There have been a lot of bad days recently for what’s come to be known as the mainstream media — or MSM — but Monday was one of the worst.
New circulation figures showed that big city papers had lost as much as a quarter of their circulation in the past six months. And new TV ratings showed that CNN, the cable network that prides itself on news coverage down the middle, finished dead last in prime time against more partisan rivals like Fox News and MSNBC.
Are the two connected?
Eric Alterman, a media columnist for The Nation, and a frequent critic of the MSM, thinks they are. "Nonpartisan news, and news aimed at a broad audience, doesn't have the cachet, and therefore the consumer base, it once had,” Alterman said. “The whole notion of citizenship has been declining for decades now.”
This is missing, almost entirely, the reasons why papers are ailing. The partisan/non-partisan question is almost irrelevant to whether or not people feel like buying and reading a paper. The real problem with papers are varied, but they can be distilled down to one central truth; newspapers today are no fun.
Now, I'm not saying newspapers have to stop covering hard news in favor of soft crapola for the masses, but you cannot ignore the need to be entertaining. Papers used to accomplish this in the hard news sections by having their own reporters covering items of national import. People reading those stories could get the feeling that this was their home town take on things, which could be distinctly different from the take of an AP or a NYT. Now, that type of coverage is simply non-existent, and you could do just as well reading USA Today and having done with it.
However, it isn't only in national news coverage that newspapers have been de-emphasizing the local angle, all of the other local news coverage, from sports and the arts to night life/dinning and human interest stories, have also been scaled back. (Sports coverage less then others, but even there resources have been removed and the content is less.) The result is papers that are often too boring to be enjoyed.
I was reminded of this over the past weekend when I read a great article in the St. Paul Pioneer-Press about a group of guys who built a trebuchet in their backyard: Have trebuchet, will fling
"This is kind of chancy. We've never done anything this wide and big," warned Roger Bacon. "OK. Let's do it."
There was a countdown, a whoosh, and suddenly a wheelchair was soaring hundreds of feet in the air, hurtling through the skies above Hugo at an alarming rate of speed.
That's what happens when four 30-something guys decide to build a trebuchet, a siege engine resembling a catapult originally designed in the Middle Ages to pummel castle walls with projectiles.
There are no castles in Hugo, so the builders of this trebuchet are content with seeing how far they can fling a bowling ball. They're at about 700 feet so far. They're hoping to reach 1,000.
They're also testing the flight and crash-landing characteristics of obsolete consumer electronics by launching old television sets, a VCR and a computer. Thanks to the Hugo trebuchet, mankind now knows that a flying microwave oven will bounce about five feet into the air after hitting the ground.
Is this of earth shattering import? Not really. Will the author win a Pulitzer for his efforts? Unlikely. But who gives a crap? It's a damn fun thing to read.
At one point, Modert's mother asked where they were going to move the trebuchet when they were done.
But the machine, situated only a few yards from the house, is anchored with lengths of pipe driven several feet into the ground.
"This one is permanent. It's too big to move," Modert said.
The builders are not sure how the $2,500 project will affect the home value.
"The tax assessor did come out earlier this year, and we're waiting to see what he says," Bacon said.
Bacon said when asked if any changes had been made to the house, Modert's mother told the assessor, "Well, there's less shed and more trebuchet."
Reading this story was a highlight of my weekend.
This saddens me as newspapers so rarely have that effect on me anymore. But, the important thing is it can be done.
If they would only do it.
(Gleaned from Memeorandum)
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