Watching the completely stupid management decisions of Big Media (and for that matter Little Media) in the mainstream is kind of like watching a trainwreck in progress, with clowns. It’s really painful to watch, and the blood and tears make it a horrible thing to watch, but the clowns make it kind of funny, because, well, they’re clowns.
OK, bad analogy. But hey, clowns.
Anyway, once again we see why the LA Times, once a great paper that consistently informed I, the reader, in ways the Chronicle is completely unaware of, is starting to circle down the drain. In this case, in their desperate attempt to get me to go to the Macy’s Labor Day Sale, they had these kewl ads programmed with mad Flash skillz.
The problem? You can’t click them closed and they completely obscure the article I was trying to read. In other words, the entire point of me being on the site in the first place is gone – I’m just suppose to click on the ads and forget about reading anything in the LA Times entirely.
You realy have to hand it to the idiots in charge of these publications. To “save money” they fire off most of their staffs – funny because in a knowledge economy such as the news, you might want to have people on board who know about the subjects their writing about.
Then they start realizing “gawrsh, there’s that thar series of tubes” out there, 15 years too late, and come up with bigger and dumber ideas for “online,” when of course, they’re not blaming The Series of Tubes for everything bad known to man (read any front page of the San Francisco Chronicles to read the silly bleatings of what is left of their staff on almost any issue).
Then they wonder why it is people don’t pay 50 cents or more a day for a “newspaper” filled mostly with wire service copy, partsian politics posing as “local news,” dull, witless and endless “commentary” from people who restate the obvious, and on and on. “Alternative” papers don’t fare much better – they’re doing the same boneheaded things the mainstream does, just nastier.
And of course, we could power the entire Solar System on the perpetual whining of journalists, who bitch and moan about how “the tubes” are responisble for all their woes – but never once take a look at the fact that Big Corporatisation of the workplace affects most industries too, and who of course can’t be bothered to learn any new skills – or oh I dunno report some news. Maybe lookup that whole “colluding with the government on the Iraq war thing” and the whole “suck up to the powerful all the time” thing too.
If there was an actual newspaper that reported news in the Bay Area, and one that wasn’t wedded to self interest or special interests, I’d happily pay for it, and I’d be willing to pay more than what most papers charge now. When one comes around, can someone let me know?
Since it will be sometime around the Apocalypse, I’m sure you’ll be wanting to get in touch anyway. KTHXBAI.