The Simpsons: Is There Any News They Don't Deliver?

Oh, Simpsons. Glorious, glorious Simpsons.

One of the true wonders of the show is the humor packed in largely for multiple viewers and more than likely for the writers themselves. Signs are absolute gems. But among the most brilliant of the humor comes in the headlines of The Springfield Shopper (and select other publications). Now 55 of the best of them have been compiled in a slideshow.




I just made your day a little (hell, a lot) better. You're welcome. Hat tip.

An Open Letter

An open letter to the Odessa American Subscription Manager, but really to all of you who solicit business over the phone --

I recently received a call (in my office, while at work) asking me about (re-) subscribing to the OA. I was happy to do so and we went through the process with one of your sales representatives of getting me back on board.

It is, to be honest, unnecessary for me to subscribe -- I get the paper on campus for free four days a week and if I want it on the weekend, assuming I am in town, I can just buy it. Your subscription rate is too expensive and the paper can pile up if I am away for a few days or if I don't have the time to flip through it. But I like the idea of supporting the actual print newspaper and subscribing to the local paper, even if I already read it, further ties me to the local community.

In any case, when your sales rep -- who was competent and efficient, if a bit tied to her script -- passed me over to you I thought we were ready to finalize the process. Then you started trying to get me to pay right there and then. I get that. I do. But here is the deal -- I'm not going to give you my credit card information over the phone. I have not yet received a newspaper for one thing. But for another, too often these days you pass along your credit card information, and lo and behold, automatic renewal happens at a rate far higher than that of the extra-special bonus rate that hooked me to begin with. I think it's called a bait and switch, though I might be mixing my metaphors for tawdry business behavior.

So once I thought we were clear on how payment was going to work, you decided to chime in with "you know, sir, when the paper does come you do have to pay for it." That's when I responded, not unreasonably I'd argue, with "You know what? Fuck you. Cancel this transaction. I won't be disrespected like that."

You see, you need my business more than I need you. Oh, that's not always the case. My credit card company has me over a barrel. As do my electric and cable companies, albeit for different reasons. But you? A representative of that dodo bird of the 21st century, the local newspaper? You're expendable. At least to me you are. And apparently to most people all across the country. And the funny thing is in class not an hour before our little chat I actually encouraged my students to read the paper and gave them examples of two recent articles from the OA that are germane to our class topic. I guess I won't make that mistake again.

No, my response stands. Fuck you. Fuck you for daring to question my integrity. Fuck you for not understanding when "please send me a bill" means "I'm not giving you my credit card number." And, really, fuck you for not understanding the way this particular transaction works. Oh, I'll continue to snag copies for free on campus. But you've pretty much guaranteed that free is the only way this relationship works from here on out. And take a minute and ask yourself just how many people like me you can afford to alienate.

So, yeah. Fuck you.

Sincerely --
More Customers Than You Think

Down Goes WaPo!

The New Republic has a lengthy and withering profile on the decline of The Washington Post. Donald Graham, chairman of the board of The Washington Post Company responded with a letter so tepid and so picayune that it only serves to make the TNR profile all the more damning.

Academics and Media

The Chronicle of Higher Education asked a number of academics about "issues of education, communications, and news and cultural literacy" and "how the decline of those news media will affect higher education." Their answers are thoughtful and very much worth considering.

I am one of those people who laments the decline, and probably eventual death, of the print newspaper. But I do not mistake the physical presence of print and cheap paper with a loss of good things to read, viable sources of opinion, or varying viewpoints. There will always be demand for these things, and the best of today's print media will adjust, the worst will fail, and that's the way the system is supposed to work. Yes, I'd miss a real honest-to-goodness Sunday newspaper, but I also believe that even a handful of those will survive, even if in morphed, national form. But the best papers are basically national in nature anyhow. The Sunday New York Times still carries with it as metro section, but let's be real -- the average reader of the Sunday Times does not give a damn about bond issues in Eastchester.

Losing the Globe?

I grew up reading The Boston Globe. Or at least I grew up during my formative newspaper years -- from junior high onward, when my stepfather came into the picture and brought the paper home early every morning from his pre-work coffee run, thus broadening my horizons each morning from the tiny and provincial local newspapers that graced Newport, New Hampshire -- reading the Globe. I placed particular emphasis in those early years on the Globe sports section, which was hands down the best in the country.

So it is with fear and trepidation that I read this morning that the Globe's corporate overlord, The New York Times Company, is demanding $20 million in concessions from the myriad unions that serve in production and distribution of the Globe or else shuttering the paper is a very real possibility. Some of these concessions are surely necessary. But I cannot help but think that at least some represent an attempt to squeeze labor during difficult times knowing full well that if things do return to something resmebling prosperity, the workers will not get back what they give up.

The loss of the Globe would feel like a personal tragedy, but also would represent the most significant newspaper loss so far. Maybe the era of the newspaper, so seemingly permanent for so long, really is ending. Maybe in ten years we really will get all of our news from the internet, and that those newspapers that do survive will do so in a solely or primarily web-based form. But I hope not. The web offers many things that atraditional newspaper cannot, but so too does the paper-and-ink version offer pleasures that even the most user-friendly technology cannot replicate. I am crossing my fingers that the Globe will emerge from this current crisis.

On Newspapers

I represent one of those dying cultural anachronisms. I still value, no, cherish, the newspaper. I read a number of newspapers online, and get the vast majority of the information I consume on the internet, to be sure. But I still value the daily newspaper, whether it is the Odessa American delivered to my door every morning, The New York Times delivered on Sunday, the San Antonio Express-News when we are down there, or the ritual of making sure to grab the local paper when I am traveling, unless it comes to the door of a hotel room, which is always a nice surprise.

I grew up reading my local paper and The Boston Globe that my stepfather picked up every day. Without descending into cliche, I love the tactile, tangible element of the daily paper, and I do believe that there are things you catch while reading through the newspaper that you do not when browsing the handy headlines and choosing what to click on when it arrives in your email inbox.

But we keep hearing that the newspaper is dead, and all signs certainly point that way. I hope something happens to salvage the print newspaper, but within a generation I would guess that the daily paper will be greatly diminished, if not an entirely defunct species. In the latest New Yorker, Harvard historian Jill Lepore (whose regular work there is fantastic) has an article on early American newspapers in which a subtext is that the medium's very survival was always in question. The goal may be to reassure, though the realities of this market are rather different from the colonial and early national era. It may not be entirely reassuring, but her piece will at least remind you of the resilience of the daily (or weekly) printed word.

Not Playing Any More

Play, the fantastic sports magazine that came out quarterly in the Sunday New York Times is closing up shop after an all-too-brief run at the top. Play fell victim to the frankly lousy economic situation facing newspapers and magazines right now. It will be missed.

Hometown Media

It has not been a great few days for the print media in my home town and its environs.My dad told me the other day that the weekly paper that covers local news, the Argus Champion, is closing its doors. It is hard to explain what the Argus means in a town like Newport. There is a daily newspaper, the Eagle Times, based in the (larger) town next door, Claremont. But the weekly newspaper always held the soul of newport. Or it did until a few years ago, when the coverage started leaning toward some of the more affluent nearby towns. For many in Newport, this is the real reason why the Argus failed.

In high school the Argus was especially good at covering local sports. Each week the paper chose an athlete of the week, and a local grocer sponsored the award by giving the winner two free steaks. I must have had two dozen steaks as a result of this partnership, the sort of thing that characterizes, indeed defines, small towns. The Eagle Times does a fine job of covering high school sports, but its coverage area is such that it encompasses well more than a dozen small communities and their high schools. The Argus was for our town and our teams, with a strong emphasis on Newport Tiger sports. I so rarely get home, and must admit that I do not go online to look at the Argus at all often. But like every other institution in my hometown, just knowing it was there has always been comforting.

On a lighter note, yet another basically local paper, the Valley News, which was based a few towns away and thus rarely figured in our day-to-day lives (unless we accomplished something against one of the Upper Valley teams in sports) has made news lately for a rather embarrassing snafu. On July 21, the newspaper misspelled its own name. On the front page:
The paper later sheepishly apologized:

[Hat tip to Patrick Appel, one of the writers still subbing in for Andrew Sullivan, for the Valley News gaffe.]

On: The Glory of Newspapers and the Pats' World Dominance

One of the great joys of being on the road and in a major city is the ability to read that city's daily newspaper. We dedidedly do not live in a golden age of newspapers, but almost despite themselves, local papers still provide a sense of a city and its character. More than that, though, is that a world class newspaper (and despite accusations to the contrary and the constant, sneering invocation in some ideological corners of the "Mainstream Media," or MSM, usually for not covering some story that may or may not actually be essential news, or for not covering a story the way the accuser feels it should be covered, there are world class papers in the United States) provides a tactile connection to the world. I can read The Washington Post online every day, and I do. But it is so much better to be able to hold the Post, to flip through it, to let the stories draw you in, to carry it around.

This unintended homage to newspapers is merely my way of directing you to Sally Jenkins' column today in the Post's sports section, which is easily one of the five best in the country. I probably would not have discovered it had I not been flipping through that sports section this morning. It provides the best non-Boston, non-Pats-fan perspective on the various pseudo-controversies swirling around the Patriots these days. It really is a fantastic column.

Now I need to go check out the op-ed pages. And then wash this damned ink off of my hands.