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Newark 'Star Ledger' Reduces Salaries, Makes Staffers Pay Partly for Health Coverage
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Magic Bullet? Experts Examine Work of Legendary Photojournalist Robert Capa
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Journalism Associations Forced to Re-examine Role as Membership Declines
Florida Stupidity.com
Staff Auture
Hang on to your sanity, ladies and gentlemen. It’s time for news from the future in your hometown.
April 1 2024. 6:30 a.m.
People all across the country, are up preparing to begin their days.
Televisions and radios are turned on to catch up on the events from America and around the world that occurred overnight.
The U.S.A. Freedom News network is simulcast on television and radio.
It is the only news show on.
The three original television networks, CBS, NBC and ABC, eliminated their news divisions in 2018. This left only CNN. MSNBC and Fox on the national scene with the Bloomberg network handling the business news. NBC had given up on its CNBC network back in 2011.
CNN, MSNBC and Fox were bought in 2019 by Rupert Murdock’s News Corporation and merged into what became today’s U.S.A. Freedom News network. On for 2 hours in the morning, from 6 to 8 a.m., it is followed by an hour of “local” news, which breaks down into a 30 minutes of nationally packaged features such as “Cooking with Carole,” “How to be an effective shopper” and “The newest products in your stores.”
The second 30-minute segment includes “News from Your City,” in which each town’s or city’s public information officer or representative tells you the news that happened in your city; the school report, brought to you by a representative from your local school district; your town sports, anchored by your high school’s athletic director; and the local weather, with the head of your town’s chamber of commerce.
Sip some coffee as you watch U.S.A. Freedom News anchors Ted Knight III and Janee Janelle entertain and inform you.
But don’t worry — they’ll never tell you anything bad.
Keep those value-added stories coming. Value-added stories. You know like the one about how scientific studies have confirmed that having carpeting in your home actually makes your children smarter, followed immediately by a commercial for RTK Carpeting’s giant, once-in-a-lifetime, you-can’t-beat-our prices sale.
Since you already have carpeting and your child is smart, you decide to go to your front door to get your free, daily community newspaper.
It’s a wonderful paper, a real community paper. All the stories columns and photos are done by real people, your unpaid neighbors. All wonderful stories and cute pictures.
None of those grumpy, lying journalists telling those "bad and sad" stories.
Well, time to move on.
You hop into your $90,000 hybrid Chinese auto and turn on your "content-free" satellite radio and off to work you go.
Don’t worry.
It’s just April Fools’.
We hope.
Well, this is JT Seravat reporting. I’ll see you next issue with more news. Until then, remember, the words of Editor W.T. Stead in 1886, "A man without a newspaper is half-clad, and imperfectly furnished for the battle of life. From being persecuted and then contemptuously tolerated, it has become the rival of organized governments."
(Editors Note: The first version of this column was published April 1, 2007.)
MEDIA
NEWS
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In Google's News World, Articles Are King, Publications Are Paupers
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MUST SEE
"WE CALL THIS CRAP THE NEWS"
VIEW IT LARGE
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Ex-Rocky Journalists, Investors Split Over
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- A Headline Writer Gets Carried Away
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- Lee Enterprises Faces Debt Crisis -- In Overall Peril?
- More Newspapers Sharing Content -- Cutting Competition
- Best editorial cartoons of 2008
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- Time Spent at Most Top Newspaper Sites Declined Last Month
- Newspaper Shuns Web, and Thrives
- NYT Co. Ads Off 20.9% -- Even Online Down
- The top ten media blunders of 2008
- Books for a Hard Season, Revisited
- Editor & Publisher Annual Top 10 Newspaper Industry Stories of the Year
- Of course we'll have newspapers. But will there be any news in them?
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FLORIDA STUPIDITY.C0M
FLORIDA - IT'S NOT THE HEAT, IT'S THE STUPIDITY
READ A NEWSPAPER TODAY
SO THIS IS NEWS?
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Reporter trying to be cute
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IT'S ALL ABOUT THEM - NOT NEWS
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VIEWERS REACT
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HE DID IT LIVE
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Bill Maher's "New Rules"
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FOX Megyn Kelly
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What are you looking at?
© 2008 Seravat Writers Group LLC