Terrible Writing That Needs to Be Discussed

These Gentlemen have worked our way into an excellent groove of late, bringing you wordy goodness five times a week. But there is a reason that I want to post today. Well two reasons. Two of the worst columns I've ever read (worse than the George Will one about never wearing jeans, or the George Will one about how global warming is bunk, or the George Will ... well you get the idea.)

Courtland Milloy is very liberal. Super liberal. And that's great, and he can be an insightful metro columnist. But he's on a two column streak of writing the kind of stuff that an editor, ANY EDITOR, should have politely advised against. First he tore into Mayor Fenty in a way that would make Michelle Malkin blush. But today's was worse. He wrote a column which had the following crux: "People who supported Fenty and post on Wash Post columns are terrible people, far more terrible than supports of Gray who also write vile things, but those are okay and not as bad because I have interpreted what is in their souls and I know their ethnicity." It could have been just a "Get Of My Lawn" column, but it really just betrays Milloy's complete lack of understanding of the internet and ignorance with regards to the comments on Washington Post columns. Is this the first time he's ever looked at Wash Post comment sections? Nothing is moderated, every column is followed by dozens or hundreds of vile uninformed commentary that generally include the words "sheeple," "DIMocRATS" and "Hitler."

Kathleen Parker is pretty conservative and has won a Pulitzer. Her column today would be an embarrassment if published in a college paper. She talks of how moved she was by an ad that lays basically the entire economic downfall on Obama. It's called "Mourning In America." Get it, because Obama is not Ronald Reagan? I could go into the many many fallacies in the article, but let's just go straight to the next to last paragraph:

"Nevertheless, it is probably fair to say that Obama's ideas were too big for America's appetite. It would have been nice had he made a few incremental repairs to the economy and left the transformative events for a less stressful time."

Wait, what? We're in the worst economic situation and you wish he had tweaked things a bit and stepped aside? For zombie Reagan to save us all? I think I can safely say this is the worst paragraph I have read in a newspaper all year.

Columnists Assemble!

Maybe it was Comic Book Day warping my mind a bit, but I was thinking today that the New York Times columnists feel a bit like a super hero team. You've got the three crusading members Nickolas Kristof, Bob Herbert, and Paul Krugman shoot off to the corners of the world (To Darfur! To the South! To Wall Street!) to decry corruption. Then you've got Maureen Dowd like Spiderman after one too many martinis getting in more quips than actual punches on the villian of the week.

Frank Rich is like Professor X, coming down once a week to dispense his aged wisdom, but he's also just a liiiiitle bit creepy. Tom Friedman seems to split the difference between the caped columnist and the womanly wordsmith and comes off a bit like Beast, a wise-cracking dork always coming up with something new that occasionally blows up in his face (The World is Flat? As if!). David Brooks is like that zany conservative neighor coming by for nachos, or I guess Mr. Mxyzptlk except that he doesn't really screw anything up. Then there are bread and butter folks like Gail Collins and Roger Cohen, because someone has got to be Iceman and Storm, right?

The Sun is Setting

Yesterday, my favorite city in the whole world, my hometown, my Baltimore, took a huge blow. The Baltimore Sun, its largest circulating daily newspaper, laid off 61 employees. That's 27% of its staff. A publication that 5 years ago had over 400 employees is now down to 150. There's a good chance that it will end up folding.

Every day when I was younger, I came home to The Sun on our kitchen table. I always pulled out the Today section and read the comics and Ann Landers while having an afternoon snack. My opinions about my city were influenced by three people - my mom, my dad, and Kevin Cowherd. I was never the most well-informed kid in the world (my mom was one of those "you can't watch the news; it's too violent" types), but what I did know, I learned from The Baltimore Sun.

Granted, it's not a very good newspaper. It reports an extremely skewed, biased, and incomplete version of the news, but isn't that par for the course in today's media? With the increasing use of the Internet for news updates, though, subscription cancellations are at an all time high, and with the recession, advertising dollars are few and far between. It's not just the economic downturn at work here though - it's gross incompetence.

The Sun is owned by the Tribune Company, a Chicago-based multimedia corporation, who acquired the newspaper in 2000. In 2007 Chicago billionaire Sam Zell bought out the Tribune Co., resulting in its privatization on December 20th. Zell is, by all accounts from my boss, who used to live in Chicago, a land and money grubbing shyster who thought it'd be a hoot to own a newspaper. Since he took over, the Tribune Co. has incurred 13 billion dollars in debt, and after just one year the company filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. And so Baltimore suffers.

The layoffs were unannounced and came without warning. The fired staff members were escorted from the building by security. Three reporters and a photographer who were working the Orioles game received phone calls telling them to leave Camden Yards, as they no longer had jobs. There was nothing classy about this situation or the way it was handled.

These people need jobs, and Baltimore needs a newspaper. Here's hoping we're in for a turnaround.

 But just in case - thanks for all your columns, Kevin.