Lassie Get Help, indeed: L.A. Times forgets how to do journalism
By Gina Spadafori
January 14, 2009
Because it’s “just” pets or “just us silly pet people,” much of the mainstream media — and note that as a syndicated newspaper columnist, I’m in the club — don’t bother to apply the rules of critical thinking when it comes to animals. We cotton-headed animal lovers don’t deserve it, it seems.
“Pet news?” It’s just Paris Hilton’s Chihuahuas, dog “fashions,” kittens trapped in a sewers and PETA’s ever-more-crazy “look at us … here, but not there“ pronouncements (sure sign of an organization sensing sea change and desperately trying to cope, don’t you think?). We saw this lack of interest, this “it’s just pets” approach during the pet food recall, with a couple of notable exceptions — USA Today’s Elizabeth Weise and, interestingly enough, the Pulitzer-prize winner Abigail Goldman of the L.A. Times.
These folks got it. What it meant to the thousands of people whose pets died from tainted ingredients, and what China’s rogue capitalism means to everyone.
The people at the L.A. Times “Unleashed” blog don’ see the picture, small or big. And they don’t even try. Why should they? It’s “just animals,” so let’s pander to the cotton-heads people who love pets are presumed to be.
I’m going to flip this to Luisa at Lassie Get Help. She nails it:
How the mighty have fallen! [Shut up, S. J. Perelman.] The Los Angeles Times used to be a splendid, not merely solvent but proud and prize-winning newspaper with money to burn and a worldwide staff of excellent reporters. Today the paper is a wan tabloid on the edge of bankruptcy. Most of the journalists are gone. Drifting in their wake: a shuffle of press-release collectors, some of whom love love love animals. Their blog at the Times is called L.A. Unleashed, and it’s so horrbly, painfully bad that I could beat my head on rocks.
Unleashed operates like this: Post a press release. Count comments. Repeat. “What do you think — is PETA right on or out of line?” I know fourteen-year-olds who can track down facts and ask sharper questions than these people. Blogging doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility to be honest and knowledgeable about a subject. Blogging means you should be more honest and more knowledgeable.
Is Unleashed the worst blog on earth? It’s quite possibly the worst blog published under the aegis of a major newspaper, or what used to be a major newspaper. I suspect the bloggers are paid per comment and poked with sharp sticks for attempting what reporters in the old days called “research.” They are that fact-averse.
More good stuff, elsewhere: Therese at the PetsitUSA blog tries to unravel the story behind another killer pet food. And it ain’t easy. Therese is a better journalist than all the bloggers at L.A. Unleashed combined.
Alas, some of us have been lamenting the decline of the sports section for years — Jim Murray where are you? as Luisa appropriately laments. The blogs, though, seem to have taken the paper’s downfall to a whole new level. The newspaper seems to think that their blogs do not have to adhere to any standards of journalism. So what, may I ask, are they doing on a newspaper website??? It used to be that journalists were required to have research skills. At least this blog gets it. Thank you Gina, et al for maintaining the standards that the L.A. Times does not.
Comment by Debbie — January 14, 2009 @ 12:27 pm
We’re having the same problems with blogs with the small local papers outside of Philadelphia.
Although the blogs are attached to the newspaper websites, it appears that journalist standards are thrown out the window. My town’s paper is putting very odd videos and “cartoons” under their “blog” heading and one of the leading political bloggers called out a local reporter who seemed to have decent stories in the newspaper, but wrote totally off-the-wall-you’d-think-this-person-knew-better political commentary on the newspaper’s blog.
Comment by Dorene — January 14, 2009 @ 2:23 pm
They think all you have to do to run a blog is disseminate whatever notion comes to mind without a second thought because bloggers and their readers are lightweights.
That’s because they’ve been insulting bloggers for years now - we are all just noodniks, you know, who don’t do any fact-checking or use reliable sources. Any old geek can be a blogger but only the media guys can be the ones who decide what people should know. Don’t laugh, a guest on a recent public affairs show said that.
What a crock. What he probably meant was that publishers, editors and advertisers wouldn’t be telling people what to think if everybody were an unfettered amateur.
They can copy the format but I suspect they have been so corrupted by the decline and fall of a once respectable media that without the drive that makes people run blogs - for free, yet - because they have something important to say, it just doesn’t cut it.
Most of the feature articles aren’t much better, in the humble opinion of this lowly pamphleteer.
Comment by Selma — January 14, 2009 @ 4:57 pm