Playing 'em like a violin
In the race of daily newspapers to the intellectual bottom in a misguided attempt to save themselves from extinction, the Deseret News plunges so low Editor Joe Cannon will get the bends if it ever comes up again.In an 9-inch by 6-inch photo above the fold, the DNews features the Scottish singer Susan Boyle, the phenom on Britain's Got Talent.
What's the connection to Utah that Boyle's close-up would displace nearly half the world, local and national news? She idolized Donny Osmond as a child. Her brother told a British newspaper that Donny's posters were all over her walls:
She would lock herself in her room and play the records over and over again singing along as loud as possible. ... Our mum would say, 'Leave her alone. It's all she's got.'Fortunately, DNews readers don't frequent my blog because the following will break their hearts. Yes, Boyle has a fantastic voice, but that wasn't a surprise to the judges and producers of Britain's Got Talent — she auditioned and was carefully screened. The producers strategically cultivated her heart-warming "reality" as a badly dressed, never-been-kissed matron for maximum ratings. (One admiring viewer I know was forced to point out to me tha
t if it weren't for that voice, Boyle might actually be a member of the Monty Python troupe in drag.)It makes me feel small to say this, but no one running the show expected her to get the hook — it was a masterful, lumps-in-a-hundred-million-throats set up.
I don't mind the attention Boyle's getting, but news outlets don't have to play complete suckers. And I hate to break it the DNews, folks who love reality television the most don't subscribe to newspapers.
BTW, feel free to clobber me with examples of Trib pandering.
7 Comments:
Yeah, but it makes the old people who do subscribe feel relevant and connected to their children.
Well D News at least knows who buys their paper unlike the SLTrib who trys it's best to offend most of it's readers.
Please, get it straight. Britain's Got Talent is NOT the UK version of American Idol. It's the UK version of America's Got Talent. They have an Idol, called Pop Idol. And incidentally, both of their programs were around FIRST - we stole them.
Glen, the SLTRIB invented pandering! I am surprised that an 8x10 glossy of you banging Perez Hilton isn't on the front page of the SLLIB, this morning! Cheer up...there is hope for tomorrow?
The other intellectual bottom feeders who are gleefully reporting on the Susan Boyle phenom are National Public Radio, the New York Time, and the Washington Post.
Could it be that the Salt Lake Tribune is too cynically elitist?
Oh, the angst of the Salt Lake Tribune.
Scooped by the DesNews for a local angle on the Susan Boyle story.
And, the story has a Mormon angle that the Trib would be loathe to report even if they got the story before the DesNews in the firts place.
No wonder the Crawler is so jaded about Susan Boyle.
I love it. Glen got the reaction that he wanted.
What's sad here is not really that...but that both the Trib AND the DNews are sub par. It's not a matter of who is better, because in the end, both papers are wasting trees being printed and energy being on the internet.
You've all missed the boat, Utah newspapers (for the most part...not all of them) are best used for starting fires on camping trips and what not.
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