Newspapers have lost it lately over television. The fearless leaders of the industry seem to think it sells newspapers to talk about television and reporters are more than happy to oblige them by writing about it. Beats work, you know. There's nothing wrong with good TV reporting, but endless jabbering about who's going to win American Idol is just pathetic. And it's the kind of thing will only hasten the death of newspapers. Newspapers, ultimately, have to be a distinct alternative to TV, not a cheerleader.
But man is the Sentinel going nuts with the pom-pons. This week, while Sentinel TV writer Tom Jicha was exploring his strange fascination with the WB, Ralph De La Cruz got into the act. Seems the fellow discovered the Sopranos. A half a decade late. Okay, enjoy it Ralph, but for God's sake don't bludgeon us over the head with it. Hey I have an idea: Get that fat ass you're always talking about off the couch and do some reporting. Go out and meet somebody other than your own relatives or hamster or whatever other rodents you have caged up in your house. It's just an idea.
The day after Ralph went gooey on the Sopranos, Sherri Winston got all hot and bothered about Sanjay Gupta on CNN. "Is it just me, or does anyone else think CNN's medical expert Dr. Sanjay Gupta is a real hottie?" she started.
It's just not right. You shouldn't get assaulted by this kind of garbage when you open your newspaper in the morning. And it only gets worse. Winston goes on about a Gupta report on people who have sex while they're sleeping. Then she tells us about her tonsillectomy. And later mentions that her tonsils were "giant." Just what I needed to know. What the hell is going on here? Hey I have an idea, Sherri. Get your ass off the sofa for ten minutes.
Then you have the Herald, which has gone so far as to start a feature by Howard Cohen called the "Idol Watch." .
We can't forget about the Post's Leslie Gray Streeter, she of "yummy" Pulp notoriety. I'm not going to go crazy on her, but just look at her blog. Then turn away forever. It's American Idol all the time. Somebody forgot to tell her that American Idol isn't "cool," her favorite word. (How about somebody run a Nexis search on her use of that word). It's corporate whoredom played out in our faces, churning out horrible pop stars and bad music. They're just running these voices through the studio machine and cashing in on them before everybody realizes they're crap. Somebody's got to sell Ford vehicles, right? Might as well be the raw meat on American Idol.
Side-by-side with Streeter in the Post blogosphere is Kevin Thompson. The lede on his most recent post: "You gotta love The Trumpster -- most of the time." It's about The Apprentice and, yes, it's absolutely worthless. There are dozens of chatrooms on the Internet where people talk about this stuff. The Palm Beach Post isn't carving itself out a niche -- it's only adding to a flooded market.
The good news is that all of this is easily fixable. Just stop writing this crap.
That Wasn't So Hard, Was It? The Miami Herald followed NT on the Mike Kirsch "BOLO" story and credited Jeff Stratton for having broken it. On top of that, Herald reporter Jennifer Lebovich (along with Wanda DeMarzo and David Ovalle) did a damn fine job on the story.
DeFede Didn't Leave The Building Click on this for a blast to the past, back when the Miami Herald was a rocking newspaper. No, not back to the 70s and 80s, before Knight Ridder ground the Herald into the, um, ground. But to the halcyon days of Jim DeFede. Apparently, old icons never die at the Herald -- they just get deleted from the interface.
