, IS the underlying truth of the culture she is warning about.
Shared elitism at the desk of stupidity that neither of you refuse to leave.;)
Posted by: chris | March 15, 2009 at 06:42 PM
btw:
,
it was NOT-- MS.Parker who stated the below comments, it was Alex Jones.
taken from the post:
"
Alex S. Jones, director of Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, tried to break the news gently to the crowd of mostly older men and a few women at the meeting.
In the not-distant future, says Jones, the news may be delivered via a video game. Forget the Internet. Forget blogs, tweets and tags. Forget Jim Cramer-style infotainment. Millions of people are already living in computerized parallel universes through games such as "The Sims" and "World of Warcraft" (WoW). We may have to toss the newspaper on those stoops -- in the virtual world of fake life.
More brandy, please. "
Posted by: chris | March 15, 2009 at 06:48 PM
News "Reporters" (like Erik "The Liar Back Stabber Jackass Dumbass" Krangel) are done. There is no further use for them. They lie for a living by sensationalizing, fictionalizing, and plagiarizing to meet deadlines for pay. They write for pay period. They are done. The days of needing them are over. News is no longer delivered by horseback riders.
So of course they wriggle like dying cockroaches that have been sprayed with raid.
Bloggers are generally unpaid and if they get any compensation at all it is usually via crappy google ad sense and maybe selling a few ad spaces on their web pages. But it usually is not their day job and they have nothing to lose by telling the truth.
The fact a so-called journalist fails to even perform cursory research amply demonstrates why no self respecting journal/publication would ever hire that dimwit lady for anything other than a janitorial position with a toilet swab. But the competition for those jobs is tough so she would not cut the mustard. I'm sure there is room for her in underpass hotel. And she still has the oldest profession to fall back on. After all she has been whoring with words for half a century already right? Obviously she can put a good spin on the pitch to the johns at the street curb.
Posted by: Ann Otoole | March 15, 2009 at 07:09 PM
You should never compare someone you hate, or view as pathetic, to a cockroach. Do you realise how fucking badass cockroaches are?
Posted by: Alyx Stoklitsky | March 15, 2009 at 08:36 PM
For more evidence of the topsy-turvy nature of reportage in the 21st century, anyone who watched the sparring match - or, as it turned out, the punching bag - between Jon Stewart and Jim Kramer on Comedy Central's Daily Show will have seen "boundary collapse" in action. Here we have a comedian playing the role of the investigative journalist and the journalist playing the role of fool. When Comedy Central comes across as a bastion of intrepid investigation and CNBC - a "news channel" - behaving like an extension of the Wall Street press machine, you just know something has changed.
In an upcoming interview for "SLentrepreneur Magazine,", Larry Mullen of the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism & Media Studies based at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas says of the shift in "traditional" news distribution that "What has changed is that news and opinion have come down from the Ivory Tower. Now the average citizen can put his or her opinion out there for 100s or 1000s to see. All you need is access – and anyone can have access. Just head down to your local public library and log in."
Of course, there is still the problem of veracity. That's not to say that the major new organizations are always right, but that there are so many more bloggers who can be wrong.
Parker et al. are slowly just becoming one of thousands of commentators. Consumers have now to develop a new skill - working out who is right and who is wrong. Thanks to the democratization of information, "truth" has become much more slippery and "facts" are no longer the winnowing tools for separate wheat from chaff.
Posted by: Sigmund Leominster | March 15, 2009 at 11:50 PM
Kathleen Parker @ "Drive-by pundits, to spin off of Rush Limbaugh's "drive-by media," are non-journalists who have been demonizing the media for the past 20 years or so and who blame the current news crisis on bias."
Damn, she busted my irony meter with this one. The woman is a pundit for crying out load. Must be swell that you feel your' job destroys the very institution you make your living from, isn't it Parker?
I think, we need to properly honor her by naming a sewage treatment plant or a lethal parasite after her.
Posted by: Emperor Norton hears a who? | March 16, 2009 at 12:21 PM
Proprietor of Fucking Shit, Urizenus Sklar, presents to us his stupid fucking opinion, as if being the owner of a tabloid rag for an online pixelsex videogame gives him any knowledge about the topic whatever.
You are a god-damned clown, Mr. Sklar. Taking the opinion of some dumb opinion whore who writes for the Washington Post (a rag notable in its failure) and then extracting it to all of mainstream media only proves that you are an idiot. Oh, except that you completely made the nature of this quote ambiguous, and in fact this was a whore quoting a moron- Alex Jones. So much for reading comprehension, asshole.
Ann O'cunt: Do you honestly think that bloggers hold the keys to journalism? As you have noted, they have nothing to loose, which makes them equally likely to lie as to tell the truth. Furthermore, there's no adherence of any journalistic standards in the bloggedweb community. Some of the biggest mistakes in mainstream journalism in the last few years have resulted from journalists paying attention to the bloggedwebbers.
Blogs only serve as gossip and opinion clusterfucks. Go back to rubbing cunts with Prokofy, you god-damned stupid whore of a woman.
Posted by: Baron Cuttlesmith von Blogharder, Esqu, MD | March 16, 2009 at 01:12 PM
Hey! Uri-anus! When did the brain damage 'actually' set in for you? B4 or after the so-called retirement? or B4 or after your major collision with Second Life™? or at birth?
Posted by: Voi·là | March 16, 2009 at 06:29 PM
"One can't help noting that males and females acting out fantasies are drawn to roles frowned upon in real life: suburban homemaking and warrior-hero play. Hmmmm."
That's true and it's why Gor is so popular.
Posted by: ^o) | March 21, 2009 at 03:53 PM