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anti-press ezine 1998 10 14
ANTI-PRESS EZINE #02
An October E-dition (for those concerned with the temporality of meat-space.)
Antipress1@aol.com
You can find Anti-Press at the better newsgroups: alt.etext, alt. ezines,
alt.journalism, alt.journalism.criticism, and alt.journalism.newspapers .
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All material Copyright (C) 1998 Anti-Press. This text may be reproduced
without charge but with full copyright credit and notice. If you don't
respect our intellectual property, we'll use our Mob connections and
you'll wake up one morning with a horse's head in bed with you-- or
better yet, a horse's ass (Senator Al D'Amato).
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WHAT THE FUG IS ANTI-PRESS?
Our motto: "We're positive about the negative." A penetrating look at
small city "life" and "news" and anything else we want to attack.
WHAT THE FUG IS PLATTSBURGH'S PRESS-REPUBLICAN?
A local (news)paper.
AND WHAT THE FUG IS PLATTSBURGH?
Cold. Stupid. Inbreeding with farm animals due to seven months of
winter.
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Legal notice: Anti-Press is a satirical ezine that may or may not be
about the fictional or non-fictional micropolitan Plattsburgh, NY and
its possibly fictional or non-fictional aspects. So there.
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The first issue of Anti-Press ezine provoked a few reactions and so
we're back. We're got all kinds of stuff lying around to comment on,
mainly from the Local (news)Paper. But we're not limited to dissin'
Plattsburgh and it's (news)Paper. The "Anti" in our title means we'll
be discussing a diverse range of topics that strike a negative chord in
our heart (actually, in a lower region). So think of us as a "Press"
that's not afraid to be "Anti".
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PLATTSBURGH'S PRESS-REPUBLICAN:
ALL THE NEWS FIT TO MISPRINT
_Note: As explained the last ezine edition, this rant-rag originally
appeared locally as a two-sided truth-sheet. So the article was created
some time ago but its point is timeless._
Here are actual article excerpts showing the "professionalism" of the
Local (news)Paper. They are taken from the story "Sex-Crime-punishment
term too short" (11/14/97). These excerpts are formatted to resemble
the original column lay out.
P-R Excerpt: "(The attacker) constantly teass
the family that he's gotten
awy with it. He told us, "This
happened because we deserved it."
A-P's Comment: Teass? Awy? Yes, the P-R's new computer system can
replace human proofreaders to some extent-- IF they use the
spellchecker!
P-R: Before it was changed, the law
allowed up to five years from the time
of the crime for victims to
pursue a felony sex-related char-
e and two years if they pursued
a misdemeanor charge.
A-P: Here's a classic P-R stylistic maneuver: hyphenating a one
syllable word. But not only do they try to hyphenate "charge", they
forget the "g" and misspell it!
P-R: LaFountain is spearheading a
statewide petition and letter-
writng campaign to try to eradi-
cate the statutes.
A-P: It's good that bonehead mistakes don't undermine the serious
nature of this article. At the P-R the medium is the MESSage. Look at
their "writng".
P-R: LaFountain said she'll still
fight for the change, even if she
isn't able to press charges again-
t her attacker.
A-P: Another word incorrectly hyphenated AND misspelled! We're
"againt" such errors.
P-R: "Children are still being abus-
d, and the government still has
to do something.
A-P: The P-R "abusd" the English language with that last typo.
It's reassuring that the P-R is doing its best to alleviate the
illiteracy problem in our area. Is its continued abuse of the English
language part of its "Newspapers In Education" program?
Also, take another look at the headline: "Sex-crime-punishment term too
short". Does that show OBJECTIVITY? This is supposed to be straight
news, not an editorial. The headline is telling us what we should
conclude while reading the article. There has to be more than one side
to this issue. A better headline would be: "Petition questions
sex-crime law".
Yes, we at A-P make mistakes but we're mainly a staff of one working
for free. We don't charge the public for our mistakes. Why buy the P-R
and financially support their hack editing?
In fact, since we will run this through a spellchecker, we will have to
make an effort to not change the P-R's bonehead typos. It's bad when
you have to proofread a manuscript to keep the mistakes in to make a
point.
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IS THERE A DINGLE-BARRY ON YOUR LOCAL PAPER?
Dave Barry has trouble being Dave Barry. Banging out column after
column, it's hard to be in top form week after week. Most of the time
we find Barry's column to be OK or simply lame. Then he'll surprise us
with a real entertaining column like the recent one on the Beanie Babies
craze.
But the thing we really don't like about Dave Barry is the same thing we
don't like about Stephen King or Enya or Hitler or Stalin-- once you
establish a name for yourself, look out for a sorry slew of annoying
imitators. And when you're a nationally syndicated columnist, some hack
at the local paper thinks he can be just as funny. For every "Barry"
there has to be at least a googolplex of "dingles" out there trying to
reflect his style.
And when a dingle fails, it's a horrible thing to witness. Take the
Local (news)Paper and it's Dave-Barry-Wannabe. What really makes this
dingle's column a combination train-wreck-and-airplane-crash is that
he's an editor. Beware of anyone who edits his own work. (Except
Anti-Press, of course.) Lately this wannabe has discussed how he
produces his column at the last minute, indicating the wealth of
material he has to share with the readers. To use the appropriate
cliche: A writer should have something to SAY. (That's why A-P is on an
irregular schedule; we only put out an e-dition when we have something
worthwhile to hurl into the Net.)
Then again, a comedian might not have something to say but he can be
FUNNY. This requires a certain quality. That quality is called TALENT.
If you want to drive us up a (padded) wall, then indulge in pseudo-self-
deprecating humor. You know the routine: _Hi, I'm Dingle the columnist
and I think I'm Great but I pretend I'm a jerk and say bad things about
myself and my column so you can laugh WITH me, not AT me, you know, lame
lines like how this latest column is going to end up as a birdcage liner
and how the publisher thinks I'm an idiot and how my wife thinks I'm an
idiot and how my creditors think I'm an idiot, and--_
OK, we have tortured you enough by paraphrasing puerile pabulum. When
the wannabe isn't going on about what kind of "idiot" he supposedly is,
he either tries to extract humor from a national story, the latest hot
topic. This assumes that the dingle actually follows the news but how
can he? He's preoccupied with editing the hell out of someone else's
work and then dashing off at the last minute his latest humor
"disasterpiece" (to use one of those pseudo-self-deprecating puns that
dingles throw in a column as evidence of their real genius over their
supposed idiocy).
Usually a dingle stays clear of national events that required a modicum
of knowledge and understanding. Instead he'll write about what he knows
best: cats. A friend's cat or another editor's cat or the mailman's
cat. When all else fails, he'll write about his wife's cat. This is
known in journalistic circles as "pussy writing". (If the columnist
goes on about flowers, then it's "pansy writing".)
But we must say that sometimes a dingle-Barry expresses Great Truth, if
only by accident. Take this recent topic: "Writing Humor No Laughing
Matter." Yes, his column proved that point-- especially to our parakeet.
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BUT WHOSE INTEREST?
A newspaper can't serve everyone's needs but neither should it serve the
needs of a select few. Plattsburgh's Press-Republican prides itself as
being "The Hometown Newspaper", implying that unlike a big city pub it
cares about the little people.
In the past the P-R would help promote a variety of local social and art
groups through a column on page 3 called "Of Interest". Various
organizations would submit short notices of upcoming meetings and
events.
Then some idiot in editorial decided that small, struggling groups
didn't need the exposure and so their listings have been dumped into a
weekly events calendar that no one remembers to read. What remains are
notices such as "Podunk Town Board To Meet For Discussion of Yellow
Stripe on Route 9". By perusing that item we are compelled to attend.
We need to observe the forces of fate at play during the discourse on
whether a desolate stretch of road should have a segmented single stripe
or continuous double lines down its middle. (Then again, considering
the new shows for the fall TV season, the yellow line debate would be
more entertaining than staying home and watching _Costello_ or
_Vengeance Unlimited_.)
In the meantime certain arts and social groups suffer from a lack of
exposure. Attendance drops because they're no longer mentioned on page
3, they're no longer "interesting", unlike a debate on the choice of
"passing" or "non- passing" roadstripes. In some cases readers-at-large
think that these groups have folded because they no longer see them
mentioned in the usual spot in the paper.
So who can afford the loss of free promotion? A little arts group with
ten dollars in its treasury or the Podunk Town Board with tons of
taxpayer money to play with?
But it would be unfair to say that "Of Interest" only prints notices
about prosaic governmental meetings. Truly interesting news items do
appear on occasion. For example, let's look at the 5/2/98 paper and see
what is "Of Interest". There is only one article: a local college
student arrested over his method of protest. Upset with the lack of
activism at Plattsburgh's College, a student "brought a paper plate with
his own excrement" to the College Center with "student apathy"
emblazoned on the plate.
Yup, we're just happy to read such a scatological story first thing in
the morning while sitting at the kitchen table. It's "Of Interest" to
us if we're munching on a chocolate breakfast bar. Amazing how the P-R
can ruin more than your appetite for news.
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TEST YOUR LUCK
We have an ad in front of us that piques our attention, something we
clipped out during the summer. An amusement park was featuring a
singles night. "Get a number at the gate, then match that number with
your date at the Ferris Wheel of Love." We envision what kind of
matches were made that night and what was shared besides telephone
numbers.
Well, we can top that ad. VD is available on the Net. Go to
http://www.disobey.com and check out the section called Low Bandwidth.
Or request your VD by emailing v_d@iname.com . Remember to mention
Anti-Press. With pleonastic affectation our astute acumen has discerned
the following paradigm: "Everyone should have VD-- even the Pope."
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_GHOST WRITERS_
We needed a name for our "Letters Department" and the above seems to
fit. Since Anti-Press is no longer committed to paper, we consider our
existence on the Net as ghostlike. There's meat-space and ether-space.
So until we meet in meat-space, you're a specter to us.
Anyway, we appreciate the email we received from "T", a journalism
student across the border in Canada. T offered some valid suggestions
and did mention that we should shy away from the "anti-Montreal tinge".
Hey, Anti-Press has a little bit of French-Canadian in us. In fact, we
dated a woman from Quebec who was half English, half French-Canadian.
The top half was English, the bottom French. (Unfortunately her bottom
half controlled her top half too often.) We broke up with her due to
religious reasons. She thought she was God and in her case we were
atheistic.
Until next time, accent the negative...
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