The Tennessean is Nashville, Tennessee’s premier newspaper, at least if anyone can call anything owned by USA Today premier anything. In my fairly frequent attention to what passes for journalism these days, I have coined the word journolism, based on JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. And it seems that there has been some real journolism happening at Nashville’s newspaper. A site search for Audrey Hale, the Covenant School transgender mass murderer, turned up relatively little recent news, and nothing on Miss Hale’s ‘writings’ prior to the shootings. But there was this: Continue reading
Category Archives: Freedom of Speech and of the Press
If journalists are not producing material for which people are willing to pay, they’ve no one but themselves to blame.
This site covered the Vanity Fair article about the shake-up at The Washington Post last Tuesday, so The Philadelphia Inquirer’s hard-left, #TrumpDerangementSyndrome consumed columnist, Will Bunch, is a little bit late to the party. The problem is that you peasants just haven’t been willing to shell out your hard-earned dollars to pay for Mr Bunch and his writing!
Can America save democracy when no one is even reading about it?
After mass layoffs, U.S. journalism is about to be flattened by AI. When democracy falls, will the public even know about it?
by Will Bunch | D-Day + 80, June 6, 2024 | 3:18 PM EDT
“Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right? I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.” Continue reading
Unsubscribe, huh?
It was just a month ago that the NewsGuild of Greater Philadelphia criticized The Philadelphia Inquirer’s “Unsubscribe” ad campaign, after the newspaper laid off yet another five employees. I’ve mostly ignored that campaign, but this one caught my eye this afternoon. If by “Unsubscribe from ‘I (heart) NYC'” actually means “Unsubscribe from The New York Times,” I’d point out that my subscription to the Times is $20.00 every four weeks, or $260. a year is less expensive than my subscription to the Inquirer, $5.49 per week, billed at $21.96 every four weeks, or $285.48 per year.
Yeah, I have reasons to subscribe to both, primarily for my blog supporting documentation, but if it’s a simple economic decision, and the better newspaper costs less than the poorer one, . . . .
Imposing California standards on a central Kentucky newspaper is not the way to keep the Lexington Herald-Leader from failing Executive Editor Richard Green has an impossible job!
This site has recently reported on the problems print newspapers, which are, in the end, simply updated 18th century technology, competing in the 21st century. We have noted how the Lexington Herald-Leader, once two newspapers, morning and afternoon, produced newspapers distributed widely over most of central and eastern Kentucky, is now being reduced to three print editions a week, to be delivered by mail.
Well, perhaps censoring the news isn’t the best way to build up your brand! Continue reading
I know how to save The Washington Post! Find a new billionaire owner who doesn't care if the paper is losing money!
I know how to save The Washington Post! Just have Jeff Bezos, net worth $196 billion as of June 4, 2024, owner of the newspaper, give it to MacKenzie Scott, net worth $33.3 billion as of June 4, 2024, Mr Bezos’ ex-wife and a noted philanthropist who has no problem in giving away her money. Just a straight-up reassignment! Mr Bezos stops losing $77 to $100 million a year on the Post, and Miss Scott, with five times as much money as Patrick Soon-Shiong, net worth $6.3 billion as of June 4, 2024, and who is finding the Los Angeles Times’ losses too much to bear, can easily handle losing money, because she doesn’t seem to care if she makes money or not. Continue reading
The inclusion of bias in news articles is subtle, but you have to be aware of it
This site has expressed some amusement at The Philadelphia Inquirer referring to gangs as “street groups.” It began when we were reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, so we must replace the term “gang-bangers” with “cliques of young men” or “clique beefers”. District Attorney Larry Krasner and his office seem to prefer the term “rival street groups“. Continue reading
The Lexington Herald-Leader has not died, but it has definitely been moved into a nursing home. One foot in the grave, and the other on a banana peel?
On Tuesday, April 30th, I attended a meet-and-greet seminar held by the Lexington Herald-Leader at the Marksbury Family Branch Library off Versailles Road. Executive Editor Richard Green was there, as was Managing Editor Lauren Gorla, who did most of the presentation work. I was standing next to Austin Horn — it was standing room only! — the Frankfort politics reporter.
There were several issues discussed, including from one seventies-looking gentleman from Mt. Sterling, who noted that there was very little coverage from his town and other places outside of Lexington. I paid special attention to him, because I grew up there, being graduated from Mt. Sterling High School shortly after we ceased using quill pens and ink bottles. A point a couple of other people, and I, made was that delivery of the newspaper outside of Lexington was spotty at best. Now living in Estill County, home delivery is not available. This is an important issue to me, because, in the late 1960s, I delivered the morning Lexington Herald and afternoon Lexington Leader in my hometown.
I have to wonder: I was not the only paperboy in Mt. Sterling, but do the fewer than 100 customers I had outnumber the total number of subscribers in Montgomery County today?
While the newspaper does have “Lexington” in the name, it was the newspaper for much of central and eastern Kentucky for years and years.
And now? Instead of taking action to make the newspaper more valuable, the Herald-Leader is making it less so:
Herald-Leader to change print publication days, delivery method in next step of digital push
Going to jail for telling the truth? That’s what Europeans risk! "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." — George Orwell, 1984
In 1984, country music singer Lee Greenwood released his song, “God Bless the USA.” I was reminded of that song, when I read the article below, and the stanza:
I’m proud to be an American
Where at least I know I’m free
And I won’t forget the men who died
Who gave that right to me
And I’d gladly stand up next to you
And defend Her still today
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt
I love this land
God Bless the U.S.A.
The article?
Transgender Spanish Actor Sues French Politician For Calling Him A “Man”
By Genevieve Gluck | Saturday, June 1, 2024
Spanish actor Karla Sofía Gascón, a trans-identified male previously known as Juan Carlos, has filed a legal complaint against French politician Marion Maréchal, alleging she committed hate speech by calling him a “man.” Maréchal could face one year in prison and a €300,000 fine (£255,300) if found guilty.
On May 26, Maréchal, the head of France’s Reconquête! party for the European elections, made a comment on social media about Gascón after it was announced that he had won an award for “Best Actress” at the Cannes Film Festival. Gascón had won the award for his role in ‘Emilia Pérez,’ wherein he plays the titular role as a ruthless Mexican drug lord who decides to “transition” in order to evade law enforcement.
“So a man has received the prize at Cannes for… female performance. Progress for the left is the erasure of women and mothers,” wrote Maréchal in response to the news of Gascón’s win.
Apparently in Europe, a politician can face up to a year in jail for telling the truth!
Well, sort of the truth. Juan Carlos is most certainly a male, but it’s clear that he isn’t actually a man. The rest of this article is below the fol, because I have included Mr Greenwood’s music video. Continue reading
Journolism: The credentialed media don’t exactly lie, but they conceal politically incorrect facts Journalists should try telling us the whole truth for a change
No, that’s not a typographical error in the title: the spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. We use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
Journalism at least used to be a profession concerned with the 5 Ws + H: who, what, when, where, why, and how. Those were the questions reporters were supposed to answer if at all possible. Now that print newspapers have been in great decline, and newspapers in digital form are the wave of whatever future newspapers have left, the space limitations that used to hem in stories as measured by word count of column inches are mostly gone. Editors may have to pare down things that are going to be printed in the dead trees editions, but digital bandwidth is incredibly cheap. And Associated Press reporter Nicole Winfield left out a really big answer to “why.” Was it because the “why” is completely politically incorrect? Continue reading