I Am Giving Up On The News Media

 I made a choice about this blog.  I changed the tag line.  I took out the "media analysis," but kept the "analysis."  I am giving up on the news media.

My efforts at blogging has entailed many things over my 20+ years of activity, but being a critic of the media has been a fairly constant thread through it all.  I am publicly stating I am taking that off the masthead, so to speak.  The news media is hopeless and there is nothing to be done about it.

I am not saying I won't consume the news, I will continue to do that, but I no longer respect what is left of the profession anymore.  The only thing remaining is trying to entertain an audience, and this is from the "reputable" outlets.  The disreputable outlets are unabashed agents of propaganda and manipulation.  I'm not going to name names, but they are obvious.

I am giving up on all forms of the news media: broadcast tv, cable tv, newspapers, websites, and radio.  This is includes national and local outlets. The death of local news has been the most painful to watch the last decade.  The slow death of local newspapers and the nationalization of local TV news programming has turned local news into a mockery. The only way people will know somethings local is by individuals posting about it on their varied social media accounts.  That is a dangerous and terrible situation as social media is a cesspool without any reliability or trustworthiness.

I will point out that there is still good journalism going on.  There are individuals, even those employed by vapid outlets, who do good work. I am not trying to bash every journalist.  I am hitting at the profession. That is what I am giving up on and if I have disappointment in some individual journalists it is when they defend their outlets or colleagues actions when they chase after drama and entertaining stories. Seeing some journalists get defensive at criticism has exasperated me. They don't want to come to the reality what they are doing is not journalism, it is entertainment.  Some of them don't see a difference and that is just sad.

At this point I am going to guess you might be looking for someone to blame.  Some of you might want to throw blame on corporate media.  Sorry Charlie, they only get a relatively small portion of the blame.  The overwhelming majority of the blame goes on the public. Most of the public does not care.  They don't consume news.  They may say they follow the news, but they don't. At best they read some headlines, but they don't regularly consume anything.  Sure, they know about the sports and entertainment news.  They know what is trending on social media.  They are immersed into the marketing feeds (TikTok, YouTube, Instagram) and are up to date on what they are spoon fed while sitting on the couch or on the crapper.

All of this is done willingly, by the way.  People are inherently lazy and foolish.  They want what is easy and quick.  They make time to play endless video games, or watching sports or viewing reality TV (modern day soap operas), but they don't want the mental veggies that is the news. They are willingly embracing a path that would lead society to Idiocracy and not Star Trek.

So, the failure of the corporate world is not in marketing to these people, but instead for requiring the news media to pay for itself. In the broadcast TV world of the long past, news programming was a loss for the networks.  They could make more money from a sitcom.  They provided the news as a service to society.  Partly for legal reasons, but also for civic reasons.  Owners had a tiny shred of duty that kept news coverage going.  That eroded over the years, but prior to the internet, it sort of worked.  The Internet killed the newspaper. With the death of the newspaper, the Wire Services have been decimated.  The blood of the news is reporting: who, what, where, and when. With the lack of reporting, an artificial blood of drama and entertainment has been created and killed the credibility of the news. With apathy of the public, the news media has been gutted. So, no one else cares, so I am giving up on media analysis.  

I am admitting defeat.  I am still not sure what I am going to write about.  Politics is pointless at this point as well, much because of the same terrible media and apathetic public. I am not sure if I will even keep this blog going. This was always just a fun little project and 20 years ago it had a small but consistent audience.  Well, that is long gone. There is not much point as people don't care.  I suppose this is blog post is just a tree falling in the woods. No one will notice.  Well, if I am going to go down, I wanted to at least say something on the way to ground.

What to Write About for 2024?

It is 2024. Happy New Year!  Ok, so the honeymoon should be over in a Presidential Election year at about 12:04 AM on the 1st. It is day two of the year and I am looking ahead. Local elections are happening this year, but for Cincinnati there is not going to be much for me to write and think about. The Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney and Sheriff races will be interesting to watch and should be competitive, but that's about it. 

Hamilton County has gone "Blue" in a partisan sense.  Compared to other urban counties, it is NOT as close and there are many more moderate voters that in certain races will easily split tickets.  For the Prosecutor's race the Republicans have had the edge for a long time.  This year is setting up to be one that the Democratic candidate has a very good chance of winning, with Joe Deters not on the ballot.

The most interesting thing I am seeing so far: All of the statehouse races in Hamilton County will be  contested by both parties.

 

National politics is something that is very difficult to write about.  State wide politics is also something that is difficult to write about for a large state like Ohio. I have no plans to write much about the Ohio Senate race as there is little I can add.

The only thing I may play with is using the State wide Voter Registration datasets.  I have linked in year end datasets and I plan on working on some statewide data.  I think getting turnout rates based on generation would be most interesting information I could compile.  In Hamilton County I have been doing this for years now, but seeing how different it would be statewide or for certain types of counties.  I don't have a profile created for all counties, but I could come up with some general variations.

I will be thinking about other topics to write about.  This blog used to be more active with more snark and more traditional political banter.  This blog is now almost 22 years old.  I used to care about being in the trenches, bare knuckle punching policy, parties, and pols.  I don't give shit about that. When I argue on something I am like a dog with a bone, I don't let it go.  I think it is better to avoid arguing.  Discussing, sharing ideas, maybe even debating can be good and high level.  On social media, it is not not.  On a blog, it can be better.  There can be depth, there can be facts and support.  There can be a pause to reflect before one just reacts. I am going to be thinking about other topics to write about.

Media has been something I long have cared about.  Locally, the news media is dying.  There are good journalism going on, but we just have failures going on in what is being covered and we have so much garbage journalism.  I don't think there is much I can write about that.  The causes are evident to me and no one is willing to change, as the average person is the problem with the media and the average jane and joe are too lazy to change or learn anything.  It is like we are doomed and I don't know the value of that.  Maybe there is some data to collect on who and what media exists.  Maybe there is something I can add.  I will try, but as I age my expectations don't expand like my waist.