2007: An Algorithm Victory

Nobody’s Opinion; While listening to the news on the radio that “Saddam” is dead, I happened to be thinking about another death, that will be coming in the future…much to the horror of a man named John Carroll, who was forecasting yesterday on C-Span, the death of the American newspaper.

John Carroll, who used to be The Los Angles Times Editor, is now being supported by the Knight Foundation and the Shorenstein Center at Harvard. He is going around the world lamenting the lack of newspaper subscriptions and the fate of the great propaganda machines for the liberal socialists.

Mainly---The Lost Angeles Times and The New York Times.

And Bloggers are to blame, poor souls that we are. We are NOT journalists. We have NOT studied the fine art of journalism at the universities and been brainwashed with the proper norm of liberal bias. We cannot give the American’s anything but lies and rehashed rubbish according to him and poor John is all in a tether.

So John, this nobody says, “You talking to me? You talking to me?”

Now, I know he is talking about me; you’re basic nobody blogger who is really mad about everything going on, but has no college degrees.

But the real fact that he doesn’t want you do know is that, despite what he tells you, there are plenty of great “journalists” on the web---in fact its crawling with them.

Yes, the great newspaper men have met the enemy, and it’s the American people.

This guy claims to have been in the business for a long time, and who am I to doubt him? There was a time in America when the average citizen felt like the newspapers we were getting were reporting the truth, we believed them.

I don’t know about the other cities, but here in St. Louis, we used to have two newspapers, the Post-Dispatch, which was liberal, and the Globe, which was conservative. This was fair. The Globe went out of business.

It was a sad day.

Right away, we started seeing the “globalization” of local and national news. There is only so much you can take when every single morning you have the problems of some starving African baby on the front page; or the problems of the poor in China.

The brainwashing was so obvious that you could melt your paper in the fireplace and a little voice would come of the burning ashes like the wicked witch of the West and start screaming, “I’m melting, I’m melting…the poor babies are dying of Aids! Oh cruel, cruel world!”

I tried to stomach the Post-Dispatch for years, I used to get sick just reading it.

I finally canceled my subscription after the paper did a seething piece on Mark McGuire. This was right after the year he broke Roger Maris’s home run record, the year that every one in the country came back to the stadiums just to see Mark McGuire hit home runs.

The piece was incredibly nasty.

The paper had also written a seething and undeserved article on Brett Hull, a hometown hockey hero, who single-handedly built a new hockey stadium…and then they got rid of him. The paper helped tried to help demolish our home town hero’s image.

Now while John makes the argument that Newspapers are now all about the bottom line, does it make any sense that two great sports hero’s were trashed in their hometowns at the height of their popularity with vicious lies?

And they wondered why everyone went out and canceled their subscriptions?

No, it’s not about the bottom line. It’s all about the line of the New World Order/ socialists agenda, that you simply are supposed to READ, and believe, and accept.

These guys just don’t get it, do they?

The masses are awakening.

John said the small and unimportant Bloggers mistakenly think that they are being like the colonials at the beginning of the county. Giving everyone a say…letting people speak.

BUT…we are not a little country now he says, and the little individual blogger cannot stand up to the huge and very big government. Only a huge newspaper organization can stand up to the government because it has more money, and lawyers.

Well, one individual did stand up to the government and almost brought it down, and his name was Matt Drudge.

One man alone, with his little, website brought the Impeachment Trial of President Clinton with the Drudge report.

So much for that theory.

Now, standing up to the government according to the BIG city newspapers means putting American soldiers in deathly danger by revealing top secret military moves. Frankly I don’t get the connection.

In fact, because of this fact alone, both papers should be shut down.

John states that there are no real reporters or facts on the internet.

I want to know, what he is using…Microsoft 3.0?

Most of us that finally mastered the computer found out that the only facts worth reading were on the internet. All the facts that our government AND the newspapers aren’t telling us can be found online.

Not to mention that, with the high cost of equipment, and time spent there in front of the screen, why in the world should we buy a paper, unless for the coupons and local sales?

Besides, most of the newspapers are already online.

Then he goes into scare tactics. There will be libel suits soon, he says. The reason lawyers are not suing now is because they know bloggers don’t have much money.

Well, I doubt if that fact changes.

The main thing that we all need to worry about is censorship, and that is a real concern.
The big corporations are trying to pass a law where the little sites will not come up first, only the ones with the ads….bloggers will be hidden, the “freedom” of equality will disappear. Google has already started.

There is the very real possibility that the government will step in with more censorship and taxes.

After all, Hillary is just around the corner. And I’m sure, being as he was trained in Oxford, John Carroll already has a spot waiting for him at the White House in 2008.

Hopefully, tomorrow, I will wake up and find out Saddam really was killed. And hopefully, the people of America will keep putting their voices and thoughts on the internet and shout as loud as we can…for it’s only there where OUR voices can be truly heard.

And if they shut that down, then we should start up our own newspapers again…but this time---make sure they are written for us.

Nobody’s Perfect; John Carroll also said, “How galling for us (newspapers) to be replaced by an algorithm.”

I think he’s been watching replays of the “Matrix” too much. He needs a life.

Nobody Knows; He also said the radio used to have serious reporting, like Edward R. Murrow…but there is none today.

I don’t know what that makes Rush Limbaugh, but if you want to know what’s going on in the U.S. Congress, Rush always keeps you informed. As do most of the talk show conservatives.

Nobody Cares; If Saddam is hanged, or if John Carroll does not make it back into the newspaper business. After this year, my main concern is the electrical grid, and my new favorite treat, peanut brittle, two important elements I need to blog and upset Mr. Carroll.

So, here’s a New Year’s Toast to all writers, bloggers, editors, and readers of the great internet news….May we bug the hell out of all the liberal newspaper and 2007, and bring them to their senses.

(Ha!) Well, that’s not going to happen. Let’s just keep attacking.

Happy New Year to ALL….