So one of the reasons that blogs are supplanting newspapers in the role of telling the public what’s going wrong, perhaps the strongest reason, is that they enjoy a certain freedom with format?

It’s an interesting thought.

ne reason seekers of news are abandoning print newspapers for the Internet has nothing directly to do with technology. It’s that newspaper articles are too long. On the Internet, news articles get to the point. Newspaper writing, by contrast, is encrusted with conventions that don’t add to your understanding of the news. Newspaper writers are not to blame. These conventions are traditional, even mandatory.

Take, for example, the lead story in The New York Times on Sunday, November 8, 2009, headlined “Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House.” There is nothing special about this article. November 8 is just the day I happened to need an example for this column. And there it was. The 1,456-word report begins:

Handing President Obama a hard-fought victory, the House narrowly approved a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system on Saturday night, advancing legislation that Democrats said could stand as their defining social policy achievement.

Fewer than half the words in this opening sentence are devoted to saying what happened. If someone saw you reading the paper and asked, “So what’s going on?,” you would not likely begin by saying that President Obama had won a hard-fought victory. You would say, “The House passed health-care reform last night.” And maybe, “It was a close vote.” And just possibly, “There was a kerfuffle about abortion.” You would not likely refer to “a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system,” as if your friend was unaware that health-care reform was going on. Nor would you feel the need to inform your friend first thing that unnamed Democrats were bragging about what a big deal this is—an unsurprising development if ever there was one.

Iowahawk.

With a grateful hat tip to Westsound Modern.

Click thumbnail to view much larger, and read article.

Hat tip to FrankJ.

Michael Savage occasionally is heard to make the charge that we aren’t nearly as free in this country as they are in Iraq. This one-minute clip, which has become truly an “Everyone else is blogging it, I might as well do it too” moment, is part of one larger issue that compels me to take that charge seriously.

Lots of snarky comments in reply to this; my favorite (from somewhere) was “That’s okay Grandpa, we’ll go get our news from somewhere else.”

Well, John Stewart has a thing or two to say about this, and his words may surprise you (hat tip to Rick)…

I’m just lovin’ that thing at the end. Of all the things Stewart’s lampooning, that “competitive spirit” between liberals and Fox and non-Fox news organizations, needs lampooning the most. “Ah HAH! It’s a seed, not a nut!”

Yeah, an acorn is a seed, and don’t worry about where your tax dollars are going. Traffic report next, followed by weather. Investigate Acorn…by all means…but once that’s done, in all seriousness, let us not forget about the bigger problem. As we’ve been told about it and forgotten about it oh so many times before.

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” — Thomas Jefferson.

Update: AllahPundit comments on the investigation about to get underway. Hope you weren’t looking for any encouragement here:

I can’t do better than Karl’s summary so I’m going to steal it: “A Soros hack, an SEIU thug, someone who pleaded to lying to the FBI, and a Kennedy.” All that’s missing are a few pimps and prostitutes for “technical expertise.” Hardest-hitting internal investigation evah:

In a press release, ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis says, that as “a result of the indefensible action of a handful of our employees,” the group will immediately stop accepting anyone into ACORN office for service programs, will conduct in-service training of staff, and begin an audit “to review all of the systems and processes called into question by the videos,” to be conducted by the group’s Independent Advisory Council.

The Council includes many prominent Democrats, including the man who helped President Obama Transition Team, John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress; former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend; Andrew Stern, International President of the Service Employees International Union; and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros.

What an amazing coincidence! That’s exactly the list of names I had in mind, of the wise and principled public servants I was hoping would be leading this thing up! They’re my go-to guys, absolutely! I have them on speed-dial! Before Super Friends! “Help me, Podesta, Kennedy, SEIU and Cisneros!” I shout it out almost reflexively, anytime I see some kind of mess that needs to be cleaned up and disinfected.

Yeah, of course I’m being sarcastic. Rather sad that some folks need to be told that.

How’s that hope and change working out for you?

Jeffrey Lord, writing in The American Spectator. And quoting Tom Brokaw:

[O]ne of the things I’ve been saying to audiences is this question comes up a lot, and a lot of people will repeat back to me and take it as face value something that they read on the Internet. And my line to them is you have to vet information. You have to test it the same way you do when you buy an automobile or when you go and buy a new flat-screen television. You read the Consumer Reports, you have an idea of what it’s worth and what the lasting value of it is. You have to do the same thing with information because there is so much disinformation out there that it’s frightening, frankly, in a free society that depends on information to make informed decisions.

From what I understand, this is after the Van Jones thing although it’s before the ACORN thing (the former is mentioned alongside the interview, the latter is not).

Lord then, pretending to write a letter to Brokaw, launches into a dizzying array of historic chunks of “disinformation” that turned out to be quite true — but we didn’t know it at the time because the old-guard media was busy protecting us from ourselves, tossing us bromides about Jackie Kennedy’s pink hat.

Lord closes his imaginary letter with:

The investigation of Mr. Jones — a government official no less — is but one example of the competition your colleagues now must face every minute of every day. The investigation into the corruption in ACORN is still one more. So too with the Bush National Guard story. Not to mention the real details of the President’s health care plans. The response to Mark Levin’s book — and the importance of that response, in spite of a virtual blackout from your peers — is, in its quite distinctive fashion, yet another.

In truth? Either you really don’t get all this — or you do, and simply can’t bring yourself to admit the fact. Much less do anything about it.

What do I think? I think you’re a really smart guy, and so are your colleagues.

Which is exactly what troubles.

Thanks for your time.

What the Van Jones and ACORN things have to do with each other, I notice, is not just a rogue underground media, but also video. In that setting, what exactly is it Mr. Brokaw means by “disinformation”? Does he mean the video tells us stories about Jones and ACORN that are accurate this time ’round, but we’re getting into a bad habit with starting to trust these guys standing around in back alleys selling us news from mysterious pockets in their overcoats?

Or does he mean the video was somehow taken out of context, telling us tall tales that are not true?

Wonder what Brokaw had to say about that spate of Michael Moore movies just a few years back.

I’m not much for conspiracy theories, but speaking for myself, if someone’s paying me a livelihood to do something I really don’t give a rat’s ass what their political leanings are when I get done telling them what I’ve been paid to tell them. The way these guys act, it’s like they have some job on the side; like they aren’t really being paid to bring us information. It’s like they’re being paid to keep it away from us.

John Nolte, writing in Big Hollywood (hat tip to Rick):

In recent days and weeks three major news stories have broke here online, at Fox News or the Washington Times; everywhere but the mainstream media. Worse still, as the stories unfolded, the media willfully ignored them until, much to their embarrassment, they were forced to give grudging coverage only after official action — in the form of a resignation (Van Jones), reassignment (the NEA) or dismissal (ACORN) — occurred that could no longer be ignored.

Mainstream news outlets have been caught off guard before, but they used to play catch up. Today they play “hide the ball.”

It’s a problem decades in the making.

If you spend those decades bringing people information, there’s no problem. But the mainstream media hasn’t really been doing that; they’ve been instead spending those years stopping anyone from talking about this-or-that, by refusing to run the story. When an alternative form of media comes up that runs these stories you don’t want talked-about, then, what do you do? That’s the problem.

Deciding to run this, and not-run that, has been the one refuge of corrupt editorialist thought and action. It is all entirely subjective. We saw this with the Chandra Levy thing eight years ago, as Dan Rather came under scrutiny for his refusal to discuss the story — he started coming up with all kinds of reasons to avoid it, illustrating plainly that the talent he was showing was one honed from years and years of the same tortured argument. One cannot help but wonder about all the things we weren’t told in the twentieth century, pre-blogs and pre-innerwebs.

But it’s entirely a matter of personal discretion and taste. If you want democrats to win and Republicans to lose, you can green-light this and red-light that all day long all month long…and when people come to question you about it you can just toss up your silly arguments like Dan Rather did. Some may not like it, but the arguments will, in their own way, be legit.

So now it’s a different world. We’re watching a whole species of dinosaur grapple with a brand new climate, and lumber onward toward extinction. Some days the dinosaur does something smart that helps to postpone the inevitable. Some days the dinosaur does something unforgivably dumb.

What Nolte’s writing about, here, is the latter of those two.

Fascinating stuff. Everyone loves to watch a train wreck.

Stunning.

Hat tip to Conservative Grapevine.

I realize the setting may not be conducive to conducting an interview, and perhaps the things that are distracting her aren’t all being captured on the audio.

Nevertheless — this is a jaw-droppingly bad piece of fieldwork. She doesn’t even do a decent job of propagandizing. Her theatrical sense of outrage gets in the way from start to finish.

Hat tip to Good Lieutenant at Jawa Report, who has taken the trouble of gathering more than a few tidbits of Compare-Bush-to-Hitler artwork goodness to help enlighten the bubble-headed anchor-lady.

Shepard Smith and Neil Cavuto can be heard to respond here.

And Still I Persist points out that maybe, just maybe, we’re seeing the reason for the decline of newspapers, paraded right in front of our noses each and every single morning we bother to crack one open. On the online edition of The Denver Post, take note of the first headline which is in bigger and bolder type than all the rest:

It’s about a poopy, er, I mean, a puppy.

This caps off a week in which our new President seeks godlike power and our Secretary of State was caught on camera enjoying a good ol’ belly-laugh (or hens’-cackle,as the case may be) about hostage taking. We are once strong, now cowering, but our newspapers won’t even discuss it because that would put the Big Reveal on some kind of hard-right-wing bias. No…they’d rather talk about the baby-daddy of the grandson of Alaska’s eleventh Governor, and what he has to say.

Over a generation ago we used to wonder “Are our newspapers applying such scrutiny to (insert name here) because he happens to be a powerful nationwide-officeholder, or because he is a Republican?” What a wonderful learning experience. In 2009 there are no powerful nationwide-officeholders who are Republicans — and so all uncertainty regarding such questions, has been scientifically removed.

Prediction: It is not going to be all Palin, all the time. As soon as 1) another conservative rises up to frighten our liberals more than she does, or 2) it can be strategically calculated that silence would do more damage to her cause than talking about her, our newspapers will stop talking about Sarah Palin. But until then, the dead-tree industry is a Palin-tabloid industry, and the “news bureaus” in Anchorage remain open…and if we want to crack open a newspaper to read about the people who really do have all the power right now, well, you should expect to read about the fashion sense of our First Lady, vegetable gardens, good intentions and puppies. Newspapers are not, for the most part, businesses that are just out to make a buck. That’s a lie. Now that the rebels have grown up to become the power structure they once despised, our newspapers have fallen into an unfortunate habit of comforting the powerful and afflicting the afflicted.

Media Matters was just bursting with pride yesterday. The liberal watchdog group had caught Fox News using “GOP talking points” as their own research.

I scanned the piece from top to bottom, looking for a report about inaccuracy in these GOP talking points. Failing to find that, I looked for an insinuation that any of the facts/figures were subject to discredit, controversy, challenge, contention, dispute…anything. Couldn’t find any of that, either.

Nevertheless, that is a little bit on the slimy side. I’m inclined to give MM the point. Although it would be a much better point, more in keeping with the grandstanding headline, if Fox News recycled Republican talking points as fact in the middle of some kind of argument between the two parties. That would be a clear-cut case of deciding-instead-of-reporting. Not the case here.

But what does that then say about the Sacramento Bee’s headlines tonight. The story underneath carries the byline of “Bee News Services” although it matches word-for-word the first paragraph of a Washington Post story, here. But look how this Sacramento Bee editor chose to present it to the world:

Two logjams broken
Leaders in House, Senate OK blueprint for recovery
MEASURE IS UNPRECEDENTED AND ITS IMPACT UNCERTAIN

Yup, they’re talking about the stimulus plan. The trillion-dollars-worth-of-condoms plan.

Okay, I exaggerate, it isn’t $1 trillion worth of condoms. It’s actually a little less than a trillion, and some of the money goes to things with more of a “stimulative” effect than condoms. There’s lots of good stuff…like…the National Endowment for the Arts…TV conversion…global warming…the Department of Education…

Let’s bottom-line it. You gotta be more than just a little bit left-leaning to think of this as a real “blueprint for recovery.” You gotta be out of yer gourd.

I anxiously await the power, profile and gravitas of Media Matters, showing up to join me in my call for the Sacramento Bee to reverse their cranial-rectal inversion process on this one. This is the front page to the major newspaper of a thriving industrial valley, capital city of one of the nation’s largest and most prosperous states. It’s not a children’s fairy-tale book.

And if it’s wrong to put Republican talking points on the airwaves even when they are not subject to dispute, it’s wrong to put democrat talking points on the front page of such a high-profile newspaper — that are.

Not sure where Lauer’s sense of priorities is here, or where anyone else’s is either, I can only speak for myself.

But if I had my way, I’d see to it we were all freakin’ drowning in all kinds of “outrageous statements” if it meant more kids were raised by fathers and mothers. Lauer may spend as much time and energy as he wishes to spend keeping us clean of such things, but where I came from, if you’ve got free speech you’re going to hear some stuff that goes “over the line” from time to time. And if you value free speech in any genuine way you aren’t going to very much care about that.

Also, if you’re so sure your way is right, you’ll let the other person finish a sentence now and then. Especially when you’re supposed to be giving an interview. That’s the way things work on my planet.

Hat tip to Rick for the clip.

Dave Kopel has an interesting analysis on how the economics of the newsroom push it there.

Seems nothing ever comes along to push it back where it belongs, again.

Our newspapers have crossed the first milestone on the pathway to complete insanity. How many milestones have to be passed on by before the whole thing is just a birdcage liner and nothing else?