Mission Statement of the Chicago Daily Bugle
All the news that's fit to promote...
The Chicago Daily Bugle is intended to revolutionize newspapers everywhere.
There is a very worthwhile article in the January 20, 2019 edition of The New
Yorker
by Jill Lepore, "Does Journalism Have a Future?" that deserves comment.
We can start with this quote from the article:
"Sometimes what doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger; it makes everyone
sick.
The more adversarial the press, the more loyal Trump’s followers, the more
broken
American public life. The more desperately the press chases readers, the more
our press resembles our politics."
The Bugle is meant to become an antidote to the sickness which is American
popular culture as it has become in the years since William Clinton took office
and extending through the presidencies of George W Bush and Barrack Obama
and Donald Trump. The Bugle is anti-Clinton, anti-Bush, anti-Obama,
and anti-Trump. All of them, in my humble opinion, are sick.
The Bugle is pro-George Washington, pro-James Madison, pro-Alexander Hamilton
(of history, not of the Broadway travesty), pro-Jefferson to some extent,
anyway,
pro-Lincoln, and pro-Teddy Roosevelt. FDR is more controversial but I like
him also
and think well of Eisenhower and JFK. Especially Eisenhower.
While some credit is due to Ronald Reagan, I have never been a fan and
have a variety of criticisms to make of his administration.
As close as any human has ever come to being a perfect Radical Centrist,
it is Ben Franklin. He was a scientist, a philosopher, a political activist,
and a revolutionary. He was also a responsible American citizen who willingly
worked to make government actions successful. He thought for himself,
he was practical and a pragmatist. He never betrayed his highest principles.
As far as can be determined he was honest to a fault. It is pretty hard
to do better than that.
We could use much more of the spirit of Benjamin Franklin in the 21st century.
The joke that we have two political parties in America, the Evil Party and
the Stupid Party, is not a joke at all. The Democratic Party is evil, if not
in everything, in about 90% of everything. The Republican Party has shown
great capacity for stupidity, if not about everything, 90% of everything.
Lepore documented the capitulation of the press to the American political Left.
That is, with only a limited number of exceptions, the press is now the
self-appointed
mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, which, in turn, has become increasingly
subservient to Cultural Marxist -aka nihilistic- philosophy as expressed
once upon a time by Herbert Marcuse. "Anything goes," in other words,
and there is no objective wrong or right except as promulgated by "the party."
The equivalent on the Right can be seen in the rise of libertarian values
wherever you look, from corporate board rooms and locker rooms
to boards of deacons in churches.
None of this is good in any way and all of it needs to be challenged head on,
unmistakably -and boldly.
Reference in the following comments is to an extended quote from The New Yorker
article,
included after the conclusion of this story, a quote that discusses the nature
of what
passes for "new journalism" today. Mostly it is algorithm-driven, based on
highly partisan views of politics, and follows no morality except valorization
of as much profitability as can be generated.
Its all worthless, in other words.
But what would you expect considering the ultimate source of this new model
of how newspapers should be structured? Everything is intended to make life
easier
for the Cultural Marxists and libertarians of Silicon Valley and its outliers.
Meanwhile "old school" journalism retrenches and retrenches again, its minions
unable
to conceive of any other way of operating except the ways they have been trained
-at city desks around the country. It is regarded as a success when a 250,000
circulation
newspaper "only" falls to 150,000. Some papers struggle on even when, in this
example,
they decline to 80,000 or even 35,000.
No-one knows what in the hell they are doing.
Especially not the "major" TV networks, with their mix of weather report news,
and school shooting news, and hate Donal Trump news, mixed with literally tons
of human interest fluff and tear jerk stories.
The Chicago Daily Bugle has no interest in any of these models of news.
The mission of the Bugle is first and foremost education. But please do not
mistake
how the Bugle uses that word with how others employ it. This means something
like
"lifelong learning," or learning for practical purposes, or learning what you
really
need to know about current politics in order to make decent decisions about who
to vote for. But it also means openness to learning about subjects that really
interest
most people, starting with sex. That is, about s-e-x, put it all "out there,"
with
really good visuals, and with a lot of well written but with a sense of humor
commentary by analysts who actually have studied the literature of sexuality.
That is, make it sexy AND make it classy. This is not porn, it is erotic art.
And erotic analysis.
To understate the case, there is a large market for exactly this.
As for Bugle policy towards politics, hit both major parties repeatedly, every
day,
and hit them hard. This is a paper for the 40% of Americans who are
Independents.
While 50-50 parity is never possible, the rule to follow is, if at all possible,
criticize Democrats and Republicans about equally. The paper is not
non-partisan,
it is anti-partisan.
The objective is to expose the fallacies of both Left and Right, show how
thoughtless
both the Democrats and the Republicans really are, how unoriginal, how
short-sighted and narrow-minded each is, and to hell with protecting
any sacred cows. The idea is to make hamburger out of sacred cows.
Sometimes it will do so through thought-provoking references to US history,
especially to the Founding Fathers and to early women leaders like Hannah Adams,
who more-or-less invented the field of Comparative Religion in America.
The Bugle, as much a possible, will defend and "stick up for" religion.
The paper is pro-religion even if, by "religion," what is meant is something
like Comparative Religion, or open-mindedness about religion, or
no sacred cows in religion, either. This is a paper for people who like
to think about religion and who think that questioning their own ideas
is a good thing, not an evil. "Religion" manifestly does NOT mean
"devotionalism" as understood here, it is not about anyone's "prayer life"
or other such content. This does mean religion as source of motivation,
as guide to morality, as inspiration for excellence. But expect a lot
of criticism of both the Religious Right and the Religious Left.
In other words, the Bugle will be light years ahead of all of its competition
in religion coverage -especially inasmuch as most current journalists are
basically
ignorant of religion, have never studied religion, can only conceive it in
terms of
now dysfunctional paradigms of religion, and, anyway, have nothing but disdain
and even contempt for religion.
This is a paper not only for political Independents but for religious
free spirits of any denomination or persuasion. It is intended for
all those people who surveys have identified as "spiritual but unaffiliated"
as well as all those people in more usual religious groups who
think that it is good to explore the world of religious ideas.
And a lot of attention will be given to religious start-ups of many kinds
including New Age religions.
The paper will be critical of Islam as a matter of policy. However,
it will publish news stories about persecution of people of all faiths
around the world, whether the persecutions are carried out by Muslims or Hindus
or anyone else.
The paper will be uncompromisingly anti-homosexual.
The paper will be uncompromisingly pro-evolution.
The paper will be uncompromisingly anti-gender-feminist
The paper will be uncompromisingly pro-women's rights, but keeping in mind
that rights will not always be the same for men and women because
of the truths of sociobiology.
The paper will be uncompromisingly pro-civil rights
The paper will be uncompromisingly anti-the-SPLC and its "take" on what
is or is not "hate" and decidedly opposed to the view that black people can do
no wrong
or that Hispanics can do no wrong and that white people are always wrong.
To hell with Political Correctness, in other words and to hell with
the current version of multi-culturalism. However, the paper will always
seek to recognize black or Hispanic achievement.
Under no circumstances will anti-Semitism be tolerated.
I will admit to one bias, however, I am, as a rule, pro-Asian.
I am also, as a rule, very pro-American Indian. I mean, duh, they were here
first.
But I recognize that Asians or American Indians can sometimes be idiots.
The paper will be uncompromisingly pro-business
The paper will be uncompromisingly opposed to businesses that price gouge (like
Apple),
that are guilty of use of overseas sweatshops (like Nike), and so forth.
However,
my pledge is that if a business genuinely reforms, its accomplishments will
receive
feature article recognition and a good deal of praise.
The environment is important and the Bugle will include such features as a
"glacier watch" column
with photos of selected glaciers as they retreat further and further towards
oblivion. The paper
is also unequivocally opposed to strip mining of coal in mountainous country
anywhere.
And although I have a negative view of abortion
the paper recognizes that an absolutist view of the issue
is unjustified and that there are legitimate classes of exceptions.
The paper will always strive to be as controversial as hell.
This includes coverage of the visual arts, or especially of the visual arts.
The paper will make the most of humor -but always in good taste.
.
The paper will be as truthful as humanly possible and will seek
to become the gold standard in truth telling, the place to turn to
if you want the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
We will admit any mistakes we make.
The paper will try to make a lot of money, however, if you want to get rich
from the Bugle forget it. Some limit of profits, say around 12 % annually,
is the goal. Anything above that will be re-invested in the paper -for purposes
like expansion, like better coverage of under-represented issues, and so forth.
And it would be nice if, at some point, the paper could underwrite a foundation
that helps colleges and other schools in ways that are consistent with
the values expressed here.
This policy will be written into its charter and be legally binding.
Everything possible should be done to make the Bugle into a very attractive
presence on the Web. This means a thorough re-examination of everything
that is found on the best news / information sites available, This includes
Times New Roman for all text in all stories, and an all out war against Ariel
fonts.
Dammit, it is crucial that you should be able to read the paper and enjoy the
experience
And to hell with the view that if Silicon Valley likes Ariel that is all you
need to know,
I detest Ariel fonts for any kind of text. It is horrible, the worst possible
text font.
Indeed, the Bugle, while in no way is it anti-computer, will be as critical
toward Silicon Valley as facts warrant, which as things are, is a great deal.
The paper will rip apart AOL especially, and seek to ruin life for
Tim Armstrong who has ruined my life with everything wrong
that AOL has done under his leadership.
The paper will always provide useful news about computers and software to
its readers. Special attention will be given to start-ups with great potential
not only in terms of business success, but in terms of being consistent with
vales promoted by the Bugle.
The Bugle will highlight promising new computer business start-ups,
In hiring, preference will be shown to people who have serious background in
such fields
as Comparative Religion or history of religions, Intellectual History or
History of Ideas,
and who have some experience in journalism. Some aptitude for being a detective
is also desirable. In other words, very smart people with a passion for truth
and a passion to further the values spelled out in this essay.
Anyone who dislikes the values espoused here should look elsewhere. Early on
I anticipate legal challenges and am more than willing to take these values
issues
to any court of law in the land -with full expectation of overturning a good
number
of past decisions by the judiciary. Yes, I have researched this matter also.
This should give you the idea
Billy Rojas
Editor-in-Chief
and Dictator for Life of the Chicago Daily Bugle :-)
-------------------------------------------------------
...“Raw buzz is automatically published the moment it is detected by our
algorithm,” and “the future of the industry is advertising as content.”
Facebook launched its News Feed in 2006. In 2008, Peretti mused on Facebook,
“Thinking about the economics of the news business.” The company added its Like
button in 2009. Peretti set likability as BuzzFeed’s goal, and, to perfect the
instruments for measuring it, he enlisted partners, including the Times and the
Guardian, to share their data with him in exchange for his reports on their
metrics. Lists were liked. Hating people was liked. And it turned out that
news, which is full of people who hate other people, can be crammed into lists.
Chartbeat, a “content intelligence” company founded in 2009, launched a feature
called Newsbeat in 2011. Chartbeat offers real-time Web analytics, displaying a
constantly updated report on Web traffic that tells editors what stories people
are reading and what stories they’re skipping. The Post winnowed out reporters
based on their Chartbeat numbers. At the offices of Gawker, the Chartbeat
dashboard was displayed on a giant screen.
In 2011, Peretti launched BuzzFeed News, hiring a thirty-five-year-old Politico
journalist, Ben Smith, as its editor-in-chief. Smith asked for a “scoop-a-day”
from his reporters, who, he told Abramson, had little interest in the rules of
journalism: “They didn’t even know what rules they were breaking.” In 2012,
BuzzFeed introduced three new one-click ways for readers to respond to stories,
beyond “liking” them—LOL, OMG, and WTF—and ran lists like “10 Reasons Everyone
Should Be Furious About Trayvon Martin’s Murder,” in which, as Abramson
explains, BuzzFeed “simply lifted what it needed from reports published
elsewhere, repackaged the information, and presented it in a way that
emphasized sentiment and celebrity.” BuzzFeed makes a distinction between
BuzzFeed and BuzzFeed News, just as newspapers and magazines draw distinctions
between their print and their digital editions. These distinctions are lost on
most readers. BuzzFeed News covered the Trayvon Martin story, but its
information, like BuzzFeed’s, came from Reuters and the Associated Press.
Even as news organizations were pruning reporters and editors, Facebook was
pruning its users’ news, with the commercially appealing but ethically
indefensible idea that people should see only the news they want to see. In
2013, Silicon Valley began reading its own online newspaper, the Information,
its high-priced subscription peddled to the information élite, following the
motto “Quality stories breed quality subscribers.” Facebook’s goal, Zuckerberg
explained in 2014, was to “build the perfect personalized newspaper for every
person in the world.” Ripples at Facebook create tsunamis in newsrooms. The
ambitious news site Mic relied on Facebook to reach an audience through a video
program called Mic Dispatch, on Facebook Watch; last fall, after Facebook
suggested that it would drop the program, Mic collapsed. Every time Facebook
News tweaks its algorithm—tweaks made for commercial, not editorial,
reasons—news organizations drown in the undertow. An automated Facebook feature
called Trending Topics, introduced in 2014, turned out to mainly identify junk
as trends, and so “news curators,” who tended to be recent college graduates,
were given a new, manual mandate, “massage the algorithm,” which meant
deciding, themselves, which stories mattered. The fake news that roiled the
2016 election? A lot of that was stuff on Trending Topics. (Last year, Facebook
discontinued the feature.)
BuzzFeed surpassed the Times Web site in reader traffic in 2013. BuzzFeed News
is subsidized by BuzzFeed, which, like many Web sites—including, at this point,
those of most major news organizations—makes money by way of “native
advertising,” ads that look like articles. In some publications, these fake
stories are easy to spot; in others, they’re not. At BuzzFeed, they’re in the
same font as every other story. BuzzFeed’s native-advertising bounty meant that
BuzzFeed News had money to pay reporters and editors, and it began producing
some very good and very serious reporting, real news having become something of
a luxury good. By 2014, BuzzFeed employed a hundred and fifty journalists,
including many foreign correspondents. It was obsessed with Donald Trump’s
rumored Presidential bid, and followed him on what it called the “fake campaign
trail” as early as January, 2014. “It used to be the New York Times, now it’s
BuzzFeed,” Trump said, wistfully. “The world has changed.” At the time, Steve
Bannon was stumping for Trump on Breitbart. Left or right, a Trump Presidency
was just the sort of story that could rack up the LOLs, OMGs, and WTFs. It
still is.
In March, 2014, the Times produced an Innovation Report, announcing that the
newspaper had fallen behind in “the art and science of getting our journalism
to readers,” a field led by BuzzFeed. That May, Sulzberger fired Abramson, who
had been less than all-in about the Times doing things like running native ads.
Meanwhile, BuzzFeed purged from its Web site more than four thousand of its
early stories. “It’s stuff made at a time when people were really not thinking
of themselves as doing journalism,” Ben Smith explained. Not long afterward,
the Times began running more lists, from book recommendations to fitness tips
to takeaways from Presidential debates.
--
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
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