Posted by
Rich on Tuesday, February 19, 2008 9:31:55 AM
The following is a recent conversation overheard between two journalists named Daryl and Tom who work for the New York Times Company.
"Have
you noticed that profits are down 20-30% at the Los Angeles Times and
Boston Globe this year? Did you know that the San Diego Union-Tribune
eliminated more than 100 jobs, one-tenth of its work force. The Chicago
Sun-Times began a major round of newsroom layoffs, then put itself up
for sale, and publishers in Minneapolis and Philadelphia warned that
tough economics could force cuts there? "
"Shush, don't say
anything or we could get fired. I heard that the big wigs in the New
York Times company, who owns the LA Times and Boston Globe, are getting
big salaries and bonuses while us peons get laid off."
"Why do you think our profits are down so much?"
"I
don't know. Maybe it is because we make our money off of the pain and
suffering of others and people are tired of reading about it."
"No,
that can't be it. People love to read about rapes, murders, fires,
hurricanes, tornadoes and suicide bombers. People love watching train
wrecks, we are just giving them what they want. Remember our motto, 'if
it bleeds it leads'."
"Well if it isn't the bad news maybe
people don't like it when we coerce people in government to sell us
national security secrets about wire tapping and prisons in Europe that
undermines our ability to fight terrorists and harms our government."
"No
that can't be it. I get great e-mails from my friends from Berkeley,
the Daily Kos, Code Pink, MoveOn.org, the Huffington Post, Hugo Chavez,
Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Osama, and the Democratic National
Committee. They say keep them coming. They really love us in Congress
because they use our stories as an excuse to hold hearings. If they
didn't hold hearings what would they do? Win the war on terror, fix
Social Security, cut taxes and reign in government spending? Don't be
silly."
"Well maybe we need to print more bad news about the War in Iraq?"
"That
would be great and sure would get our readership up but unfortunately
we are winning in Iraq. There isn't any blood and gore that we can put
on the front page. It is so bad in Iraq that even the grave diggers are
facing a recession because of the drop in body count. It is so sad. It
seems our fortunes go as does the grave diggers in Iraq. Strange isn't
it?"
"How about we bash Bush?"
"No, Nancy, Harry, Hillary and Barack are doing that for us. Old news!"
"Well
maybe we need to go to the files and pull out the "this economy is the
worst since the great depression" stories we published during the 2004
Presidential elections and reprint them?"
"No, that won't work. We have already milked the "we are in a recession" story line already. We need to be much more creative."
"I got it. Let's talk about the obscene profits made by other companies to hide the fact that we are going under?"
"That's a great idea. Let's see now, who can we pick on? I know, our favorite - big oil."
"That's
a great idea. Big oil is always worth a headline or two. They make lots
of money because they provide us with always available, cheap fuel to
heat our homes, run our cars, our factories, our hospitals, our
schools, our power plants, and keep just about everything else in the
economy chugging along."
"I'll call one of our editors right now and tell him we are doing a story on big oil profits."
"Great we need the work."