The Future Of Newspapers By A True (And Truthful) Newspaper Man
The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce – commonly known as the RSA
May 4, 2024
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
Yes newspapers, they are a changing, and not for the better–great Newshour tonight with Lehrer
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june06/pulitzer_4-17.html
anyone involved in investigative journalism knows (re. entertainment or corruption etc–anything) that budgest are dropping out of sight.
very bad for America–we are already so poorly informed as it is and so many blogs are just opinion pieces and have ZIP to do with facts.
Dave’s blog excepted of course :>
May we say that the old paradigm has NOT worked, and that is the reason a new paradigm is coming into being. The centralized reductive influence on the flow of information, which has been managed by major media concerns for their own profit, has created so many devastating problems we don’t have time to list them all: multiple major wars per century; vast numbers of poor people isolated from small numbers of increasingly rich people; environmental devastations; the dumbing down of all secular cultural influences to monetary profit, the centralization of huge religious organizations to the detriment of any actual meaning, and so on and on.
Screw the losers in mainstream media. They’ve led us down the garden path to nowhere.
Yeah, but what’s the alternative? Most people prefer to have news come to them on TV, not to actively seek it out on blogs or other alternative sources.
Well, I don’t know about most people. More and more people are actively seeking out what matters to them personally. That’s the change.
Formerly, mainstream media basically created a kind of mass consciousness, by broadcasting memes and concepts that more or less everyone shared (except for those who didn’t, like in other cultures — therefore major conflicts occur). But the stuff they talked about did not empower us. Exactly the opposite. What can I do about Bush? Go sit in the street with a placard? Big deal.
The alternative is to come back to our intimate, personal connection to life and abandon the hypnotic effect of those supposedly BIG affairs, which are little more than fantasies to distract us while we’re being indoctrinated in the value of various products we must purchase.
Not that something should not be done about Bush. What we must do about it is refuse to support the bastard.
Blogs have little to do with facts? They’re just following traditional media then on that course. Blogs are better than traditional media outlets and will continue to be better. They are hungrier and have more ethics. They’re not held down by corporations and a bottom line and stockholders. They’re free to report on what they want and to do whatever they want to do without interfernce.
Embrace the new media. The old ways are as dead as the dinosaur.
“They are hungrier and have more ethics” ?
We aren;t talking about investigative journalists who get shot in the ass reporting on Rwanda or Sudan, we are talking about blogs which are often little more than ‘opinion with attitude’ and often have poeple at the helm who know f*ck all about what they are blogging about. I love reading blogs about the middle East and Africa for eg. by bloggers who have never been there. Blogs rarely “report” they just log opinions.
If I had to check facts in a blog it would be a fulltime job. You can say/make-up whatever you like in a blog.
Blogs are free to tell the truth and to tell lies, pretty equally, but knowing which is which is the trick and for that I am afraid we still need reporters in the field and wire services and independent counsels.
The biggest journalism story of the year so far? The Village Voice moves hard right under new ownership. Political coverage spiked, Washington correspondent fired, 2 other writers resign (in protest), music section editor fired, fact-checkers and copy editors fired.
Not only that, the film section has had its budget severely cut and will be forced to rely in part on out-of-town reviews. One reason I read the Voice for 28 years was its film coverage. No more!
The second biggest journalism story of the year? NY Times and Washington Post got undeserved Pulitzer Prizes the way Miramax once bought Academy Awards. CounterPunch had an excellent story on the Pulitzers yesterday.