(edited)

So, for a second, let’s philosophize about what the death of the Seattle PI really means on a variety of levels.  

1) In an industry that is losing money, losing readers and has been becoming more and more irrelevant since 1995, someone finally decided to put the P-I out of its misery.  Shouldn’t this have been considered an option years ago?  

2) We will hear arguments that having only one paper will decrease the quality of the journalism.  Really?  Many people believe the quality of journalism has already diminished.  Especially in print.  Examples:  

• Not one journalist of the 1000’s getting paychecks, investigated Bernie Madoff, AIG or the mortgage meltdown BEFORE any of it happened.  How?  
• The day before election day Christine Gregoire said Washington’s budget is in surplus.  The day after election day, it’s $9 Billion in the hole. No one asks any questions.
• Baseball reporters chose to ignore all reporting on steroids, protecting the people they are supposed to be reporting on.
• Reporters are so used to regurgitating press releases that there is a web site called HelpAReporterOut.
• Reporters became so clueless as to how to write online, we had to come up with a Social Media Press Release to make it possible for them to pull quotes out and link to online sources.

Anyway, the point is that “professional” journalism already seems a shell of itself.  People are smart enough to know that reporters know one thing and are writing something else.  There are still ones we really respect, but on average, I think we have less faith in the quality of the investigation.  Losing the P-I is an effect, not a cause, of journalistic depreciation.

3) The world is digital.  I see the stats that say something like 90% of people have cell phones. Which means 1 out of 10 people DON’T.  How?  Why?  I don’t care how old you get, you need to at least accept that technology advances.  For the price of one year of printing the New York Times, they could give every subsciber 2 Amazon Kindles.  

4) First go the papers, next the local TV news guys?  Does a station really need to pay someone $2 million a year to read a teleprompter?  Or do you invest $2 million is creating micro-blogs and ways to provide niche news to a captive audience without the restraint of a 30 min newscast?

5) Closing the chasm between “news” and “blog.”  Suppose I go ever Interlake High School football game, and write about them on my blog?  Anyone who hass “Interlake High School” in a Alert or Feed reader would get my blog post.  Do we need an intern from the Journal American to be there as well?  Why shouldn’t the JA just promote my citizen post instead?  

6) But there’s something nice about holding a paper on a Sunday morning.  Really?  Getting your hands smudged?  Having it blow around in the wind?  Squinting to see the font?  The annoying ad folded onto the front page?  News that was 12-18 hours old? I know there is a comfort factor in reading a piece of environment damaging, dirty, 12 hour old, static piece of paper.  But holding an iPhone at the same Coffee shop on the same sunny day is also a satisfying experience.

Conclusion:

I’m sure there are 10-20 more things to think about on this issue.  I’ll miss the P-I the same way I miss Cheers, Seinfeld, $4 Spring Training Tickets, $.99/gallon gas, my 8th grade classmates at St. Paul’s and the real Ken Griffey roaming Center Field in the Kingdome.  But the world changes – usually for the better – and we either adapt with it, or get stuck behind.  There are some people that will never go digital, and who will have the way they go about their day extremely disrupted.  For them I feel bad, I guess.  To a point.  But it’s also an opportunity to force these people out of yesterday’s static world and into the benefits of today’s digital society.  

Really?  How much work did you put into this….Your marketing guys must be pure genius.

A few things collided in my brain this week, and I think it’s time we admitted they probably are inter-related in some way.

Phelps

First off, Michael Phelps gets busted for smoking marijuana in October.  The country flies into outrage.  After all, why should a 20-something year old, who just accomplished the greatest feat in Olympic History, in a room full of other 20-somethings who admire him, sit down and do what they do?  The nerve.  And if the guy who has more Olympic Gold Medals than anyone on earth can do so AND smoke marijuana, should it really be illegal?  Is there really someone saying, “Well you know, if he didn’t smoke dope, he’d probably be able to be a brain surgeon as well as Olympic Gold Medalist.”  

The part that kills me now is that because of the photo, the county sheriff has had to haul in 7 people at the party and the guy who owned the bong, even though that guy wasn’t even there.  You want to talk about a guy born under a black cloud.  A guy who lives at the house DIDN’T get to party when a superstar randomly dropped by.  But someone did grab his bong out of his room so said superstar could smoke from it.  And then when he tried to sell it on eBay for $100k, he got arrested.  

A-Rod

On the other side of the spectrum, there’s the guy we just KNEW was up to something, but could never figure out what.  His breakup with Jeter was odd, getting caught with a stripper was odder, and being friends with Madonna was just plain bizarre.  But it turns out all he was doing was taking steroids with 103 other players from 2001-2003.  

And do you wonder why not one team has sued any players for breech of contract?  Think about it.  A guy has a monster year.  You sign him to a 4 year, $40 Million deal.  Then the Mitchell report comes out and spooks everyone off the juice.  Now your $40 Million guy goes clean, and falls back to 15 HR a year.  Well if you didn’t know he was on roids before you signed him, then found out he was on the list, wouldn’t you sue and renegotiate back to what a 15 HR guy should make?     

Dow <8K

So we have illogical drug laws, cheaters playing and reporting about our national pastime and we honestly ask ourselves, “So how did our economy get so bad?”  Obama supporters are already wondering and asking why they haven’t received a blank check in their mailbox to cover all their expenses in 2009.  People think a national bank should be set up where every citizen who asks can get an ATM card to withdraw whatever they want.  Then there are all of these CEO’s who managed to get the government to give them big piles of money, and are now faced with the choice of taking a 80% pay cut and digging their company out of bankruptcy, or taking a 100% pay cut and resting on the beach in Costa Rica.

Here’s what I don’t get about the $900 BILLION stimulus package.  Obama is out their pounding his fist saying, “We must do this today or our people will be bankrupt.”  The Republicans are out there saying, “Some of this makes sense, but I don’t get how $300M for STD testing stimulates the economy.”  So, why can’t we agree on about $250 Billion that makes the most sense, shoot it into action and then argue about the next chunk?  Any Senator who says they won’t approve a $100 Billion for construction and infrastructure projects unless the raises for Special Ed teachers are approved, is obviously gorging on pork.

Summary

So are these unrelated?  I just think it shows a complete lack of logic in the whole structure.  A guy making $25 million a year cheats, affecting 800 other ball players, 75 million fans, the seasons of 29 other teams, and the advertising revenue of several networks.  And we seem to be upset that a guy who at most is putting three of his teammates at risk is able to smoke pot and still shatter Olympic records.  And we’ll continue to drop billions into pretending to fight marijuana, arresting people, running them through trials and then releasing them to probation, instead of spending that money to hire a teacher to explain why you shouldn’t buy a house with zero percent down, especially if you don’t have a job.  There has to be some logic somewhere.

Not sure why I found this so amusing….