GOODY TWO SHOES: What Passes For “News” These Days: Part III
The Daily, Rupert Murdoch's iPad-only tabloid, may be cutting edge but editor-in-chief Jesse Angelo’s definition of news is more, um, traditional, according to this memo he sent to the staff urging them to “start finding more compelling stories from around the country - not just scraping the web and the wires” to “[f]orce the new White House press secretary to download The Daily for the first time because everyone at the gaggle is asking about a story we broke.” Angelo wants his “crack news team” to “[g]et in front of a story and make it ours [to] force the rest of the media to follow us.” A couple of stories Angelo suggests “that will keep people coming back to The Daily” are: “the oldest dog in America, or the richest man in South Dakota.”
Why not a story about the richest dog in America (that would be Leona Helmsley’s Maltese poodle, Trouble)? Wouldn’t it be more interesting to find out how she’s getting by on her $2 million a year bequest than about some mangy mutt who’s managed to hide from The Grim Dogcatcher?
Editorial Note: Stephen Colbert proves that his nose for news is more acute than Angelo’s by sniffing out “the richest old dog in South Dakota.” Make him the managing editor of The Daily!
BTW, Colbert also takes on Arianna Huffington’s habit of stealng curating material from him and other content creators by launching TheColbuffingtonRepost.com, a parody clone of the real (?) thing, reports TechCrunch:
[A]side from what this means in terms of eCPM or whatever the business model is these days, we as consumers and producers of media must sit back and appreciate the sheer ingenuity of The Colbuffington Re-Post, at least for a moment. You win Colbert.
Comments