Matatouille - Thought, Opinion, Nonsense, Etc.

I heard this viewpoint on a radio show a while back, and like sometimes happens, it stuck with me. And no, this will not be a rant against the liberal media.

This guy was explaining how the kinds of people who used to go into journalism as a career back in the day are not the kinds of people who go into into it now.

See, in the old days, think pre-TV, an awful lot of journalists were muckraker types. They had an axe to grind. Maybe they were bullied a lot as kids or whatever, and they wanted to get back at the world. These were people with something to prove, people with chips on their shoulders. Get the point? Anti-social types. And that made for great investigative reporting.

And now? It almost makes me laugh. Who goes into the "News Media" now? The term itself suggests the answer. People who want to be on TV. The elitists. These are people who went to Ivy League schools and decided to go into the media so they could be on TV instead of going to law school or becoming doctors or going into politics.

So, naturally, these people are entranced with celebrity. As has been pointed out ad nauseum if you're paying attention, these are folks who go to cocktail parties with the people they're reporting on. So, naturally they follow the herd. That's how they got to where they are in the first place. Do they want to rock the boat? Sure, if by rocking the boat you mean doing stories on how messed up Britney is or how another politician got caught with his zipper undone, or which restaurants have the most rats. You know, the kinds of stories that people watch that change absolutely nothing. Or if it means going after the right wing, sure. To them, those are the bad guys.

It's just so ironic. The type of people we really need to be in the media are the absolute opposite of who's attracted to it and who runs it now. Sigh...

And so where do these sourpusses go now; these muckrakers; those bozos with chips on their shoulders? Bloggers mostly. Can you tell? (He smirks, already knowing the answer) Yeah, it's true. I have a chip on my shoulder the size of Cleveland. (Cleveland's big, right?) Someone, please help me get this damn thing down. Or maybe not. That bile actually makes for some interesting posts. Not that I could get them in the paper. lol. Sigh....

But you know what? Nature does actually abhor a vacuum, just like the cliche says. These people (myself included) had to go somewhere and nature (well, natural computer geeks anyway) has supplied the internet.

It's almost as if God himself created the internet just for clowns like me.

You think?

Matt Lipeles