Spitzer, Kristen, and the media
Yes, I know...my own paper is guilty of it, too. She's splayed all over our homepage. That doesn't prevent me from commenting on my industry, though.
We have arrived at that nexus between what people want and what they need, a sore topic with those of us who still think of our profession as a calling.
We could dwell upon the complexities and nuance of a self-made Boy Scout like Eliot Spitzer falling in such a spectacular way. We could parse his psyche, his self-destructive bent, his narcissism. We could talk about how he put himself at risk of blackmail, how he instituted some of the very mechanisms that ensnared him.
But in the end, we really want to know about the SEX.
And if my paper didn't have any of it, we would get complaints. Or readers would turn somewhere else to get their news, somewhere that struck more of a balance between the spoonful of medicine and the sugar that helps it go down.
No readers, no advertisers. No advertisers, no space to run those stories about Charter Review Commissions and uprisings in Karachi that everybody should know about even if they don't want to.
This argument has no clear-cut answers. If you want to weigh in, feel free.
CHAN LOWE has been the Sun Sentinel’s first and only editorial cartoonist for the past twenty-six years. Before that, he worked as cartoonist and writer for the Oklahoma City Times and the Shawnee (OK) News-Star.
Comments
Excellent! I love this. Pretty soon we get to hear about Kristen 's a/k/a Ms. Dupre If Your Nasty,favorite foods, Starbucks drinks and preganat baby sister..." I love how we focus on the real important issues! Great cartoon:)
Posted by: Patricia | March 19, 2008 4:21 PM