Let me start by saying I was not looking for Britney news.
I was checking my Yahoo e-mail and this was one of the headlines:
Britney Spears turns herself into police
Nice trick.
Maybe I can turn myself into Oprah just long enough to transfer some of her money into my savings account.
This kind of stuff just bugs the hell out of me.
Obviously she went to the police to turn herself in. She didn't morph into a cop.
But the Internet will save journalism. Right. I keep hearing that.
I heard it just last week from our new publisher. And god I hope he is right.
But if we really want to be saved, as an industry we need to take more care and pride in what we do.
I do not lay this at the feet of print people. All the print people I know would mock that headline just as I have done.
I know the Internet is all about speed and instant updates. But that story happened LAST NIGHT. There was plenty of time to get that headline right.
Sorry. A rant, I know. But c'mon people!
**I just went back to Yahoo and saw that they fixed this. Hmmm... I wonder if someone complained. I am not vain enough to think they saw it here.**
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9 comments:
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! The Internet will save journalism. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!
(Okay, could I be any more cynical about it? No, probably not.)
Yeah. Everytime I hear someone say "The Internet will save us!" I think about updating my resume.
What is the Internet saving us from exactly? Certainly not bad headlines, stupid video or just plain ol' crap. It's killing the English language and any definition we had of NEWS. It killed my job, too. Now, don't get me wrong, I like the Intarweb (and this blog :-) but any newspaper whack job who tells me it's saving us also has monkeys flying outta their butt. Now I'd like to see that on the Internets. The Sun-Sentinel in Florida just killed its nation/world desk (sound familiar?) and sent those news junkies to cover freakin' PTA meetings. Argh! Something has got to give.
I saw that thing about the Sun-Sentinel, Vicki.
Seems like we are all trying to be "hyper local" but what does that do for other coverage?
It should be interesting as we head toward the end of the year.
My company's big time on the Internet bandwagon. I'm in meetings all the time for it. Sadly, our Internet product is doing more to hurt our organization than help it. I could rant long about this ... sigh.
But I'm with Angela, and I throw one in, too:
BWAHAHAHAHAHAH!!
My paper is hyper-local, and it's been this way for a long time. But that's because we're small and figure people can get their national stuff elsewhere, which is very true. So I am very much on the hyper-local bandwagon. With smaller and smaller staffs, I think it's more important to cover local.
The Internet will kill journalism in order to save it. What's left won't be "journalism" as we know it, but ad-sponsored reporting projects, amateur-written articles on Starbucks openings and such, analysis crowding out objective perspectives and "crowdsourcing," in which "real people" write about themselves. Back in the newsroom, we'll be air-traffic controllers and spellcheckers, not editors. Errors will pop up more frequently on the Web as "immediacy" takes priority over "quality."
Of course, the publisher will tell the civic groups in town that: "This is a new model, a financially viable one, and you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. But we'll be bringing you more coverage, not less."
All of that will be true ... depending on sideways you're capable of looking at it.
And if you object to this too loudly, Britney will show up to shoot you with a Taser and read you your rights.
HAHA!! I love the headline!!!
(Sorry, I ran across your blog from NinjaoftheMundane and couldn't resist your rants and ravings and generally awesome views of journalism :)
Hahahaha, it took me a minute to figure it out, but you're right!
I've already written my rants about Britney before. What I find most interesting about her whole problem now is that the courts decided it was in the children's best interest to place them with K-Fed. I guess he's really shown a lot of responsibility with all the work he's put in at Burger King over the last few weeks.
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