Striking Distance
Mar. 16th, 2004 07:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erikredI really loathe the SF Chronicle. It's the forced sense of cheery camraderie they add to every story. In some way, I suppose it's meant to make you think of the reporter as your next door neighbor, dressed in a bathrobe, leaning on your fence, cup of coffee in hand, pointing across the street at your suspicious neighbors and listing the juicy gossip of the morning.
Case in point: The SF Chronicle is running a story about Marcus Wesson, the polygamist and suspected mass-murderer, wherein they refer to him as a "man with [a] striking personality." He may have murdered nine people, all family members, and the SF Chronicle thinks the most important thing we need to know about him is that he had a striking personality?
Imagine the SFC tackling "dynamic and enthusiastic overachiever" Jeffrey Dahmer or "charming former painter" Adolph Hitler. Brrrr.
Give me my inverse-pyramid journalism any day of the week; just tell me who, what, where, when, why, and how. Leave the humanization bits for the biographers.
(LJ thinks my link to Darren Hanlon's cool song Punk's Not Dead is too long to fit in the Current Music spot. Fascists.)
Case in point: The SF Chronicle is running a story about Marcus Wesson, the polygamist and suspected mass-murderer, wherein they refer to him as a "man with [a] striking personality." He may have murdered nine people, all family members, and the SF Chronicle thinks the most important thing we need to know about him is that he had a striking personality?
Imagine the SFC tackling "dynamic and enthusiastic overachiever" Jeffrey Dahmer or "charming former painter" Adolph Hitler. Brrrr.
Give me my inverse-pyramid journalism any day of the week; just tell me who, what, where, when, why, and how. Leave the humanization bits for the biographers.
(LJ thinks my link to Darren Hanlon's cool song Punk's Not Dead is too long to fit in the Current Music spot. Fascists.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-03-16 09:46 am (UTC)It has always struck me as odd that greater San Francisco-- full of educated, cosmopolitan people --would have such poor newspapers. I can't imagine why that would be. (To be fair, the SJ Merc is well done, but the focus is too southbay/silicon valley to float my particular boat.)
In my case, the writing was just too irritating and I gave up on the Bay Area newspapers. The problem is, that leaves me without a good source of local news. Rebecca is the web producer for KPIX, so these days I get my news by talking to her, but when she changes jobs, I am doomed.