"The
8-Step Cure for Old Fartism," by Jon Katz (November
4, 1997). "Recently, I wrote that the decline of
newspapers wasn't caused by competition from new media
technologies, but by a virulent and much more deadly virus,
one which I have just isolated and identified. It's called
Raging Old Fartism."
"Niche
Masters Who Can Kill You,"by Randy
Cassingham, Author, This is True, Presented to The Online News
Summit II held in Washington, D.C., May 19, 1998
"Why
newspapers are in trouble," by Guy Kawasaki (Forbes,
February 9, 1998). "Imagine. It's 1901, Ransom E. Olds is
about to introduce the automobile assembly line, and you are a
blacksmith. What should you do? (1) Put the horses on
amphetamines. (2) Change your line of work. Correct answer:
(2). Faster horses wouldn't have saved the day for the
blacksmiths. The blacksmiths of the next century are
newspapers."
"Peepshow,"
by Mark Stencel, S. Robert Lichter and Larry J. Sabato (Rowman
& Littlefield, 2000) "Three of America's best
political analysts have brilliantly tackled a grisly truth:
sex and scandal have been institutionalized in American
politics, with researchers digging not just through an
adversary's old speeches and voting records, but divorce
papers and the garbage. A must-read." Morton
Kondracke, editor, Roll Call
"News
Is a Verb: Journalism at the End of the Twentieth
Century," by Pete Hamill, paperback (Ballantine
Books 1998)oraudio
cassettes (Dove Audio 1998). "With the usual
honorable exceptions, newspapers are getting dumber. They are
increasingly filled with sensation, rumor, press-agent
flackery, and bloated trivialities at the expense of
significant facts. The Lewinsky affair was just a magnified
version of what has been going on for some time. Newspapers
emphasize drama and conflict at the expense of analysis. They
cover celebrities as if reporters were a bunch of waifs with
their noses pressed enviously to the windows of the rich and
famous. They are parochial, square, enslaved to the
conventional pieties. The worst are becoming brainless printed
junk food."
"All across the country, in large cities and small, even
the better newspapers are predictable and boring. I once heard
a movie director say of a certain screenwriter: 'He aspired to
mediocrity, and he succeeded.' Many newspapers are succeeding
in the same way." --the author
"News
Values: Ideas for an Information Age," by Jack
Fuller (University of Chicago Press 1996). Jack
Fuller is a lawyer, journalist, and the Publisher of the
Chicago Tribune. "A concise, powerful statement of the
fundamental issues, ethical and practical, confronting
newspapers today, News Values offers a provocative new
perspective on the questions which journalists should be
asking themselves now in order to prepare for tomorrow."
An excellent discussion of the truth of the news, deception
and other confidence games, and news and community. Buy
this from Amazon.com - hardcover
or paperback
"Spin:
How to Turn the Power of the Press to Your Advantage,"
by Michael S. Sitrick and Allan Mayer, hardcover (Regnery
1998). "'Tell your story before others do.' 'Be
available for interviews.' Whoaa! That's it! Two common sense
conclusions ... endlessly repeated in 214 pages of utter
drivel. Do people really pay Sitrick for such basic advice?
Apparently. He told us so! The problem is this - not one of
Sitrick's clients has anything to hide. They are all squeaky
clean with wonderful stories to tell if only they had the
confidence to open up." --Amazon.com reader.
(Title descriptions are from Amazon.com unless otherwise
indicated.)
