Monday, March 10, 2008

Where's the news?

The Enquirer pretends to "get" news in the Internet age by emphasizing its blogs, but the front page still looks ignorant. The top of the front page tells us about the weather, as if we all woke up this morning to discover it had snowed this weekend. Property damage and personal injury were minimal, so why is this front page, above-the-fold news?

Next is Botox and other so-called "fillers." Placement of this story in the center of the front page is shameless pandering to 40-plus women, who the Enquirer is hoping will continue to buy this dying rag and keep it afloat.

But the main story on the page is an Associated Press story about the enormous cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The story is based on a new book by Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Blimes, a former federal budget official now teaching at Harvard, and it's good to see this in the Enquirer.

But it's not news. The book came out March 3, and there have been stories about it in the worldwide media for a month. It's not news to most of the world, but it's news to the cavedwellers who run the Enquirer, and so it is misplaced as the lead story in today's paper. Today's front page is a pitiful display of news judgment.

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

thank you, thank you, thank you for posting today. The front page top of the fold story about botox made me sick. My only consolation was that I gained a few minutes by not reading much of the paper.

9:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good post and the truth. Look at its vaunted sports page and what isn't covered there: The XU women's team upsets 19th ranked Georg Washington on Sunday and wins the A-10 women's tournament defeating Temple. Not a word in our daily newspaper.

12:14 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Xavier women's story (with photo) is at the top of C4 in Tuesday's edition. Nice try.

2:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

News coverage? Well, let me put it to you this way: IKEA IKEA IKEA IKEA IKEA IKEA IKEA IKEA IKEA IKEA IKEA IKEA IKEA IKEA IKEA IKEA IKEA IKEA IKEA IKEA IKEA...well, you get the picture, or what's left of it.

10:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The botox story took many people by surprise. It was about five years too late. As for Ikea, enough is enough is enough. News is increasingly rare and what news there is tepid.
Can things get much worse?

8:18 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

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2:16 PM  

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