Chi-Cry-Me-A-Reader
In last week’s Chicago Reader Michael Lenehan put forth a “Modest Proposal” (PDF!?) to teach the web surfing, blog reading public a lesson about the value of journalism. He proposes a year without journalists. The article sounds to me like an old Morse Code operator, lamenting the rise of the telephone and proposing that they teach Ma Bell a lesson by going on strike–yeah, no more telegraph service! That
Preach on. It always surprises me that these ‘progressive’ news outlets can’t get with the program and open up to RSS. I would consume so many more page views that way.
RSS? The Reader still posts the majority of their content in PDF! Who wants to sift and search through a frickin’ PDF to read articles? And it’s amazing that an outlet as ostensibly hip as The Reader has no bloggers whatsoever.
Now now. Look, when i started reading his article, I too was like, “oh, cry me a river!”
Then I realized he was using some of that there sarcasm and is totally fucking with y’all.
And you’re falling for it, hook line and sinker.
Funny thing is, comically overblown complaints aside… he’s totally right.
Someone has to make the donuts.
He’s being sarcastic about journalists going on strike for a year, I’ll give you that… I didn’t miss that sarcasm, it’s just not very effective. But I think he’s serious about the rest of the article–I think he sees blogs as a threat to journalism and outlets like Craigslist/eBay as a threat to their revenue stream–to which I still call shenanigans.
Someone does have to make the donuts. But you know what? The upstart tiny place around the corner can make donuts just as good, if not better, than Dunkin’ Donuts can. Media outlets can adapt or they can die, but blaming the competition or implying fault with your audience is not a good way to ensure you stay relevant.
Thanks for posting this. It made me think about a widely used BBS we have in Japan, called 2channel, and gave me some ideas for writing up a 2channel, blogging, and “real news” Metblogs Tokyo piece related to Lenehan’s article (see the last part of it, “Is citizen journalism a joke?”).