Posted 10:52 PM by Gene

The news biz began its death spiral in 1975. In that year the business showed it could usurp democracy by almost unilaterally dictating public policy. That was also the year, more fatefully, that two newsrags ran their cover ads for THE BOSS!!!!! right next door to each other. That said there really wasn't a dime's worth of difference among most news publications. The harder they claimed to compete the more alike they were. And here were Tweedledee and Tweedledum in print. Actually the rot set in the year before, when People started. That very crime against brain cells said the prime motivator for the news biz was advertising -- selling ad pages and selling ads among the ad pages. Combined with its newfound dictatorial powers no wonder the press began to die; it had grown not merely apart from its audience, but superior to it, and with the wherewithal to avoid the scornful's questions. Outfits like Zeitgeist might stand a chance with real talent and fully exercising the notion JonBoy imperfectly expressed of wanting to dazzle the readers with a weekly AHA! moment, but decades of conformity primed by power and advertising ended that hope before it could be born. Indeed we are struck that Poynter's goody-goodies conceded game, set and match by calling The New ECONOWIZ "an uncomfortable mix of the abstruse and glib, mostly an expendable read both in print and online." That is what the whole news biz has become, and barring a sudden surge of Menckens it is doomed to spiral ever downward, whatever its profits or its editors' egos.