skippy the bush kangaroo: smokin' potter

Sunday, July 22, 2007

smokin' potter

americablog sends us to this post by michael glitz, reporting that the nyt won't track sales of the last potter book on its best seller list because the sales would dwarf all other entries. they say it's because the series is children's fiction but they had to make up that rule after the first three books dominated the best seller lists.

we think the issue is of a piece with marc ambinder's inadvertent collision with truth (his posts [here and here] insist that the edwards haircut story is news because journalists say it is and by the way, journalists don't like edwards) and the recent wapo editorial chastizing harry reid because the republicans filibustered the vote to end the war.

journalism is no longer a profession with standards. instead, journalism is a status based activity. the news is what journalists tell us it is. there is no point objecting to the stories about edward's haircut as not newsworthy - they are, because journalists tell us they are. there is no point in suggesting that it is logically absurd to blame the democrats because the republicans would prefer to protect their party than the troops. the editorial pages have decided that the war is harry reid's fault. ergo, the war is harry reid's fault. there is no point in suggesting to the new york times that a best seller list that excludes the best selling books in publishing history is useless. the nyt times, gentle reader, decides what a best seller is, not an objective index of popularity like, book sales or something.

if journalism were a profession, with standards, readers could assess the articles and editorials journalists produce according to those standards - and praise or criticize them accordingly. but why should journalists care about the opinion of readers? the journalist is not a professional. instead, journalism is an activity engaged in by those who have achieved the status of journalists. those with such status are privileged to tell us what the news is. by definition, readers' objections are meaningless, because readers don't have the status of journalists. reality is what journalists tell us it is.

anybody who says otherwise is a dfh, who, by the way, doesn't have any professional standards.

posted by Pudentilla at 5:23 AM |

2 Comments:

And don't forget Chris Matthews trying to justify having Ann Coulter on his show for an entire hour because as he said, "Hey, she sells books". (In this case it was a paperback release of a year old bargain bin screed.) It had nothing to do with the fact that she's no expert on anything, or had anything enlightening to say, just that "she sells books".

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