Dumbing Down

Another domino falls in Denver:

Rocky Road Closed

And in Kalifornia, a strident voice of the American liberal elite can’t seem to get its message of global warming, dangerous guns, obligations to homeless, nuclear whale endangerment and socialist paradises out to the buying public:

Even The Elite Can't Read

In Chicago, the venerable Tribune is on the skids and the travails of the New York Times don’t need belaboring. Newspapers are an endangered species. The question that comes to mind is, why?

The easy answer and one which has been pointed at regularly is the incredible decline in credibility. All you need is a dozen or so examples of really outrageous journalistic malfeasance before no one is going to believe your cries of “wolf” any more. The fact that the major metro news-rags have become characterized as propaganda devices for the American left is certainly a significant factor. The unwillingness of the newspapers to acknowledge that there is a market for balanced reporting, even if it means that conservative free-market principles might have to be credited is an issue. It doesn’t take an intense market analysis to notice that when Fox News and the Murdoch empire jumped up with a semi-conservative, “fair and balanced” approach to TV news, they flourished and the more liberal network news outlets descended waist deep into the La Brea tar-pit. They have been followed down the well-worn game trail into the morass by MSNBC, CNN and the other bleating, liberal sycophants.

But, what of newspapers? It was a Norman Rockwell start to every day in America to wake, get the morning coffee perking, and then go out the front door to pick up the home-delivered newspaper. Maybe you would greet your neighbors as all along the block, people emerged to begin their routines with the latest events of the world as reported accurately by a trusted source. What happened?

Reporting gave way to editorializing and moralizing. Newsprint succumbed to 24 hour news channels. Acceptance of what is real died in favor of reinforcement of what I want to believe. I don’t need to see or read what challenges my thinking. I can find more than enough online and on cable to reassure me that my sound-bite superficial prejudice is perfectly correct—even when it is patently absurd. Harvard MBA Bush is stupid and divinity school drop-out Gore is an environmental genius…Yep, if that’s what I want to believe, I can be reinforced just by choosing my news. Who needs a newspaper?

And, what of journalism? I remember the rote rule for Journalism 101 on how to write a “lead” for a news story. It was simple. The first sentence must include the “W” questions—who, what, where, when. Put it all in the first sentence. No other choices. Then in subsequent paragraphs expand and explain. Fit it all in the first three column inches. Nothing important left off the starting page for a jump.

You don’t see it anymore. Pick up your local news-rag. The front page is definitely NOT news. It somehow ignores world events, wars, crimes and national catastrophes. It is almost surely some human interest story about a welfare mother, unwed with five children who hasn’t paid her mortgage in ten months, weighs 340 pounds and is losing her food stamps to a local thug who is preying on her when she goes to buy her lottery ticket each afternoon. Octo-mom, anyone?

So, we’ve got no news, no credibility, no market awareness, and a largely illiterate, unquestioning audience who is apathetic about the world. Forget about newspapers. They are now the last of the dinosaurs slowly declining in the swamp, turning slowly into methane and hardening into a gooey residue which might someday be used to heat our homes.