October 31, 2005
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
By and large, the St. Louis Post Dispatch is a terrible newspaper. It puts the crap in crappy. It survives because it is the only real newspaper in St. Louis. Yes, I subscribe (including weekends) for the following simple reasons in order of importance (1) my wife saves more money with the coupons than we spend on the subscription, (2) my daughter likes the everyday section, (3) my son likes the sports section, (4) I like the idea of getting a newspaper more than the actual one I get. But that doesn't mean it's a uniform consistancy of bad. Frequently somebody slips in something good, and sometimes it comes from the most unexpected sources.
For instance, the editorials are typically poor. Even good progressives like Archpundit think so. But they had a really good one today, in fact I was thinking about writing the same way on the very subject they did (only I'm not a paid staff and last week and this weekend was very, very busy). So instead I'll let them do the talking about oil company profits:
Mr. Durbin is one of several members of Congress proposing excess profits taxes on oil companies. The idea is excellent populist politics and lousy economics. It's a bad idea that would ultimately leave us with higher gasoline prices and tie us even more tightly to the unstable oil states of the Middle East.It is true that oil companies are celebrating a profit gusher. Last week, ExxonMobil reported quarterly profits up 75 percent to $9.9 billion. Shell's take is up 68 percent to $9.04 billion.
Figures like that stick in the craw of all of us with sticker shock at the pump: $50 for a tank of gas! But those sky-high profits now will help ensure a steady supply of oil in the future.
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But in the short term, the key to price relief is to dig more oil wells and expand refineries. Oil companies will do those things if they are highly profitable.After all, oil drilling is a risky business, and refineries cost billions. Today's profit levels provide a great incentive to drill and build. But companies must also take gamble on what oil prices may be when new wells and refineries come on line. Long experience with the ups and downs of oil prices have taught oil executives to bet cautiously. That, along with the Gordian knot of regulatory red tape, helps explain why no new refinery has been built in America since the 1970s.
I wonder if the editorial staff talked with Dave Nicklaus, because it has all the earmarks of his thoughtfulness.
But let's turn our attention to the bad, as pointed out by Brian Noggle. Betty Cuniberti is retiring from the paper and I won't miss her pointless ramblings. She says farewell in her typically clueless style:
Even in the era of the Blogosphere (no thought too vacuous to share), this is good work if you can get it. What knucklehead would walk away from a newspaper column?
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To cut operating costs, the paper offered an early-retirement buyout to folks over age 50 with five or more years on the job. It appears that some 40 newsmen and newswomen, whose combined service totals a staggering 700-plus years, are walking out the door. Just like that.With them goes an era when a guy (and sometimes even a girl) got a job in the hometown and stayed 30 years, 40 years or more.
We'll see few of their kind again.
Newspapers aren't the money-printing machines they used to be. The Post-Dispatch is just one of many papers forced to dance with the enemy, the dark force that seeks to take the paper out of newspaper: the Internet.
Newspapers are joining doctors, lawyers and makers of psychotropic drugs, marketing ourselves with imagination we never knew we had. Or needed. We'll do anything short of coming to your house in a French maid costume, making breakfast and reading the darn thing to you.
Be assured, many of our best and most seasoned people remain. They will continue to do great work at all hours of the day and night and bring you news from every nook of the bi-state region and the planet. They'll be joined, I'm sure, by fresh, young talent. That is always a plus.
Just for the record, since some morons at the Post fired Elaine Viets, I have zero desire for any current employee to show up at my door in a french maid outfit, even if you do make me breakfast.
For a women who has done nothing but share vacuous thoughts, and whose vacuity I have spared both my readers from in the excerpt, that is quite the pot calling moment. Of course, it doesn't stop there (it never does), because she bemoans the internet, a device that has proven of inestimable value in providing the American people with a much better variety of news and news sources, and frankly a quantum leap in quality in news analysis, and yes, plain old columnists. What's left unsaid in her column though is the role of the erosion in trust of not just the Post, but all newspapers. Readership is declining for a very simple reason - the Post, like most other newspapers, has declined -- in accuracy, in fairness, in balance, in just about every way -- and the internet allows people access to information that shows just how badly it has declined.
And speaking of the internet, the Post has a lousy internet presence. The decided several years back to separate their internet portal, STLtoday.com, from the newspaper, and killed the old St. Louis Post Dispatch site. And STLtoday.com is pretty ugly. Just get aloud of their blogs. Ugh. If that's the future of blogging, count me out. I'll rename this site "Funmurphys: The Vacuous Thoughts" and keep on posting.
