Readings, Rated
Nyah nyah we beat the Tribune
We scooped the Trib. More accurately, the New York Observer scooped the Trib when, on June 23rd, they reported that The Baffler was going to resume a regular publishing schedule. We posted about this development two days later. It took the Tribune a full 34 days to regurgitate the same story. What gives? Maybe the Trib was too busy getting the full scoop on the scandal of the century.
Their late coverage of The Baffler just shows the struggling paper’s lack of concern for books in general. My question is, why bother assigning the article at all?
My triumph at our superior coverage quickly vanished with a visit to the comments page. There were upwards of 43 comments posted about the story. I got very excited, since I assumed that many, many people were as stoked as I was about The Baffler’s return (or that least one of them would reference our post or the story in the Observer). Nope! They’re all about how the stupid liberal media just gave us another Obama-worshipping supermarket rag. One person even called editor “Frank Thomas” as liberal as it gets. Others were belaboring the (inaccurate) idea that The Baffler was nonpartisan — one went so far as to suggest the journal is libertarian (ugh). This prompted me to leave my first comment on the Tribune website. Alas, nobody bothered to respond.
Cruel Chicago Tribune editors and commenters! Why do you forsake us?
I don’t know what it is about newspaper comment sections, but they seem to consistently attract the most misinformed and asinine comments on the entire web. Well, at least outside of Youtube, but at least Youtube commenters have the defense that most of them are teenagers.
I have a soft spot for YouTube comments! But the Tribune is TERRIFYING. They’re so uniformly racist and angry! It’s weird and scary. I wonder what percentage of Chicago residents they represent.
Well, the Youtube comments do have a certain…charm I guess. But yeah, the Tribune comments are consistently disturbing, as are many comments on the Reader’s site as well. I don’t know what it is about newspaper comment sections, but my Californian liberal college hometown’s local paper has the same problem with overwhelmingly racist and angry commenters, so I don’t think it’s a Chicago-specific problem.
That’s reassuring! Maybe it makes the right-wing assholes come out of the woodwork. I mean, it’s not like they’re busy doing anything but stockpiling dry goods and cleaning their shotguns…