I Trust the Fourth Estate More Than Real Estate Moguls

Over on Twitter today, one of the trending hashtags is #LoveMyNewspaper. During the four years beginning on January 20, 2017, one of the ongoing battles -- if not the most important ongoing battle -- will be between the post-truth president and his media watchdogs, especially those in the print (and e-print) media who are capable of delving in depth and over time into the statements and actions of next administration and its tangled conflicts of interest.

We need to be clear about which side we're on.

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Your semi-regular reminder that there are Americans stupid enough to believe the National Enquirer....

...and they all voted for Donald Trump last Tuesday.

"Hillary & Huma GOING TO JAIL!" Headline on the 11/21/2016 issue
of National Enquirer seen at the supermarket on November 15, 2016.

One Thing We Can Do Today.

I had a plan for this morning. Though I'm a digital subscriber to The New York Times, I was going to run out early and buy a print copy of today's paper with its headline about America's first woman president. I was going to put it away with these copies from 2008 for my one-year-old granddaughter.

Yes, We Did.

I have no desire to buy (or even see) a print copy of the Times this morning, but I have another plan. I want anyone who reads this to think about subscribing to the Times or the Washington Post, or your local newspaper that probably endorsed Hillary Clinton along with every major print publication in the nation.  In many ways, last night's result was a victory of the illiterate reality-television world over the world of printed words. Subscribe to the Times if only to prove the man wrong who unfailingly and gleefully refers to this essential national publication as the "failing @NYTimes" whenever he tweets about it.

The failing @nytimes reporters don't even call us anymore, they just write whatever they want to write, making up sources along the way!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 15, 2016

I don't work for the Times or the Washington Post or any other newspaper, but I consider subscribing to at least one paper as a civic duty of anyone concerned about the First Amendment. Think about it as a non-deductible charitable contribution if you need to. Think about it the same way you think about contributing to your local PBS or NPR station. We need them all all the time, but we will need them all even more over the next four years.

Weighty Questions Being Weighed by National Enquirer

Seen at the supermarket
on August 11, 2016.

Why is Donald Trump's newspaper of record so obsessed this month with running fictional stories about the weight of the most prominent Democratic women?

Seen at the supermarket today, September 1, 2016.

There is no way that Michelle Obama has gained 95 pounds this year or that Hillary Clinton has gained 103 pounds, no matter how skilled the Enquirer's Photoshop magicians may be. Could this have anything to do with Donald Trump's own health, or questions about his official sub-200-lb weight?

The nation's favorite checkout-counter reading endorsed Donald Trump in March, and he returned the favor in July.

"I've always said, Why didn't the National Enquirer get the Pulitzer Prize for Edwards, and O.J. Simpson, and all of these things?" -- Donald J. Trump, July 22, 2016

UPDATE 7/19/2022: My original video link from 2016 has gone black, so here's another link from Mediaite with Trump's praise of the Enquirer: https://www.mediaite.com/online/donald-trump-wonders-out-loud-why-didnt-the-national-enquirer-get-the-pulitzer-prize/

Lou Reed 1942-2013

The topic of this post is "old news" of course in the era of Blogger, Facebook, and Twitter, but out at lunch today I passed a plastic red The Village Voice box and saw Lou Reed's face staring out at me on that old medium, ink on paper. I used to subscribe to the Voice back in the Seventies when it was much more "content heavy" (to use an awful 21st century concept) and there was compelling writing and art in it every week. Now I rarely pick it up for free, but this week's is an exception, so grab the Oct 30-Nov 5 issue if it's still available around you.  It's filled with reviews from the Voice archives of Lou's concerts and albums, including a long 1989 Tom Carson review of New York that's worth a search for this issue. That and the cover, with the line from Halloween Parade at the bottom ("This Halloween is something, to be sure / Especially to be here without you"), which is suitable for framing.