The idea that many newspapers might successfully go with a Sunday only print product, and weekday online strikes me as one model that might have some prospects ahead of it. What’s going to be challenging is the inevitable privatization of reporting itself with newsroom cuts — it occurred to me reading an article about baseball coverage (whose provenience i’ve now utterly misplaced) that in baseball towns without a vital newspaper staff, the team itself will necessarily end up assigning a staffer to “follow the team” and write material as a baseball writer once would have, to distribute to news outlets.

And then what? Should they use it? Will they? And then i tried to imagine what this model would look like in the pharmaceutical industry, or the military — and remembered it’s a phenomenon that’s already been on the move for some time, esp. in the entertainment biz: PR departments create interviews and content of all different sorts, and try to “place” it. The ethical question is when or in what form it’s right to use this kind of press release news article or puff piece profile, and that question is going to be forced over a barrel in the current environment.

If you take Beck’s quote from the article, “I’m a rodeo clown,” remove one word and add an ellipsis, “I’m a…clown,” I would be in total agreement with him. Actually, that kind of editing is par for the course at Fox, so it is entirely appropriate.

I think it is easy to read WAY too much into his numbers. By his own admission, he is “a rodeo clown.” His schtick is this bizarre, insane moron coming unglued before our very eyes. It also appears to be a carefully crafted act. It is hard to imagine him being able to grow or even retain those kind of numbers indefinitely. His act would seem to have a kind of shelf life built in. Just because people are watching doesn’t mean that he is tapping into to anything.

The problem I have with this type of programming, is as conservatism gets more desperate and the histrionics get more over the top on Fox shows, inevitably there will be some instance of violence or attempted violence by the deranged kooks that believe it all. We’ve already seen James Adkisson express regret at not being able to kill the 100 people mentioned in Bernard Goldberg’s book, so he sought out what he thought a suitable proxy in a children’s pageant at a church. Their only crime was that they were too liberal for his taste, and therefore, they deserved to die.

What responsibility does Fox have for scaring these well armed morons shitless? How is this “fair and balanced?” Since it is all about the money, maybe it will take a few lawsuits by survivors to exact financial retribution. That would get their attention.

Speaking of cars, enjoyed the opening F1 race today, from Australia. Thank heavens (and Verizon/Direct TV) for tivo- it ran live between 2 and 4 in the morning.

The cars look bizarre this year, and KERS looks like a good way to electrocute a pit guy or emergency responder – but we shall see.

It WAS marvelous to see Ferrari and McLaren out of the picture, and scrappy little Brawn (ex-Honda) with customer Mercedes power dominate the weekend!

Huzzah!

edit: I see that Nance has Life Sentneces on her night stand, which is a fine book. I finished it a few days ago, and then plunged into Jon Meacham’s book about Andy Jackson – which is a great book so far. Ol’ Hickory wil (at the very least) be a palate cleanser before I proceed into Ms Lippman’s What the Dead Know

So where was the intervention and forced management of AIG, as this link’s story attests to?

I have never had anything good to say about GM management, but forcing Waggoner out …what good will that do?
Is this a trend? All bailout recipients will be at the mercy of the US government , for the government to appoint leaders for them? This is more of what we saw earlier when the auto industry took the brunt of the offensive against poor R.O.I. while the New York institutions were handled with kid gloves…more bullshit.

Still wondering if anyone else finds “Kings” weirdly compelling, and i’m feeling even more so after tonight’s episode.

//Officially off my soapbox now.