State of the States

New Jersey and North Carolina have gone totally ga-ga.

In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie attempted to get passed in the legislature a bill that would have ended the print newspapers' monopoly on legal notices, their last reliable source of revenue, in an act of revenge against all of the nasty things new Jersey newspapers have said about him.  Through controlled by the Democrats, the legislature was ready to go along with the governor, thanks to some deals he made with the Democratic leadership (the details and contents of which were never revealed.  The Democratic rank and file in both the Assembly and the Senate rebelled, though, and the bill was tabled. Defeated outright was a bill that would have allowed Christie to profit from a book deal while still in office.

Did I happen to mention that has-been comedian Joe Piscopo may run for governor of New Jersey next year?    

Meanwhile, in North Carolina, the Republican legislature stripped incoming Democratic governor Roy Cooper of his powers, such as reducing the number of appointments he can make by two-thirds, moving some authority to the incoming Republican state schools superintendent, stopping him from appointing trustees to the state university system.  The legislature pretty much made Cooper even weaker than North Carolina governors, including outgoing Republican governor Pat McCrory, already are. Cooper may sue.

And if that weren't enough, the legislature has been attempting to repeal the law forcing transgender people to use the public bathrooms of their birth sex rather than the won hey identify with, provided the city of Charlotte repeal its ordinance affirming the right of transgender people to use public bathrooms of the sex they identify with.  Charlotte stuck to its part of the deal, and so the legislators would have to stick to theirs especially if they wanted to end the economic boycotts against the state.

The statewide repeal failed.

The year is stumbling to an embarrassing close politically in the United States, but the politics will carry on into 2017. 

Below The Fold

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, having published in Washington State's largest city, folded its print edition last week after 146 years in business. The newspaper is now only available online, which must be cold comfort to staffers at the P-I (was Seattlites call it) who were downsized as a result.

With more people inexplicably choosing to read their news off the Internet, and having to boot up and then scroll down to read an article while in an uncomfortable position to do so, those of us who appreciate a newspaper you can hold in your hand and read leisurely and at a relaxed pace are feeling very lonely. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is now online only, the Rocky Mountain News folded completely, and the San Francisco Chronicle could follow, leaving San Francisco without a major daily paper (the Examiner long since gone). The Philadelphia Inquirer and even the New York Times are also endangered.

I always thought there'd still be a market for newspapers, wonderful sources of investigative reporting and assets to local communities that the Internet would only supplement, not replace. But more and more people are getting their news from online news videos from CNN or MSNBC, as well as blogs that opine more than report. The news they get is selective, biased, and poorly researched at best. This kind of news dissemination, encompassing the most amateurish forms of journalism, is not what the Internet was meant for.

Everyone knows that the Internet was meant to be a repository for pictures of hot women. :-D

I have never presented this blog as a legitimate news source. :-D

Rocky Mountain Low

The Rocky Mountain News, a Denver-based daily founded in 1859 - predating Colorado's admission to the Union in 1876 and even predating its creation as a territory in 1861 - folded yesterday. This has been the biggest blow to journalism since Tuesday!

Seriously, why on earth is this happening? Can we really get all the news we need, as opposed to the news we can use, from cable news channels that offer more opinion shows than solid reporting (honorable exception: Christiane Amanpour)? How many bloggers do actual reporting? I don't - I am here strictly to mouth off on anything that strikes my fancy, and I make no bones about it, so if you came here looking for solid journalism, you came to the wrong place.

The best thing about a newspaper is that, unlike with a news Web site, you don't have to go through the trouble of booting up, getting online, trudging your way through your favorites list to find a site, and then having to scroll a lot to read the damn thing. You buy it for fifty cents, open it up and read it. Plus you have a crossword puzzle to challenge your brain. Nevertheless, the Philadelphia Inquirer is on thin ice, the New York Times is in trouble, New Jersey's Star-Ledger is getting thinner, and San Francisco could be without its own daily newspaper. What's going to happen without real, honest reporting? Who's going to report on corruption? Corporate greed? Joe Biden's gaffes? Michelle Bachmann's violent mood swings?

One good has come out of this decline in print journalism: gossip columnist Liz Smith, who actually thought that reporting on and cheerleading for obnoxious celebrities was more relevant than stories like the Arab-Israeli peace process, lost her job at the New York Post. Unfortunately, the Post, like the cockroach, is here to stay.