Daily Briefs: The Journalists of Journalism
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SCARY STORY, if you’re a newspaper person such as a Dan Margolies, Legal Affairs columnist for The Kansas City Star and undefeated 1987 Missouri State arm wrestling champion, or a Jim Davis, the cartoonist who has personally slaved over every panel of the Garfield comic strip for the last 30 years because of his awesome integrity. Or really, anyone else who works in newspapers. The very, very fiscally solvent and not-at-all close to bankruptcy New York Times reports today that “some economists and newspaper executives say it is only a matter of time — and probably not much time at that — before some major American city is left with no prominent local newspaper at all.” BRRR!
Look, what with distribution networks such as the internet and that other thing — what was I thinking of? Oh, right, the sides of funnycars — what with all that, it sucked to be newspapers before the economic downturn. Now, it’s like, you want to do WHAT? Publish ARTICLES? Of upwards of 7000 words? ON PAPER? Any good venture capitalist worth his annualized rate of return would already be laughing you right out of his leather-and-rubies-upholstered office, but you also want Mom2Mom???? And a Sunday magazine? Paid for with WHAT? Magickal fairy advertising inserts about elfs? You know that a healthy daily paper is basically a teeny little blastocyst of journalism suspended in a thick, nourishing amniotic bath of advertising, right? But with the flight of advertising dollars from the daily papers to the tattooed chests of the kinds of hobos who can reach the coveted 18-34 demographic (really telegenic hoboes), it’s a pretty grim time to be a journalist.
Once this ol’ journalism up and dies, me and Dan Margolies and Justin Kendall are gonna hit the Pro Stock funny car circuit and try to win us some purses. Dan’s like a crazy genius with roots-type positive displacement superchargers and Justin, he was an Army brat, been racing cars since his daddy was sent up to Leavenworth for going AWOL. Me? I’m the brains of the operation. I run the business end, and I also drive the flatbed. At night, I sit outside roadside motel rooms with my guitar and sing hillbilly rock and roll songs while the bug zapper crackles. But you know what would really make this operation sing? Dillard’s ads on the side of the car.
