Words

They are funny things. And they can have so many meanings depending on context and spelling. Every time I watch CNN and I see the closed captions get something horrendously wrong I think computers are stupid. But then I look at how the Record Eagle fails a credibility save by not using spell check. It's English. It's that people can not take time to pronounce things properly or slow enough to be understood and then I wonder why I care.

I was talking to ACG the other day about the quality of print media. My own personal opinion, after having been in it for ten years, is that print media needs to die. Oh, I love my newspapers and my magazines. Don't misunderstand... there is something nostalgic about a paper, and something completely necessary about having hard copy of a newspaper. But it needs to die.

The reason being is simple... I've read too much science fiction. Just like all the idiots bent on owning the world and everything in it. In Fahrenheit 451, everyone lives by the wall sized TV screen. Its their life and their information. They are dumbed down by banality and they are hypnotized by the illusion of importance by participating in interactive television. And the TV's work both ways. THEY can see you as easily as you can see the other actors. The TV becomes a means of monitoring the people.
We are switching to digital broadcast in February of this year. If something is aired "by mistake" it can be erased from the memory as easily as striking a delete button. The new TV or the new converter box could theoretically monitor everything going on in the house besides tracking your subversive TV choices. But more than that, the TV can be used to broadcast specific messages to specific groups simultaneously. Obama says something... you hear it one way... I hear it another and then we get into some serious wag the dog orchestrations. Everything can be denied. But with a print paper, you have in black and white, the evidence of your opinion that someone else was not paying attention.
If we are to be completely manipulated by our government them newspapers must die. And they are complicit in that death. They give content away instead of charging e-subscriptions. They allow slipshod reporting, biased op-ed pieces and they reduce their delivery routes to force more people to the websites. NPR talked with editors and publishers of several major papers across the country to see what they were doing about the problems facing the nations media. There is nothing they believe that they can do. And why should they? The government spends money to bail them out of some of their losses through subsidies on returned or unsold papers. They have no incentive to stay in print. They will make money until they've angered their last customers.
I know I sound like Frank from "You've Got Mail" without being as eloquent. But one cannot deny the quality of the print media has decreased right along with the nations test scores.