Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Barry / Media Today's Jesussean
Posted by Bruce Barry on Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 11:25 AM
Meanwhile, on the front of the local section, we find reporter Bob Smietana on the apocalypse beat with a hard hitting story on end-of-world signs of Jesus' return as explained by some guy from Washington state guest-preaching up in Madison for a couple of weeks.
Comments (14)
Showing 1-14 of 14
Bruce,
Good points on the Tennessean today. Maybe you can answer this media riddle for us with some facts.
Staffer Ashley Spurgeon on this very blog wrote a post yesterday at 9:55 am lecturing Pith readers about their language and online civility - sort of a laughable topic on this blog, don't you think? The Scene and Pithers are sort of KNOWN for celebrating inappropriate behavior. You know, and ALTERNATIVE news weekly approach.
Here is the cached link to the post, which no longer appears in chronological order on Pith.
http://blogs.nashvillescene.com/pitw/2009/09/piths_guide_to_commenting.php
Am I missing something here? I am a loyal Pith reader - always have been - and was looking to follow the comment thread only to find I had to Google it to find the post.
Was this rather anti-Pith post taken down?
like
dislike
I cannot answer the media riddle. As a technical matter it is curious that the post to which you refer doesn't appear in the post stream, yet can be accessed directly via link. But as a contributing writer I am not "on the inside," so to speak, so I am unaware of the status of that post. Perhaps Ashley or her editor will chime in.
I'd like to hear more about the internal memo concerning Christianity on the front page of each section. Every section, even sports and business?
When was this memo issued? How did you find out about it? What specifically did it say? Is it supposed to be daily or weekly or what? Who wrote it, someone local or did it come down from Gannett? Is Ms. Cheap required to conform to it?
As for the missing blog post, I'm also curious about its deletion. I blame SouthComm (with no evidence).
testing testing...it's been many minutes since I posted a comment and it still hasn't appeared (I blame SouthComm) and so I'm going to see if this one disappears into cyberspace (does anyone use that word anymore?) as well. Looks like my previous comment may have gone to wherever Ashley's post went. It's a conspiracy, I tell you.
I'm not sure what happened to the post, and only noticed it was gone when my editor asked me what I did with it. I can only assume I broke the internet.
As for this post, I just wanted to chime in that I looooove end-times talk. I'm by no means a Biblical scholar, but I'm pretty sure they're 0 - a million on that one. Sure, you only need to get it right one time, but it's not like you're going to be around to enjoy it.
There was a computer glitch. The post lives!
http://blogs.nashvillescene.com/pitw/2009/09/piths_guide_to_commenting.php
As you were.
No explanation/response from the editor of the paper when content criticizing readers suddenly disappears?
Very un-Garrigan. Hell, even very un-Kotz.
We thought perhaps Southcomm had taken the balls from this newspaper's staff and put them on a shelf the same way it has with the City Paper - shit, they don't even have an editorial page anymore.
Technical glitch, huh? We'll anxiously await the next editorial directive from the men's grill at BMCC.
Citizen Kane, it was absolutely a glitch. And at the hands of VVM, no less, who are still temporarily supplying the server for our blog. The post is back up.
Oh, bb was being facetious. Well, of course. I mean, I knew that. I was just joking. Yeah, that's it, I was just joking. Hah hah. Gosh, that was funny...
Complaining that a religion reporter won't stop writing about Jesus is a bit like whining that a sport writer won't shut up about the Titans.
This here's the buckle of the Bible Belt. You *don't* want the newspaper keeping tabs on the Jesus freaks?
You think if the media ignore them, they'll go away? Good luck with that, Pithants. (I'm testing out new catch phrases, since you've resurrected your list o' banned sayings. You like? I also toyed with Pithbuckets or the more continental flair of "Pithoirs.")
I wuz on the inside on this one...
We did our best at The Tennessean to run a "level playing field" concering faith-based articles. Anita Wadhwani and Ray Waddle did their best to follow that rule. The big problem was that the majority of the religious advertising comes from Protestant Christian churches in the area and, just as other advertisers occasionally do, demanded more bang for the buck on occasion with an extra few seconds of the spotlight on their church on the first and second front pages.
Couple that with the fact that the majority of subscribers come from Williamson County who want to see more of their lifestyle reflected in the morning read (spit and you will hit a Protestant church anywhere around there)...well, I guess we were just lucky to get away with as much non-Christian stuff as we did.
I do believe their marketing department is calling the shots now, eh?
