Posted 4:50 PM by Gene

Knight Ridder Philly Newspaper Monopoly Tabloid Edition's endorsement of DIPPITY-DO! is an admission and a challenge. It's an admission that, faced with an audience tiring of the same old news hack blah and competition from a free tabloid, it must do something, ANYTHING, to attract attention, even if in doing so it threatens to put itself out of business and hundreds of nonideological working stiffs out of their jobs. (What are THEY compared to a august EDITOR?) It is a challenge to the industry, a challenge it indirectly takes up from MR. CONSCIENCE of E&P, to put more partisan tubthumping tantrums on the front page. Yes editorials once graced front pages, but that was in an age with more true competition. This, in essence, is an invitation for other NEWS HACKS to sing with one voice ol' DIP's praises, much as Horace Greeley once lied -- SANG the praises of ol' TIP. One hopes they rise to the occasion, and make one giant ass of themselves; far more likely is this bold courageous avalanche of 1,838 words meets with near total indifference, underlining the trade's essential impotence in the face of an angry mob.

"The commonwealth - indeed the nation - cannot afford another four years of George Bush." Alas, we cannot afford another couple of years of your industry, its prevarications, its selling, its complete raw contempt for the public -- but it will remain in power long after you or I or Bush or DIP shuffle off this mortal coil -- assuming, as it does not pay to assume, that NEWS HACKS are MORTAL.