tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post4440210208144616011..comments2024-03-28T05:13:13.921-04:00Comments on Books, Inq. — The Epilogue: Premature mourning ...Frank Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18410473158808750903noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post-4131569468179099692008-03-30T00:50:00.000-04:002008-03-30T00:50:00.000-04:00Sad but truth, Frank. Beau Blue, I'm with you. N...Sad but truth, Frank. Beau Blue, I'm with you. Newspapers banish a complex, in-depth, and meaningful version of reality in favour of light, bright, and tight whiz-bang writes. Once exited a job when told my pieces (or any I ran) could no longer exceed two-effing-hunnert-and-fifty words.<BR/><BR/>The obscenity of the idea floored me. I hit the roof before I hit the road, laughing all the way to the brink. Impossible, as impossible as the currently popular six-word life-story encapsulation. And, although the section ranked among the most popular (read one of the biggest buyer-bait lures hooking the little fishies), it wasn't earning its keep paying the pappeteers max-o-millions in sexotic adverteasements.<BR/><BR/>IMO, publications will survive (in another medium, a digital one congenial to their prosperity, profitz, and efficient proliferation).<BR/><BR/>In the not-too-distant, we shall view our "cultural" public past from the vantage / vanishing point of the wistful full-throatal mourner. Nostalgia, <I>n'est-ce pas</I>? Sentimentality <I>versus</I> sentiment. Inevitable and lethal. ISTM we could well become that amorphous seer of McLuhan's impossibly personal rear-view mirror (endlessly distorting our repliconceptions of both our perfect selves and their pathetically misguided others).<BR/><BR/>SNAFUBAR REDUX.<BR/><BR/>IOW, welcome to the future's future <I>via</I> our fleeting glimpse of hard-copy relics now featuring in the museum of our collective mindset (complete with the remote in control) of our past (imperfect).<BR/><BR/>Yes, I argued, peeps see lots of adverts on other pages; plus, IMO (backed by stats), readers buy screwscrapers, er, noisepapers, er . . . Readers plonk down pennies for news on art, culture, and entertaintment; natch, as an additional treat, they're generously gifted with a barrage of moolah-making pages packed with prime-time crime, I-witness reports, sex, drags, whacks, wracks, cracks, sub-slime attacks, the pukifying works. (And, that's just the pimpers of the parasitic pair. We haven't even got [to] "the news.")<BR/><BR/>It's all about the currents — electric, electronic, e-tc. — it always comes down to the fact currency's kingpin in the grand scam of things, in the smash-and-grab wham-bam of bling rings, puppeteer strings, and soon-to-be obsolete wring-dings generated by displaying tonnes of pitches motivating consumers to part with their paycheques. Supply and deny.<BR/><BR/>Less content, more ads, better-bizthness dynamics. The glamourisation of news includes a concurrent sensationalisation of adverts (which now garner the same kind of interest and presentation as the stuff they wrap).<BR/><BR/>When writing the McLuhan bio, a wee fact spin-jumped yours truly right out of her skin . . . Some head honcho @ GM asserted (and, I paraphrase):<BR/><BR/>It is imperative we keep the buying public chronically dissastisfied with their current wheels, hairstyles, wardrobes, teethpaste, Laz-E-Bois, wallpaper, et so forthia.<BR/><BR/>He made his news-worthy declaration public twelve days before Christmas, 1937.<BR/><BR/>BTW, Beau Blue, I'll bite. Would you pay $50 per annum for subscriptions to the newspapers you cite? I dunno. My wild guess would be a resounding YES.<BR/><BR/>p.s. I didn't intend to write an essay, FFS. I'm procrastinating on a piece due Monday morning . . .Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post-45092665318367369342008-03-29T09:09:00.000-04:002008-03-29T09:09:00.000-04:00Too obvious, too simple, and too intelligent, Blue...Too obvious, too simple, and too intelligent, Blue.Frank Wilsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18410473158808750903noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post-40149936590726946322008-03-28T17:28:00.000-04:002008-03-28T17:28:00.000-04:00I still wonder why newspapers don't publish their ...I still wonder why newspapers don't publish their entire content, ads and all, on the web in a space open to subscribers only. At a cost of, say, 15 cents a day. Go ahead, ask me if I'd pay $50 a year each to get full content online papers from New York, Philly, Chicago and San Francisco?<BR/><BR/>Or have I just missed all the ad campaigns for such arrangements? How many online subscribers does it take to keep the book review sections of those pubs up to full employment?<BR/><BR/>-blueBeau Bluehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01570982615331590643noreply@blogger.com