Things White People Care About

One of most prominent features of hyper-local-something new blog TBD.com is the "Near You" widget, which allows you to filter your news by zipcode. Its default is 20005; I keep mine set to 20001, which is where I live. My boyfriend sets his to 20032, the zipcode for Congress Heights, which is where he teaches, and where all his students live.

Anyhoo so one fun social experiment is to flip back and forth between the news for "20001" and "20032." A few weeks ago, for example, the lead headline for 20001 was "CUPCAKE PLACE GIVING AWAY FREE CUPCAKES." In 20032, the lead headline was about a shooting that had taken place the previous day. I am not making this up. We are living in A Tale of Two Cities.

Ok so everyone knows that life is very different for white people living in 20001 and for black people living in 20032. White people, for example, are voting to reelect Fenty and black people are voting for Grey. White people care about cupcakes and black people care about the shooting that happened yesterday.

But why are we encouraging this? To me, something like a zipcode news filter ends up dividing a city even more than it already is. News outlets should inform people about the wider web of their communities – not just spoon feed them snippets of information about restaurants. While we’re at it, can we PUH-LEASE cool it with the food worship? I know white people are shallow, hedonistic, and childish, but seriously…. let’s grow up just a little bit and put the cupcakes away.

Book burning, Florida style

I almost always take issue with the "breaking newsworthiness" (ok, not a word) of the Washington Post's email news alerts and afternoon updates. To me, breaking news alerts should be reserved for things like Dick Cheney is dead or a tiger escaped from the National Zoo and is on a murderous rampage through Adams Morgan. Once-in-a-blue moon type deals. Yet whenever I get a Washington Post breaking news alert, it's always something wonky like "Housing prices fell slightly less than originally anticipated, the Obama administration announced last week," or "Someone you've never heard of is retiring from ABC News today -- retirement not to go into effect for three years." The sort of news items that literally 4 people care about -- and I guarantee you that those four people read the same news someplace else first.

But that's really a separate issue from my frustration with today's Washington Post Afternoon Update: Petraeus condemns Fla. church's plan to burn Korans.

At the outset, this could seem like a legitimate news item. You have the top US commander in Afghanistan commenting on a hot domestic issue -- Christians' demonstrative hatred of Muslims. But read past the opening lede and you find out, just who are these people who I'm sure we'll hear all about on Meet the Press for the next three weeks? How widespread must this movement be to warrant such urgent condemnation from the TOP US COMMANDER IN AFGHANISTAN?

The Dove World Outreach Center, a 50-member evangelical Christian church in Gainesville, Fla., announced plans to burn the Islamic holy books on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. At the Kabul protest, residents burned an effigy of Dove World pastor Terry Jones.

FIFTY PEOPLE? Why do we give a rat's ass what 50 crazy people are doing this weekend? You can't walk through downtown DC with finding 50 crazy people. What about that crazy lady who's been literally camped out in front of the White House for the past 20 years? I don't see her on the front page of the Washington Post -- and she lives in Barack Obama's front freakin yard!

As a side note I find it laughable that people in Kabul had ever even heard of the Dove World pastor Terry Jones, much less knew what he looked like well enough to make an effigy of him. Although I'm sure his ridiculous facial hair would make it fairly easy.

I'm not calling her a whore, I'm just saying, she has a lot of men to her house

Brainstorming session! Everyone think of a word used to describe a woman - where the word has no male counterpart!

OK there is

Slut
Skank
Whore
and

DOYENNE.

Which brings me to journalism pet peeve #3. Use of the word "doyenne" to describe well-connected women in Washington. (Alternatively -- well-connected men in Washington are just called 'power brokers.')

While the original definition of doyenne (at least online) implies some amount of respect owed --

A woman who is the eldest or senior member of a group or profession.
In journalism, it is invariably used in the context of a condescending profile of a 30-60 year old Washington woman who has a lot of parties at her house. To me, it's a socially acceptable way of calling a woman a whore. Like calling someone "asinine" when you really want to call them an ass.

Thank my lucky stars I haven't read this in the newspaper lately (probably because I haven't been reading the newspaper lately); however I encountered its use in this book I am reading called "The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate" by Fox News correspondent James Rosen. In one passage (page 215) Rosen refers to now-deceased Washington Star columnist Mary McGrory as a "doyenne," calling to mind someone who doesn't have a job, or who thinks of throwing dinner parties as a full-time job. When in fact Mary McGrory was a political columnist who made it onto Nixon's enemies list. So don't go round town calling her no 'doyenne.' Your mothers a doyenne ya SOB!



James Rosen




Mary McGrory




Propose solution: Just as transfats have no place in a healthy diet, the phrase "Washington doyenne" has no place in my vocabulary.

Have you seen this "viral" yotube "video"?

When a print journalist, or, in this case, columnist, writes about a youtube video -- 3 weeks after it's already gone viral.

See:
Kathleen Parker's column in today's post. The video in question is local news footage of a man called Antoine Dodson having a nervous outburst following the attempted rape of his sister. He has a funny voice, funny lookin face, and a 'fro so the whole video sounds weirdly ripped from a Dave Chappelle skit.

Attempted rape = ROFL

Anyway, here's my twitter reinterpretation of Parker's column. "Totally don't have anything to write for 2days column BC been on utube watching THIS HILARIOUS MOFO! OMFG black people are funny!"



INvariably, when a print journalist writes about a youtube video -- first of all, the article runs two weeks to up to several months after everyone has watched and forgotten the video.

The subtext seems to be: "If you're reading this you are either old and senile and need to read about youtube in the newspaper because you don't know what a computer is. OR, you are young and hip and therefore me telling you about this youtube video will demonstrate my awareness of what the kids these days are into!" For example.

This pretense of hipness just reinforces the following perceptions:


1) Journalists are losers so their friends don't send them links to youtube videos until 3 weeks after everyone else has already seen it. Which is why you can only read about a youtube video in the newspaper 3 weeks after you've already seen it online.

2) Since journalists spend their days looking at crap online, there's really no difference between you and a journalist, so who the hell needs them.

3) Buying a newspaper is exactly the same as spending 75 cents to read a second-hand account of something you already saw with your own eyes, for free, 3 weeks ago.



Proposed solution:

> Universal ban on articles about 3-weeks-old youtube videos unless the video has actually caused something newsworthy to happen. (I know, I know 'newsworthy' is itself a vague and lame term ... to be scrutinized another day). AKA Shirley Sherrod firing.

This Little Reporter Had Roast Beef, and this little reporter had none

When a reporter refers to himself as "a reporter" in the context of a story.

I will use as an example this passage from an August 6 article in the New York Times, "Watergate Becomes a Sore Point at Nixon Library," by Adam Nagourney. The article itself is pretty interesting if you care about the politics of presidential libraries (which I DO) -- HOWEVER. It is guilty of my journalism pet peeve #1:
The construction of the omnipotent reporter.


Mr. Naftali spoke in his basement office, where — with no apparent appreciation of the irony — he flinched when a reporter took out a tape recorder for an interview, saying that he would not agree to taping of an interview in his office in the Nixon museum.


What is so wrong with the use of the phrase "a reporter," you may ask? The only alternative is for a writer to do something truly crass like use the first person, and Jesus Christ this isn't a Maureen Dowd column!

Here's what's wrong:

1) Use of the phrase "a reporter" is factually inaccurate because it gives the impression that maybe there were a whole bunch of reporters present during the interview when really it was just one lonely man interviewing another lonely man.
SUBFACT: The very fact that the interview was one on one is significant for the reader to know because everyone knows that people act differently with an audience of 3 vs. an audience of 1.

2) It creates an alternate universe where the reporter is omnipresent and ergo God, which is both false and extraordinarily offensive to non-atheists.



Ladies and gentle readers of the New York Times, BEHOLD.

This is the face of the reporter who attempted, and failed, to tape an interview with the director of the Nixon Library,



WHY ARE YOU HIDING BEHIND THIS FACADE OF ANONYMITY ADAM NAGOURNEY, WHY????


Proposed solution:
Even "this reporter" would be better.