What Reporters Will Never Admit...

News reporters will never admit the truth of the following:

That people care more about their dog than who the President is,

That people want to look at porn more than any newspaper or web page,

That people actually look at porn more than any newspaper or web page,

Pornography dominates Internet content, not their discoveries and thoughts, and certainly not unrelated e-commerce,

Reporters are supposed to write interesting stories that get people to look at advertisements and then buy the stuff advertised.

I have heard many whining complaints about the amount of coverage President Obama's family gets for its choice of dog. There's a secret in there. That's what people care most about. The dog. And news coverage of the First Dog is an attempt to get some of those people to actually watch the news, and consequently see the advertisements and buy the products advertised.

So you can be a purist and want only real news, or you can build a well-watched show. Producers are opting for the latter.




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Fleabite Journalism

That's what I'm doing with this blog. It's fleabite journalism. It's what some bloggers are doing. We are scratching the ground and creating little annoying fleabites that most likely will be ignored, but maybe won't be.

Think about it: annoying, persistent, pervasive. And if left alone: unbearable.

At a certain point, you've got to do something about it. You can't take the annoyance anymore and your health could be affected.

Damn! How inconvenient!

But then you react to address the problem.

The result: chalk another one up for fleabite journalism.

Auto Bailout News and Opportunity

The latest seems to be that the bailout of the auto industry is not going to happen after all. Some of what they were talking about yesterday really sounded good to this blogger, though.

Like getting money towards a deposit for trading in your old, gas-inefficient car.

And if they did go bust, what are they going to do with all those cars? Bankrupt or not - I'd take my chances with a new Ford Explorer hybrid over the rattle trap I've got now. I might be alone on that one. But that's fine. There'd be more for me to choose from.

And let's think a moment about the whole car selling setup. I mean, don't dealerships lose money on selling cars? And they make that money up through repairs and parts. The whole system as it exists now would collapse if cars were made that lasted longer and were built better. Maybe ripping down the whole system isn't such a bad idea.

But then there would be the political fallout of all those dealers and service people who would be out of jobs. And that's where you get into the problem of Congress and politicians making decisions for the industry. I hear Senators talking about those dealership jobs and protecting them which may not be the best idea. If the long term success of the industry means that the whole "I make money on your car breaking" paradigm has to go, then preserving those dealer jobs in the short term would be bad for the auto industry and America.

So now we are going to see how well the marketplace really works to solve its own problems. The hard way.