Tim Blair

Big whoop. The Associated Press does this every day in the US. They start out with the most sensational, alarmist, anti-US headline they can and then gradually dial it down over the course of day. You go online with your morning coffee and you read "PRESIDENT BUSH ADVOCATES EATING FOETUSES" and by suppertime it's "PRESIDENT HAD SCRAMBLED EGGS FOR BREAKFAST."

Reminds me of a recent story in San Francisco (except for the part about changing the headlines). Radio, TV, newspapers all headlined the killing of a quadriplegic man by San Francisco police. Within the story, one learns that, after an attempted robbery, he led police on a high-speed chase during which he fired on them, and previously had led Oakland police on three high speed chases in one day before they finally carted his ass (excuse me, "arse") off to jail (excuse me, "gaol").

Does anyone else get the feeling that newspapers are going to be completely replaced by blogs?

Tim's example of biased ineptitude at the SMH, as well as Richard's and Ken's above, illustrate why such a trend might actually be a goodish thing. I say good-ish because there's still something wonderful - even romantic - about a dedicated collective of professional writers publishing an account of a community's daily life.

I used to be a paper-addict but there's so much op-ed pretense, filler, bias and news-cycle short-sightedness in print these days, that my consumption has dropped significantly. At least blogs put their political and cultural prejudices up front. Read a half dozen or so and you'll be better and more fairly informed than you might be after a session with the SMH.

*****

Ken:

'Gaol' is now more or less defunct here in Oz but we've held on to our 'arses'! It's difficult for an Australian to say 'ass' without giggling. So much so that I heard a radio announcer the other day use the curious word 'jackarse' while talking about the TV show of that name.

Thank you for this second, accurate arseumption.

Currencylad,

Adding to what you say I would add the pet peeve that most journalists today seem to have little or no background in anything but journalism. That is to say, they don't know history, literature, science, mathmatics, etc.

An example: I was reading an AP account of the D-Day ceremonies last weekend and the reporter claimed that one of the British veterans marching flashed the "peace" sign.

WTF? Did she ever see a picture of Churchill flashing the "peace" sign while London was being blitzed?

Or...perhaps the old fella was actually giving the "'V' for Victory" since that's what it meant to his generation. And no editor picked it up.

That's just profound ignorance of the cultural history of WWII.

(By the way, Lileks mentioned the "'V' for Victory" slogan in his 'bleat' yesterday. It was a good one.)

Here's another one.
No longer will the Imperial Roman Army be recruiting Company-Grade officers in Tokyo though, they changed the headline to 'Centenarians' at my request. Fortunately, Google News kept the original.

Peter: "Those of us about to Banzai! salute you."

Alan, rather.

Ken,

Could you mean paraplegic, not quadraplegic?