Friday, March 06, 2009

Black Coffee

Another lost day for The Garlic ...

We'll leave with, probably, the best post of the day.

Perhaps, you're one of the less-than-handful that hasn't seen, heard, of been told about the Jon Stewart riff on CNBC
(and his follow-up comments on Letterman).

Will Bunch of Attytood was just as impressed, but posited another perspective on it.

What Battered Newsrooms Can Learn From Stewart's CNBC Takedown

The piece wasn't just the laugh-out-loud funniest thing on TV all week (and this was a week in which NBC rebroadcast the SNL "more cowbell" sketch, so that's saying a lot) but it was exquisitely reported, insightful, and it tapped into America's real anger about the financial crisis in a way that mainstream journalism has found so elusive all these months. As one commenter on the Romenesko blog noted earlier today, "it's simply pathetic that one has to watch a comedy show to see things like this."

But that's not all. The Stewart piece also got the kind of eyeballs that most newsrooms would kill for in this digital age -- planted atop many, many major political, media and business Web sites -- and the kind of water-cooler chatter that journalists would crave in any age. In a time when newspapers are flat-out dying if not dealing with bankruptcy or massive job losses, while other types of news orgs aren't faring much better, the journalistic success of a comedy show rant shouldn't be viewed as a stick in the eye -- but a teachable moment. Why be a curmudgeon about kids today getting all their news from a comedy show, when it's not really that hard to join Stewart in his own idol-smashing game.

Bunch goes on to offer some suggestions, and it's a good piece, so jump on over to check it out.

Meanwhile, here's a late Friday night song, that can sum up a lot of things ...

Will be back over the weekend ...

Black Coffee - Sarah Vaughan



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