Yeah, we see maybe 5% of the war in Iraq: Usually just the things that the military can’t prevent from being leaked, and then usually foreign journalists leaking it. How many stories have you read about the Iraqi death toll? We rarely read stories about American soldier casualties. Can you say how many American soldiers have been killed or wounded since the start of the war? I didn’t think so. Apparently access isn’t everything. You know it’s bad when the Sunday Strib puts the release of a video game that celebrates the fine art of murder on the front page and the war in Iraq on page 12.

The newspaper industry is in dire straights not just because of the Internet. It is dying the death it should have died long before the Internet. People have been starved for real information since Vietnam, when the government and the military industrial complex figured out that the only way to control the flow of information was to buy the media and deploy the same kinds of propaganda campaigns used by the Nazis.

After 30 years of this, the three largest channels are now owned by companies that make weapons. The cable channels and most of the radio stations are owned by a complete nut job who is also heavily invested in military contractors—Rupert Murdoch, who’s goal is to own everything. Most of the papers are owned by the same companies. This says nothing about how the advertising industry has had its mitts in the content side of the house for decades.

Is it any wonder that people prefer to get their information from the Internet? The news industry suffers from complete credibility loss. Only until they get back to the basics of a separation of the business side of the house from the content side of the house will they regain their credibility. The problem is, the more they suffer, the more influence the business side has on content.

I’ve seen it happen first hand. I was the editor of a national magazine that died a slow death after we lost our big advertisers to bankruptcy when the dot-com bubble burst. Every day, the publisher had a new scheme to get more revenue that involved compromising our journalistic code. I had to pick my battles, and I lost more than I won. I kept telling them that we were losing readers for the sake of short-term revenue. They didn’t want to hear it. When you lose readers, you lose everything. And that is ultimately what happened. The publication was shut down four years after the bubble burst.

This story is being repeated all over the country. You either consolidate to slow your own death or you die. Eventually, it will all be on the Internet, and credibility will be the only determining factor as to whether a site lives or dies, which is what the media should be about anyway.

Admittedly I’ve never read Deadspin, The Huffington Post, or Gleeman. In fact I haven’t read too many blogs at all. There is a reason for that. Blogs are mostly opinion, and some analysis, and almost never news or “reporting.” (except , I suppose for blogs of individuals “embedded” with the military or a sports team).

Not even the news-based blogs that I have read: MSNBC political blogs, Chris Mathews, Keith Olbermann claim to be either “news” or “reporting.”

Certainly none of the sports blogs I occassionally peruse claim to provide either news or reporting. They do, however, sometimes offer some very good writing, and some very good analysis. Jesse, John Bonnes, Ubelmann and co., Fire Joe Morgan, and Batgirl, are all great examples of how well, how intelligently, and how humorously some people can write; yes, even people who don’t have jobs with a newspaper (although I clearly am not on that list).

If you are reading blogs to get your news or your reporting, than I guess the joke is on you.

I would suggest that you give up blogs unless you are interested in the bloger’s opinion, their writing style, or their analysis of a subject that interests you (and even then I would choose carefully). I also suggest you give up this stupid rant that pits one form of “information” against the other in some sort of twisted head to head competition.

Looks like you hauled in your limit of monster polynemus pontificatus with that satire, WC.