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In the end there will only be cockroaches and Marmaduke
Howie Kurtz watches the caskets roll by at the WaPo and you feel like you're listening to Ringo talk about John, Paul, and George dropping out of the Beatles:
But it is painful to watch from the inside. The talented reporters, editors and photographers walking out the door are part of the heart and soul of a living, breathing organism. How do you replace a Tom Ricks, one of the best Pentagon reporters ever? Or a Sue Schmidt, the investigative reporter who revealed Jack Abramoff's dirty dealings? Or Robin Wright, who's covered the Middle East for a quarter-century? What about battle-scarred editors with deep knowledge and a light touch?
[...]
Some colleagues are in transition. David Broder, who at 78 still pursues politics with great vigor, will keep writing his column under contract. Tony Kornheiser, who will contribute to the Web site, had reduced his sportswriting role in recent years as he became an ESPN and radio star and co-host of "Monday Night Football."
Others would have left regardless for new jobs or book contracts. John Harris and Jim VandeHei decamped last year to create the instantly successful Politico.com. And you could staff an all-star team with working journalists who once graced The Post's pages: David Remnick, Malcolm Gladwell, Steve Coll, Gwen Ifill, Mike Isikoff, Kate Boo, Mark Leibovich, Elisabeth Bumiller, Glenn Frankel, David Von Drehle. But talented hires keep replenishing the staff.
But then he gets bitter:
The ticking time bomb here is the wholesale abandonment of newspapers by younger people who grew up with a point-and-click mentality. When I was speaking at Harvard recently, a smug graduate student said, "I get everything I need from YouTube. What are you going to do about it?"
"What are you going to do about it?" I shot back. If people want to tune out the news, no one can compel them to change their habits. We can be smarter, faster and jazzier in providing information, but we can't force-feed the stuff. If newspapers wither and die, it will be in part because the next generation blew us off in favor of Xbox and Wii and full-length movies on their iPods. Network news faces the same erosion. Maybe, in the end, we get the media we deserve.
Punchline:
After pondering the offer, I decided: I'll badly miss the people who are leaving, but I'm staying put.
Ouch. There you have it: the first recorded instance of self-pwning.
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And here’s to you, Mrs. Susan Schmidt,
Kenny Starr turned his lonely leaks to you,
oo-oo-ooohhh
“What are you going to do about it?” I shot back.
Damn, that’s some snappy repartee.
What it boils down to is nobody on earth wants to hire Howie, so he’s stuck. Broder cashed in and will still rake in some extra change while he sucks valuable oxygen a younger and smarter columnist could be using, but poor Howie will just have to be content showing the new hires where the restroom is.
Tough to be stupid these days.
I much prefered the following introspective on old vs new media…from a sports guy:
http://thebiglead.com/?p=5820
They really have gutted the reporting staff at the Post.
Way to go, Howard, that’s real loyalty: blame the other writers, the other media, the readers, the non-readers — heck, blame the weather and the price of oil: but at the end of the day, it’s not the journalists who used to be at the Post that area causing us to ignore your sad little rag, it’s the quality of the writing and reporting of those who defiantly remain (hint: that’s you, Howard) and are allowed to turn the once-revered paper into Teh Suck.
There can be no doubt: Howard will be the frumpy, clueless guy who gets to shut off the lights and drop the keys thru the mail slot when the WaPo dinosaur finally keels over out of sheer irrelevance.
See now your going to make us fire you, you talentless little prick.
Couldn’t have been the shameless cheerleading for the Iraq war or the years of unquestioning acceptance of every word from Bushco. No way. Couldn’t be the continued presence of gasbags like Broder and all the other columnists who Got It Wrong from day one and yet still hold forth.
Yep, it’s them damn Nintendos and that evil YouTube.
Tool.
No mention of consolidation or the corporations which adore it, either.
Putz, heal thyself.
Where’s the part where he yells, “Get off my lawn, you damn kids!”
You see, if there’s a choice between what Howie does and everything else, choosing anything is a sign of your capitulation to stupidity, not a rejection of Howie’s many failures.
A question . . . while the WaPo reporters have their problems, doesn’t it seem that it’s the overrated WaPo columnists that have done more to make the Post sloppy and irrelevant–Samuelson, Novak, Will, Krauthammer, Cohen, Broder, and Kurtz himself.
Probably not the first case of self-pwning, but definitely one of the most jacktastic. “Old man yells at a cloud”, indeed.
How do you replace Sue Schmidt?
An Elan Mira A3 stenography machine sells for about $3900
I think the news that Tony Kornholer has left the facility should only be greeted with huge applause. Would that he took his smarmy, shiny head out of the public eye entirely.
The winds of change are blowing Howie, get used to it.
PS: You most likely haven’t seen anything yet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taVW8Kv2HcQ
Jack Abramoff did business with Democrats.
No, no…I don’t think I deserve that at all…
This is going to make Jon Stewart cry.
and today’s column by Howie is about how MSNBC is leaning too far to the left.
there’s no excuse for the Post not to do well. DC is a newsjunkie’s heaven, there’s no real competition (the Times as always lost money and had a much smaller circulation), there’s no shortage of people here who can afford the paper, and there would always be a market for the main paper of the nation’s capital. Alas, they’re too much a part of the DC Kool Kids to realize that the reason they’re bleeding readers is that they’re so far up the rethuglican’s butts that you can only see the bottoms of Fred’s shoes.
Want to sell more papers WaPo?
1. Do some REAL reporting, like youdid in the early 70s. Lord knows there is enough material here.
2. Get an effective ombudsman, one who doesn’t think her job is to discuss trivia or to make excuses.
3. Your editorial page has more dinosaurs than all three Jurassic Park movies put together. Broder, Will and Cohen have long outlasted their readability. Novak is a criminal and why does that clown of a former Bush speech writer even HAVE a column? I like E.J. Dionne, but when he’s the most liberal editorial writer you have then the page is leaning a bit to the hard right.
4. Fire Fred.
5. If I wanted RNC propaganda I could read the Times or the Examiner, and the latter is free. Maybe look at the demographics of your local area. DC, Northern Virginia and the Maryland suburbs are a deep, deep Democratic blue. Maybe, and perhaps I’m a little crazy, but just maybe three conservative daily papers in a heavily Democratic urban area is a bit much. Maybe try leaning to the left a bit. Just a wild and crazy thought… Yeah, the local RW nuts will scream but they think the local weather reports are too liberal. They ALWAYS scream. Accept it. You can’t make them happy so try aiming at the majority of your readers in the area.