{"id":1003,"date":"2008-06-27T08:31:13","date_gmt":"2008-06-27T15:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=1003"},"modified":"2008-06-27T08:31:13","modified_gmt":"2008-06-27T15:31:13","slug":"comics-journalism-one-more-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=1003","title":{"rendered":"(Comics) Journalism: One More Thing…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay, I sorta swear this is the last I’ll say on this subject.<\/p>\n

As this conversation about comics journalism has wound its way around the web, folks have been asking in the comments, “What’s the big deal?”<\/p>\n

For me, it boils down to this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“CONSTANT VIGILANCE!”<\/p>\n

There is so much bullshit in the media at every level in every way possible that it sorta shocks me to hear folks expect such antiquated notions as “journalistic standards” from their sources of information. Is “information” even the right word anymore? It’s all “infotainment,” isn’t it? The daily metropolitan newspaper delivered to my Orlando doorstep has less reporting than the paper put out by the high school up the street; questions for “hard-hitting” interviews are faxed in advance so that the interviewee can have every response carefully prepped by a PR flack; some douchebag with a camera crew shows up at a trailer park, spends twenty minutes talking to a neighbor of a felon, and files a story about the “bad economy” and how it makes people steal.<\/p>\n

Lemme paraphrase Alexander Hamilton, or maybe Bob Dylan, here: If you don’t question everything, you’ll fall for anything.<\/p>\n

I personally think most major and minor media outlets of any kind, from Newsarama to the New York Times, should be questioned, absorbed, and dismissed, in about that order. Journalistic “standards” have always been a bit of an illusion, designed to camouflage whatever imperceptible biases and flaws are inherent in the process of reporting; that’s never been more true than it is today.<\/p>\n

So buy a salt shaker, toss out lotsa grains, and consume with voracious pleasure. And if you’re not tossing the salt, you deserve whatever shit you eat.<\/p>\n

I think that’s about it. Back to geek now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, I sorta swear this is the last I’ll say on this subject. As this conversation about comics journalism has wound its way around the web, folks have been asking in the comments, “What’s the big deal?” For me, it boils down to this: “CONSTANT VIGILANCE!” There is so much bullshit in the media at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics","category-misc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}