CSotD: Forget it, Jake. It’s Idiocracy.
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Doonesbury decries the lack of information available in the Information Society.
There's plenty of information, of course, but you have to go look for it, which, even for a dedicated info-scrounger, is not so easy. Even Google News is driven by what other people think is worth knowing, and so, while it's a pretty good resource, you still have to sort through the stupid to find the not-stupid.
That is, the lead story could be that Netanyahu is threatening to spark a war with Iran, but you have to drill down to find actual, responsible coverage, because the top link is often some ridiculously skewed, five-paragraph New York Post story or an LA Times blog of similarly distorted, unsourced content.
The other problem is that, while Google News does send people to these sites and thus help them gain page views, the financial side of all this free content hasn't really taken off, and, to the degree that it has, favors not creating a site that gives people a daily briefing but giving them a lowest-common-denominator product that makes Newton Minow's "Vast Wasteland" look like graduate school.
I watched "Idiocracy" last night with my granddaughter, who is taking a course in which the movie was suggested. The premise doesn't justify a full-length movie, and Judge's dysgenic theory that we are headed for a world run by morons because stupid people have more children is funny, but I don't think a very accurate portrayal of what is causing the slide.
Still, "Idiocracy's" running joke of a top-rated TV show called "Ow! My Balls!" isn't that far off the mark. And the problem isn't so much that large numbers of people are watching Honey Boo Boo or that a TV network that calls itself "The Learning Channel" would stoop to putting the show on the air.
People at least realize that, when they're watching Honey Boo Boo, they're watching crap.
But when a network news show, with 20-some minutes to present the news, devotes half that precious time to YouTube videos and heartwarming glurge about reunited orphans, people who watch still think they've watched the news.
Which gives them permission to spend the rest of the evening watching the real-world equivalent of "Ow! My Balls!"
Trudeau spent the last week skewering the Huffington Post, which was a pretty good, admittedly liberal news aggregator until it reached a level where Ariana could literally and spiritually sell out and turn it into a freak show in which semi-clothed celebrities and cute kittens jostle for clicks alongside liberal blog entries defending unions, written by unpaid scabs:
The argument in media is that the profits from bad, best-selling garbage is what makes it possible to present the good, important quality material. This is, however, a load of bullshit, for several reasons.
First and foremost is that the days of the dedicated entrepeneur publisher are pretty much gone. The only mission that seems intact these days is the mission of making money, and people whose sole reason for running a business is to maximize short-term profit do not engage in things that will cause them to lose money now, even if it would pay off in the long run.
For newspapers, that means cutting ties to their local communities just at a time when localism is the thing that makes them stand out from the global Internet.
It means shutting down the Washington bureau, where small chains used to pool money for a reporter to write about issues of importance to each that were the topic of pending legislation.
Today, you may see wire stories about major national legislation, but you no longer see stories about, say, a federal bill to rebuild crumbling dams or that would help soybean farmers in your region.
And they cut back, not just on the comics page but on staff cartoonists who brought a sense of localism to their pages, Syracuse being just the latest to decide that cheap, national cartoons are every bit as relevant and attractive to their readers as a graphic comment on the cost of the new civic center or on the mayor's pipedream of luring a new, major employer.
And that's not just the traditional standard old-line dailies. The Village Voice, once an important alternative news source, sold out to the beancounters years ago and has gradually laid off all the expensive, thoughtful writers who made the paper matter. Now they've cut Tom Tomorrow, having slashed their other comics some time ago.
In the case of the Syracuse paper, there is at least the odd excuse that the Advance chain, which is cutting back to three day a week pubication, appears to be gradually shutting down the print side of its business. I say "odd" because, logically, an attempt to shift to on-line only would suggest enhancing your local flavor.
But not if it costs money.
Not if it doesn't generate immediate profits in the current quarter.
Oh well. As Matt Bors suggested recently, we're bailing water with pitchforks.
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