It’s a tabloid media frenzy out there and as much as you curse yourself, you the enlightened, sophisticated neophyte can never get enough of it. Tiger Woods is a slut, Jon Gosselin a fat philanderer that slams college girls and let’s not forget the relentless tirade that keeps us glued to coke/media whore Lindsay Lohan and how a shiny princess called Brittany Murphy shows up dead inconveniently just before your Christmas carols. It’s a relentless diatribe of gossip, hyperbole, slander, conjecture and glitzy gutter trash that has morphed into degenerative and congested journalism. So much for the Ernest Hemingway’s and the William Faukner’s out there, cause what’s on the kitchen counter and by osmosis the grand saloon is the vacuous permeation of a culture into it’s most bloated counter intuitive sensibilities.
It used to be if you wanted to be a credible journalist you would aspire to write for the New York Times, the Atlantic, Le Figaro, the Observer, the Sunday Times and anything Tina Brown would dare let you come near. Yet that all changed with the advent of the internet and by extension the arrival of the blogger who could suddenly out wit, out sell, out flagellate, out scintillate the traditional gate keepers called the blue chip ‘publishing world.‘ Suddenly it has become de rigeur to read Gawker, NY Post-pg 6 (which admittedly has always specialized in society and it’s treacherous capacity to self capitulate), TMZ, D listed, Guest of a Guest and the many other blogs, journals that even we admittedly adore despite our metaphorical ballooning waist lines…
With the solid expenses that once existed in traditional media (ie specifically that of printing, publishing, distribution…) -media for the longest time was concentrated in the hands of a deep pocketed formidable gentry that didn’t have to consider the thoughts and self expressions of other less formidable carriers of opinion and news. It could and would out buy you, out publish you and keep you out of the horse barn as it pleased cause at the end of the day it was the one with all the respect, access to publicists, best writers, and the talking heads that you were supposed to want to pay attention to.
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