I originally had the article linked in the URL frame - but I don't actually want anyone to go there... I get these BREAKING NEWS articles in my junk mail box fairly often. I should probably unsubscribe - but whatever. I just got this whopper:
Missing Westminster woman, 3-year-old daughter found safe Which, I guess, was a follow-up to Westminster mother, daughter disappear during shopping trip to Colorado Springs
So.... a white lady and her kid go missing... and then they're found safe. And this is not only news... but BREAKING NEWS worthy of my inbox?
How many people died in the Syrian conflict today? How many young black men were murdered? How many young women were sold into sex slavery? How many humans were otherwise trafficked?
I gotta really DIG for those answers... But some white lady who might just need a break from her asshole husband makes her way into my inbox because I bought some 2 for 1 restaurant coupon from an affiliate of a local news channel?
I am Jack's complete disillusionment with media.
Dude. Natalee Holloway. Marshall McLuhan said it best: The medium is the message. You have an email alert from a local news station about a white woman in peril. Let's break that down: - Email marketing is far and away the most effective as far as click-through and attention. 80% of direct email messages are opened and 60% are read. This is why "spam" has such a hold over us - we're prisoner to it 'cuz we just can't not open it. That said, you aren't opening an email from an outfit that sends you news. You're opening an email from a broadcast station that wants you to turn on the television. - Broadcast television is a dinosaur. I read a formative article back in 2008 that remarked on CBS, the youngest-skewing network on television, finally having the median age of its prime-time viewers cross the 50-YO mark. Elaborating: the median age of broadcast television viewers, of all networks, was 50-plus. Furthermore, the article observed that the median age of all television viewers was increasing by one year, every year, and had since 2000. Effectively, young viewers were not replacing old viewers when they died. That was 2008. Extrapolating, the median age of CBS viewers is now 57. That would put the median age of Fox viewers at 82, but I'll bet it started asymptotically approaching 78 'cuz old people die. - Everybody loves a white woman in peril, particularly old white people who watch broadcast television. Me? I'm discouraged by the amount of coverage two escaped murderers are getting but I know why - it's an easy story with no requirements for boots-on-ground that has zero controversy and all the dramatic elements of a car chase or ticking bomb Hollywood scenario. Doesn't mean it's news. The Fairness Doctrine has been dead for five years. Local stations are no longer required to justify their bandwidth through the public good, they just need viewers. The most effective way to gain viewers is to stuff your inbox with clickbait so that you'll go watch something breathless and vapid that can be assembled entirely within the studio from wire reports and stock footage. The medium is the message - clickbait for old women is news. Reclaim your inbox. Unsub from everything. Me? I get my news from The Daily Beast Cheat Sheet, not because I think it's good coverage but because I know they'll give me a good overview of the meaninglessness everyone else is fixated on without me requiring to read more than a summary. Actual news? Yeah, you'll have to hunt that out. And again, the medium is the message: the truth is out there, but it's subject to perspective and prospecting.
It's not that the email bothered me... it's that THIS story above all else in the world is what makes the threshold of "breaking news". And frankly - this story didn't really bother me as much as remind me of how jacked up we are. It actually hits my "receipts" inbox - the one I use for most transactional stuff. I don't get any of this garbage in my personal box.Reclaim your inbox. Unsub from everything.
Related: Have you found a good replacement for NSFWCorp? I'm struggling to find any gonzo outlets, but more than that, struggling to find any good in depth places at all. Al Jazeera is alright, but it only goes so far. Pando is garbage. NPR is frustrating, but occasionally has something insightful, but I don't have something that I want to go to every day and read everything from.
Good question, I actually agree 100%. Outlets that I once found enjoyable nearly "cover to cover," are faltering. Is this because places like NPR are changing or because we are?
I had the displeasure of a 6 hour delayed flight a few days ago. In the Detroit airport, there's no escaping CNN short of hiding in a bathroom stall. They talked for all six hours about two stories, the prison escape thing and the white NAACP lady. Six hours. Two stories. Next time you think NPR sucks, turn on CNN for like 20 minutes. NPR has a long way to fall before it comes close to the bottom of the well. That said, I do think that they sometimes cover nothing stories just because they're what everyone is covering.
Again, read Ryan Holiday's book. He made a convincing argument that news right now is equivalent to the heyday of the yellow press and that things didn't get better until the New York Times established the subscription model. Journalism will find traction again, but it'll be a while. I think the modern investment newsletter is probably the paradigm we'll end up on - you'll pay a large chunk of money to someone to curate reports from verifiable sources that will likely reflect the bias of the organization, but will be immune to manipulation through advertising or the need to titillate in order to maintain circulation. ConsortiumNews works that way, I just haven't liked Bob Parry's focus for a while. NSFWCorp was before its time, I'm afraid. It's gonna be dark ages but they will eventually lift.
Oddly enough, this month I started an experiment along these lines for myself to keep track of RUS/USA/UKR rhetoric, signals, and happenings.I think the modern investment newsletter is probably the paradigm we'll end up on - you'll pay a large chunk of money to someone to curate reports from verifiable sources that will likely reflect the bias of the organization
To play devil's advocate, this is local news, and a missing person in a nearby city is something that a local news station is probably going to want to keep up on. This isn't a world news outlet, it's not their job to report closely on Syria, or sex trafficking, because they don't have the reach to do that well, the only thing most local news companies report is summaries they get from their parent company or a news wire. If you want to attack the parent company Fox for lack of coverage (or inaccurate coverage) that's fair, but then Fox likely also isn't reporting this missing person as breaking news.