Critic Paul Horsley’s position at the Kansas City Star, which is owned by McClatchy Co., has been terminated. This sucks.
“I’m sorry this requires the painful announcement we are making today, but we’re taking this action to help ensure a healthy future for our company.”
Who needs culture, anyway, right?
Or: Way to anticipate the future of your market, idiots. Preemptive media integration, perhaps...? Nope. After-the-fact media integration. “Sounds good boys. Now for the next item on the docket. What’ll we do about yesterday, tomorrow?”
Sorry, Paul. We rarely had the opportunity to take apart your stuff, which means we like your writing. Good luck in the future and hope to see you in the papers or on the web soon!
Because of idiots, I get to put up this lovely painting again.
(painting by Jana Bartouskova)
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6/19/08
Fuck You for Making Me Wash Your Underwear, Again
Posted by Empiricus at 12:23 PM
Labels: Jana Bartouskova, Kansas City Star, McClatchy Co., Paul Horsley, terminated position
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5 comments:
And again, Americans have permission to get that much dumber. It's hard to know who to blame since the public refuses to demand high quality, meaningful news coverage. Americans seem to hate newspapers -- especially those which feature comprehensive and fair news coverage, good writing (not that they know what looks like anyways), and well-rounded content, choosing instead shitty, blurb-lengthed sensational tripe on TV and the hyper-global-inter-mega-nets.
When the LA Times fired some large number of reporters and essentially closed their foreign offices a year or two back, the company cited a dip in profits from 30% to 20%. Well, shit. I can't belive they didn't just file for bankruptcy with those kinds of numbers. Why even get out of bed for 20% profit?
Two thoughts for the crap-heap here:
1. "The newspaper industry has been struggling..." First, blame the citizens of this country for not reading papers. Second, blame the papers for printing junk content. I cancelled my NY Times subscription years ago and I'm about to pull the plug on my current newspaper because it's garbage. I'm coming to the conclusion (regretfully) that it's probably better to read no news then to delude oneself reading propaganda disguised as news.
2. The question is with diminishing interest in "serious" music is a classical music concert really a news event worthy of newspaper coverage? This is sort of a grand scheme of things question.
Well, I might be pulling this out of my ass, but I thought that people are still reading. Only, they've moved online or to other more truncated forms, like the Metro (see iTunes University, Bob Cauthorn?). What's prevented newspapers from competing they way they used to is that they haven't been able to come up with faster ways for their readership to access the stories, er...dreck, they want, without having to sift through the multitude of, well, whatever. Finite space is finite space, and they still have to advertise.
As to your second point, I'm not sure if (searches for random, actual newspaper article) "Consumers rethink whether they need $4 coffee" is a newsworthy endeavor either. Personally, I'd rather hear about the concert. I might gain something from its brilliance. Or, in the worst case scenario, the concert review piques my interest because it's so bad. Either way, win-win.
If Starbucks goes out of business because of overpriced coffee it would have a far greater negative effect on the economy then if all the symphony halls shut doors in the country. In fact, because of all the "public" money invested in concert halls, we hypothetically could stand to save money if the latter or (latte if you like) were to happen!
That's not to say that I find articles on $4 coffee exciting, but then again, news is not supposed to be exciting- it's supposed to be news. Two news words that trump all musical events this year- InBev, Bud.
Touche, my friend.
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