Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for September 25, 2024

All the news that’s fit to print!

Just consider disinformation as a classification of information, and you’ll see that we are in the [dis]information age.

All the news that fits, we print.

Sun – don’t look directly at it.

It’s the (something) information age. When it’s good it’s “necessary and proper” when it’s bad it’s “mis”

In real life, that couple would be looking at their phones.

You can’t handle the truth.

Repuglican governors have killed more pets than Haitian immigrants. That’s news.

Maybe a difference in scale, but no different than any other period in history after “news” became a commodity. (See the 1790s rivalries as example in the newly founded USA) Before that it was just rumor, gossip and the random traveler through your town.

Our local metro newspaper appears to be on Ozempic.

I don’t recall ever seeing a newsstand that didn’t also sell mostly smokes and candy.

Actually … The In-foam-aggravation Age.

So a preview of what’s to come when the ‘disinformation czar’ jails everyone they say isn’t telling the right truth.

On Unsocial Media, it’s all the news unfit to print.

[nerd alert] I was watching a video about “Babylon 5” yesterday. It came out in 1994 and had science fiction legend Harlan Ellison as a consultant. The action took place on a space station in the far, far future. The space station had daily newspapers.

NY Times and Washington Post…Good show Wiley!

Handy to fill in those awkward moments when your phone is busy downloading the click-bait article you clicked.

With those boxes, how does the guy stay in business?

Every media site I know of is doing the exact opposite thing, desperately trying to entice you to read dozens of articles, all equally empty of actual content. The last thing in the world they want you to do is “move along” or decide there’s “nothing to see”.

Sad but true — but most of it is worthless anyway.

Haven’t seem a newsstand like that in a long time. I think they may have been replaced by a couch in front of a TV and the many 24hr, 365 day, (366 in a leap year), cable TV networks.

There used to be a box in the middle for Fake News Gazette. It sells out quickly to Liberal Democrats who not only believe every word, but parrot it. God Bless America!

The problem is that the information age prioritizes both quantity and variety over quality.

Information overload, very little knowledge, 0 wisdom. Loads of information + tons of stupidity = the times we’re a livin.

In the 60’s the central VA newspaper where I worked as ad rep broke a mold. For a well known local uni, we published the full college catalog in a tabloid sized edition that went to over 300K subscribers. First of its kind east of Mississippi River. Included all the course descriptions, application forms, etc. Won a VaPressAssoc award for unique special sections. Repeated for the next 4 years.

We were proud to have stepped beyond the usual classifieds and display ads and offered good solid info to a broad audience that otherwise might not have given college a thought. Did it help the bottom line? Sure. But it also helped that uni enroll more students and to eventually become a major player in the post secondary education community. Gotta call that a good thing.

Now the same newspaper has all the substance of a cobweb and their print subscriber list is under 40K. Can’t call that a good thing.

It is information

Because the term Yellow Journalism went out with the Yellow Pages.

What we have now is more akin to yellow snow, Nanook.

aka propaganda.

The real transgression of the regime media is not only the “opinions” they put in as “news,” but actual news is covered up or just downright ignored.

The real problem is the papers are one fifth the size and cost five times more. And they’re 90% ads anyway

When I was in the army, I got to meet someone from the Soviet Union. They said there were two newspapers there: the “Truth” (Pravda) and the “News” (Izvestiya). He said there was a saying in Russia: “In the ‘Truth’ there is no news, and in the ‘News’ there is no truth.”

I still read the newspaper every day (Seattle Times), but I do it online. They provide a “print replica” so it’s just like reading a real newspaper without having to worry about recycling!

I prefer to see it on TV./s