All the news that's hip, we print

Jeff Danziger covers the coverage.

I am so glad to be out of the newsroom.

I used to come into the briefing every day with at least two stories already working, just to avoid being assigned something stupid. When that didn't work, I'd try to talk the editor into an angle for the assignment that wasn't, well, stupid.

Editors hated me. And, when I became an editor, I have to admit that my back went up when a reporter questioned my brilliant story ideas. In fact, I gained a tremendous amount of sympathy for my editors, when I became one.

Except for the part about trying to be hip when we were not People Magazine or Newsweek, and did not have their fad-chasing resources.

And the part about covering what everyone else is covering instead of wondering if it even applied to our readers, much less mattered to them.

I remain convinced that, if Newsweek had a story that said teenagers were shaving their heads and painting them green, a local editor would assign some poor reporter to go downtown, find a teenager with a green head, and get a story. And a picture.

And, meanwhile, some trend-obsessed goofball teen would see this story in Newsweek, shave his head, paint it green and go hang out downtown so that everyone could see how hip he was.

A match made in heaven. 

During my newsroom years, I was dating a wise woman who kept urging me to read "Scoop" and bear in mind that one day the things that were driving me crazy would become fodder for a great comic novel, though I'd have to tone them down for the sake of credibility.

There was a brilliantly sardonic book by Tom Rachman, "The Imperfectionists," published last year that captured all this much better than Waugh and that I highly recommend because, nearly 20 years later, I still don't find my collection of horror stories nearly as funny as I probably ought to by now.

Waugh (and Graham Greene) would have naifs wandering wide-eyed through the moronic systems they satirized. I was never particularly naive, and it changes things to have the person perfectly aware of what is going on and utterly powerless to stop it.

What has been particularly interesting with the Facebook IPO coverage is that there have been stories in which the financial writers -- who actually understand this process -- have tried to put the brakes on public perception and they're like the poor schlub in "The Paper" who keeps trying to pitch his ideas in the briefing and being ignored.

Or, to go back to a literary reference from a few days ago, they're like Piggy with the conch shell, saying things that make perfect sense but that don't matter when making sense is not on the agenda.

I forget who coined the term, (Meg Greenfield?), but "economic porn" remains popular even in the wake of the crash.

For all that we laughed over Jon Stewart's takedown of Jim Cramer for his pumping of Bears Stearn as it was imploding, there is just as much foolishness being said and written about stocks today. 

And the raft of people losing their shirts and even their homes hasn't stemmed the flood of "Flip This House" style promotions encouraging you to make big bucks.

Editors eat this stuff up, gazing in rapture at the pretty (economic) bubbles like drunken Dumbos and assigning reporters to go find more.

After I left the newsroom, I took over the educational services program at the paper and found myself saddled with a Stock Market Game that was, alas, quite popular with teachers and generated lots of circulation. 

The Stock Market Game is an economic porn simulation that teaches kids to buy stock and then keep flipping it until, at the end of six weeks, you sell it and see who made the most money. Along the way, they can study percentages and draw graphs and all that good stuff. 

I added disclaimers that this is really not how responsible investing works, I set up better prizes for essays (best phrase to emerge from that "... but the service charges ruined everything.") And I would enclose a copy of "Tulipomania" from "Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" in the rule packet.

I've also enveighed against the insane expectations aroused by state lotteries, and you can see how much that's done to quell the furor.

*Sigh*

Matt Davies' one picture is worth more than my 750 words.

Comments

[Dave from Phila]

Mike - great blog writing as usual. I was wondering whether the insane coverage of the Facebook IPO would make your blog. It was sickening. Thank you.

[Mike Peterson]

Dave, I'm somewhat at the mercy of the cartoonists at these moments, and both Jeff and Matt stepped up and gave me great stuff to riff off of.

But it doesn't always work that way, and I am determined not to turn a blog intended to praise good work into "boy, this guy sure got it wrong."

For instance, with the news that the Chinese dissident is headed for NYU to "study," I wonder if the cartoonists who thought Clinton and Obama should have pitched a hissy fit for the cameras and embarrassed the Chinese government now have any second thoughts?

If one of them draws a cartoon in which he confesses that his view of international relations was based on his experience on the playground in the fourth grade, I'll feature it at CSOTD. Otherwise, mum's the word. I won't even mention it. Not a peep.

[Dave from Phila]

Did I just hear a peep?

[Mike Peterson]

tick-a-lock, Ange, tick-a-lock.