Really, thank God Brian Hamilton and the editorial staff of the Chicago Tribune are a bunch of desperate morons looking to manufacture news in order to improve their bottom line and keep their new owner from axing them like he’s been axing so many others. It gives us all something to talk about until football practices start for Notre Dame. I’ve been working on a pretty stats-heavy post for the last few days, but it’s been a lot of work to put together. Writing about this Brian Hamilton thing has been easy – hardly any effort is required at all. This must be what being Brian Hamilton is like.
At any rate, El Kabong of NDNation.com has written up some thoughts on the entire matter, and here’s the summary of his point:
Some people are acting like this is all Brian Hamilton’s fault and if he wouldn’t have written the story, it’d all be fine. That’s not the case. BH bears some of the blame for writing a non-story, but an equal part of the problem is the public jones for stories like this. BH could leave the Tribune tomorrow, and we’d still see these kinds of stories. The only way to truly combat them is to not read them and let people know they’re not necessary.
And on the face of it, that seems like a reasonable argument. In essence, El Kabong is saying, “fight the disease, not the symptom.” He argues that Hamilton feels he has to write these sorts of pieces because if he doesn’t, someone else will, and this is the sort of thing “the public” craves.
But what El Kabong (who, by the way, I respect quite a bit) and the editors of the Chicago Tribune (who, as you might have guessed, I do not) are failing to grasp is that news media, as the Tribune would argue itself to be, and sites like TheBigLead.com, which originally posted the photos of ND football players at a party and apparently have people like Hamilton feeling mighty threatened, aren’t even in the same industry. So why does the Tribune feel it needs to compete with blogs? Because their ad revenue numbers are down? So what? That doesn’t mean that a company that wants to represent itself as a news source gets to also play in the muddy waters of gossip and speculation in which blogs like TBL (and HLS) roll around. By what proclamation does the newspaper industry have a right to revenue that never shrinks? If the public’s craving for news has dropped while its craving for gossip increases, that’s just too bad for the Tribune. Either they must completely abandon any sense of being a reputable news source, or get accustomed to watching the gossip game from the sidelines while operating on a set of more limited resources. That’s the Tribune’s burden to bear, and it’s certainly no excuse for the Tribune to manufacture news. Sure, it’s only sports, but I can’t help but wonder where else in the paper the editors feel it’s okay to speculate and represent gossip as news as well. Further, how is it that news outlets have identified blogs as the threat to their revenue source? Have they looked at novels, comic books, or poetry readings? Those all seem to involve the written word in some fashion, and as near as I can tell, that’s the only commonality between blogs and news sources. Perhaps the Tribune could create a new section: “Fiction.” They already seem to have a knack for it. Or maybe they could create a comic book and sell the story to a major movie studio – lots of revenue to be had there. Or maybe they could publish more poetry. One particular piece comes to mind.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
- HLS Tweets for the Week of 2009-11-15 - November 15, 2009
- HLS Tweets for the Week of 2009-11-08 - November 8, 2009
- HLS Tweets for the Week of 2009-11-01 - November 1, 2009
Face Mask
Well done MQ.
matt
Looks like professional reporting left the Trib along with editor Ann Marie Lipinski.
perrier
You can rationalize his drinking exploits all you want, but this story is news worthy because he is the QB at ND (which the Tribune covers extensively) who was just caught with alcohol for a second time. Just because a blog broke the story doesnt mean Tribune cant cover it. If you havent noticed the internet has changed the way news spreads, so its only natural newspapers like the Trib pick up such a story. I understand that you are trying to protect your best interest ( the success of ND football and its student athletes), but its sad to see that you have to stoop so low as to criticize a writer who is just doing his job to cover one of Chciago’s favorite teams.
domer.mq
perrier,
I’m not surprised you lack the ability to get the concept of “news.” I’m also not surprised you lack the critical reading skills to understand what my beef actually is.
Hamilton didn’t do his job. He doesn’t do his job on a regular basis.
perrier
There is a large majority of trib readers who dont have access to blogs 24/7. He was doing them a service. Your whole notion of what makes news “news” is silly. As always you strike back at your target by making fun of where they went to school. Well Northwestern is a better school than ND by all accounts, and Purdue beat you in football last year. Cheers.
The Biscuit
Perrier, are you telling us that what TMZ.com does and what the NY Times does is the same?
DeepTeaKup
Biscuit,
They’re getting closer every day, can you really say that the times is an objective news source? Journalism, as we used to know it is dead, people will now get their new with their chosen filter (lib, conservative) already applied.
The Biscuit
Yes, they’re getting closer every day. My point (and I think MQ’s) is that if they want to be considered a news source (and not just a blog) then they need to prevent that from happening and report actual news, and in an accurate way. And that pics of college kids doing whatever was NOT considered news 3 years ago, and shouldnt be now. Blog fodder? Yes. But not news. If the Trib wants to be a blog, great. They can go for it. But they can’t say they’re a news source anymore, and they should at least be as responsible as any random blog in the way they report…
domer.mq
Ah, perrier, the always cogent “my team beat your team last time they played” argument.
Your ability to develop a thought is remarkable.
The Biscuit
And dont forget, ND is better than Northwestern at football, and better academically than Purdue. So where does that put us?
BJGator
The trouble is that this is what “news” means now. Gone are the days of simple reporting: who, what, where, when, why. Audiences (and similarly, advertisers) want expert opinions (which, despite all attempts to disguise it, are still opinions), extrapolations, and all sorts of explorations into the potential (and quite unknown) future. Where who, what, where, when, or why are not known, such information is derived from the judgment of the writer. And this is what reporting has become: a competition to see who can “fill in the blanks” most accurately. You have to be on the cutting edge of news to get ahead, and you can’t do this by reporting simple facts anymore. You can’t fault Hamilton for this, because he is completely in line with what has become the status quo. El Kabong did a brilliant job of pinpointing where the blame lies. Newspapers are driven not by some sense of duty to their audience, but are instead under a great deal of pressure to turn a profit, journalistic responsibility be damned.