Why Newspapers Are Failing

Yesterday's Houston Chronicle provided the perfect example of why newspapers are failing in the age of the Internet. On the first page of the City & State section is an article by Rick Casey titled High Court kills wise Texas law. As you might suspect from the title, the article is about the Supreme Court's recent ruling overturning parts of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. The article starts by excerpting a speech that Gov. Rick Perry gave at a Tea Party rally on Thursday. After this goes on for several paragraphs, Casey admits that Perry never actually said this things and Casey just made them up. He then slams Perry for not accepting federal money for unemployment or education. At this point I had to double check what section of the paper I was reading because I thought maybe I'd picked up the Op/Ed section by mistake but no, it was still the City & State section.

Here's the thing. Fake quotes have no business in a news story unless it's a news story about a reporter being fired for making up fake quotes. The same goes for a reporter's personal opinions of a politician's political positions, especially when those positions have nothing to do with the story. Yet Mr. Casey thought these were appropriate things to include in his article. Clearly his editor(s) also thought it was appropriate and presumably so did the Chronicle's publisher.

When I want the news, I want the news and not some reporter's personal opinions. If I wanted Rick Casey's opinions on things I'd be looking in the Op/Ed section to see if he has a column there, not in the City & State section. I'm sure as hell not going to pay for some reporter's personal opinions dressed up as the news, particularly when I disagree with those opinions. If I want to read some liberal's opinions I can just got to the Huffington Post or Daily Kos or even Democratic Underground and read liberal opinions to my heart's content for free. If I'm reading the newspaper I want news and not opinion.

Some time back I went to the grocery store and there was a Houston Chronicle salesman there giving copies of the paper away for free hoping to get people to subscribe. I told him I wasn't interested in paying for such a biased news source. Instead of trying to defend the paper he merely asked where I got my news if not from the Chronicle. When I told him I got my news from the internet he tried to argue that the Chronicle was the only place I could get local news. The thing is even that wasn't true. When someone literally drove their car through one of my favorite restaurants, the Chronicle didn't carry the story. To find out what had happened I had to go to the internet where I found the story on a local TV station's news page. On the internet I was also able to find the personal account of someone who had been in the restaurant at the time of the incident along with pictures of the aftermath that they had taken with their cell phone. Far better information than the Chronicle's non-existent coverage.

Note for newspaper reporters, editors, and publishers. In case you haven't been paying attention to recent elections, the country is fairly evenly divided between liberals and conservatives. When you bias your news coverage towards one side you alienate the other. There was a time when you could get away with this bias because people simply didn't have any other real options for where to get their news. In the Information Age this is no longer true. If I don't like your news coverage I can log on to the internet and get my news from the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times or the Miami Herald or the Cleveland Plain Dealer or the Times of London or the Guardian or any of countless other newspapers that have gone online as well as ABC, MSNBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, the BBC, etc. Welcome to the age of competition. If you want my business you're going to have to give me what I want and what I want is news without the bias.

Debra Medina for Texas Governor

I've been conflicted about who to vote for in the race for Texas Governor. Though I have defended Kay Bailey Hutchison in the past, I'm not real crazy about the job she's done as a Senator. In my opinion she's something of a RINO, pursuing liberal policies when she believes they'll be of benefit to her whether they are good for her constituents or not. The problem is, I've felt much the same way about Rick Perry. I prefer him to Hutchison but he's pretty liberal in his own right. He says a lot of the right words but his actions don't really show him to be someone I'd like to reelect.

This morning the Walton & Johnson radio show introduced me to Debra Medina. I'd never heard of her before but browsing her web site I like the positions she takes on a lot of the issues. If you're looking for a conservative candidate for governor you just might want to check her out.

Question of the Day

I was just wondering. Why is it acceptable to protest jobs going to foreign nationals in other countries but racist to protest jobs going to foreign nationals in this country illegally? Do the poor in India and China not have as much need to eat as our neighbors south of the border?

You Keep Using That Word...

Liberals and the mainstream media keep using the term "teabagger" to describe people who participate in the Tea Party rallies. The most recent example is Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif) who used the term in a plea to the media to begin acting as thought police. This bugs a lot of members of the Tea Party but personally I find it kind of amusing. You see, I don't think they've really thought things through.

Just what is a "teabagger?" The term originated as slang for a man who likes to lower his testicles into his partner's mouth. It is this definition that annoys people. The thing is, as someone who plays massively multiplayer online video games I know that the term has other connotations as well. Of course these days teabagging goes beyond humiliating video game opponents as anyone who fallen asleep at someone else's house only to wake up and find pictures of themselves asleep with a scrotum pressed to their face posted online can attest. And this is what I think of whenever I hear someone call me a teabagger.

You see, if I am a teabagger then who is the teabaggee? Who do I want to humiliate by dangling my testicles in their face? If you really want the answer look for me at a Tea Party. I'll be the guy with a sign dangling tea bags in the faces of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid. I really must thank the Left. Without them for inspiration I might never have figured what I want to put on a protest sign.

Going Postal On Health Care

So President Obama was addressing a town hall and in trying to address claims that a government plan will drive private insurers out of the market he admitted that the government doesn't do things as well as private industry. Specifically he said that UPS and FedEx do a better job than the USPS.



Here is my question. If the government plan isn't going to be subsidized by tax money, as he appears to be claiming here, how is it going to provide health insurance to people who can't afford it now? That is the whole point of this thing isn't it? To provide health insurance to people who can't afford it? The money has to come from somewhere. If not from the people being insured and not from taxes, where is the money going to come from? Surely they aren't going to charge other people astronomically high premiums to subsidize those who can't pay. That would make the government plan a lot more expensive than any private insurance and so destroy it's competitiveness.

There's only one way the government can come up with the money to provide insurance to the 47 million uninsured. They've got to use taxes to subsidize the insurance. There's no other place for the government to get the money. The second the government plan is subsidized by tax dollars there will be no way for private insurers to compete. Private insurers have to make a profit or they will go bankrupt and out of business. The government doesn't have to make a profit because they can just seize the money they need through taxes. Which means the government can seriously undercut private insurers prices driving them out of business.

I'm a Night Elf Mohawk!

I was talking with a friend this weekend and it came out that he hadn't seen Mr. T's World of Warcraft commercial so I thought I'd post it here along with some of their other celebrity spots.

Don't Tread On Me