Rick Badie / My Opinion

By BW

March 3, 2009 2:27 PM | Link to this

The local televsion news is a joke, two-hour broadcasts, the first hour telling the viewer what will be coming in the second hour. A 30 second blip on the major story of the day, then the weather between every story. In the Metro area there is something like five or six million people, at best we may get seven different story’s.

Then there is the gridlock, no time for the paper in the morning, just click on the radio and Rush will tell you how to think.

Ah, but with a newspaper you can sit back and really understand what’s going on and every other page is not a weather report, it’s sad to see them go. While many insist it is the internet I think it’s more the economy, if no one is running ads, there just isn’t enough money coming in.

Just more dumbing down of the United States.

By mo

March 3, 2009 3:36 PM | Link to this

I much prefer a good old newspaper- one that you can hold in your hands- to online formats. It’s too easy to miss information online. Lingering over a newspaper with a favorite beverage is one of the day’s treats.

By Michael H. Smith

March 3, 2009 5:04 PM | Link to this

To a majority of the citizens, they really don’t want it to matter. They go out of their way to “stay uninformed” as much as possible. Of course there is something to be said for that course of action, like: Less to get angry about, lower blood pressure, no sleepless nights, never having to give a rip about knowing what kind of life your grandchildren are going to be forced to live, not having to think about how much money you are losing on your investments (fill in the usual blanks etc., etc.), and not waiting on the train (in this case we’ll name the train, TAX) that you know is going to run over whatever is left the devaluing currency that you may expect to receive or is in your possession presently.

Okay, this should cover the surface of usual opinions:

Personally, it will mean more scouring of the Internet, watching the boob tube a.k.a. TV, reading more e-mailed articles and emailed-news , throw in a few more online broadcast and podcast and selectively picking through the blogs. Since most print media I now read is books and magazines, setting down to read a newspaper is like visiting a museum - No offense intended Mr. Badie, that’s just the way things have gone in these days of media convergence. I’ll not go into the aspects of globalization and what worse impact it will have on the newsprint business going forward. I figure all newsprint journalists are depressed enough as it is for the moment.

By LT5000

March 3, 2009 7:53 PM | Link to this

With Blubbering Badie’s moronic articles week after week, is it any wonder that the AJC is going under?

He and Cyntia Tucker are the best they can do. The AJC, full of Has-beens and Never-was.

No one believe the media anymore. They are all Obama cheerleaders, who sold their last milligram of integrity decades ago.

They vote 90+% Democrat all the time and then tell you they are objective.

I suggest reading the website newsbusters.com. They routinely cover what a bunch of lefty pinkos the news media really is.

That’s why people have turned to talk radio and the internet. That’s where you will find objectivity.

LT5000

By John Galt Jr.

March 3, 2009 9:21 PM | Link to this

What will I line my bird cage with?

By BW

March 3, 2009 10:01 PM | Link to this

John, betwween the state legislature and our commissioners meetings there should be, oh sorry, both will be filled with crap already. Try using a page or two out of the twenty phonebooks we receive every six months.

By Chris Broe

March 3, 2009 10:02 PM | Link to this

There’s always a demand for writers. Badie is a writer, and they’ll always be a demand for him.

Print is a pain. It’s too messy. Papers everywhere. I hate the look of a read newspaper. It’s only appealing before it’s read, when it’s laying on your lawn. Then, it looks kinda cool. Goodbye paper. You had me at Gutenberg. No, it’s over, but writers must merely start twittering.

Twitter. I started a 25 words or less revolution in communication about ten years ago. I used to troll different blogs and message boards, and I’d only post this one entry: “25 words or less, moron.”

Now we have Twitter where you have to tell people what you are doing right now in 25 words or less. Isn’t that a groov?. I know that any good writer can now twitter change into the zeitgeist and make a real impact.

Understand Twitter. Twitter. It’s the future.

It’s time. America will emerge.

By Lee

March 3, 2009 10:04 PM | Link to this

Let’s see, the New York Times just accepted a “loan” from a Mexican billionaire. Now, how do you think they will “report” on one of America’s most pressing issues - the invasion by tens of millions of illegal aliens?

The AJC is still hawking Obama merchandise. Might as well let a Mayor Campbell street vendor be a reporter.

Is it any wonder newspapers have lost the public’s confidence?

I mean, the comics are not even worth a crap anymore.

By Steve

March 3, 2009 10:43 PM | Link to this

The print media puts everything that’s in the paper, online. For free! Why in the world do I want a bulky newspaper filled with stories I don’t care about when I can find the exact same information, usually on the papers own website, that give me a better option for picking and choosing the stories I really care about. The only ones who lose out are the coupon cutters. Sure, tons of online papers also pull the same exact stories from the free news services like Reuters, but they also offer their personal creations. If they want to charge users for this peronsal content, than that’s there choice. LA Times tried this and failed miserably. The days of pay-news is over unless you have something serious to offer.

Those that are saying that the fall of print media means the dumbing down of America couldn’t be more wrong if they were Rosie O’Donnell. Right now there is more information available to you than there ever has been before. On your cell phone, your blackberry, your PC, and these stories are not any different than what you would find on your morning doorstep other than much more quantity. You are completely out of the times, and that small minority that is upset about printed media falling to the waste side is the epitome of “dumb America”.

By Chris Broe

March 3, 2009 11:42 PM | Link to this

Did you Twitter a friend with benefits today? You could be a star. In your own mind! (and a million others). That’s twitter!

We can change american sentiment. All of us can. Now, there is a way to have a national thought. With progressive real time group think.

This whole Twitter Idea is the killer ap. Learn to twitter, and then twitter.

What are you doing? Twittering.

Twittering means you only get to answer one question when you blog, and that question is, “What are you doing?”, you know, like how we all answer the phone now. We say, “What are you doing?” and we started doing that about 20 years ago, and it’s now the new hello. You had me at “What are you doing”, is the new booty call line.

By BW

March 4, 2009 1:23 AM | Link to this

Lee where did you find that BS, it will sum it all up. Either the name of a real newspaper or a link where you found this BS.

Chris, what do they call Tiwtters, Twits? I hate to offend anyone at a party, I’m still attempting to be polite with Nerds?

Hey Steve, you may not care about those stories in print, but I do, ever hear of the word choice? Ever hear of a quiet morning, a cup of coffee, a good dog, a newspaper sitting on the deck watching all these important people go by on thier cell phones? I don’t really care, I’m retired, I’d certainly would miss my newspaper, my coffee, the morning sun and my dog. Who knows what you’ll be saying when or if you ever retire. Good Luck from one generation to the other.

By Bubba

March 4, 2009 7:50 AM | Link to this

I think that, where once the print media reported on the news, they have now become the news. LT’s snide diatribes aside, he has a valid point. “No one believe the media anymore. They are all Obama cheerleaders, who sold their last milligram of integrity decades ago.”

Newspapers are read according to political preference. The Washington Post vs. the Washington Times, for example. For me, I don’t read articles in the print media with the understanding that I am getting objective information. Instead, I read articles to find out what information they didn’t tell me.

Walter Cronkite reported the news but he never became the news. Dan Rather lost his job because he became the news. Connie Chung, Diane Sawyer and Katie Couric fail(ed) at their anchor job because their bosses were more concerned about how they look when they report the news than they were with how they delivered the news.

News media today, in my opinion, is more concerned with the size of the spoon with which they feed me information than they are with the content of the information that they provide me. It’s sad, really. Journalism was once a noble profession. I think most journalists do their job with noble intentions in mind. But what of the editors and publishers, the ones who direct what information is presented and how it is to be presented? I think they are more concerned with developing a cult of personality than they are with actually trusting their readers to form their own opinions based on the completeness of the information they provide.

The internet simply broadens the horizons by which we can research to find out for ourselves what the late, great Paul Harvey called “the rest of the story.” So yes, I’ve heard of a “a quiet morning, a cup of coffee, a good dog, a newspaper sitting on the deck.” I still enjoy it. These days, though, I find the newspaper unsatisfying and unfulfilling.

By Joey

March 4, 2009 8:09 AM | Link to this

It hurts when we lose a newspaper. But it is a requirement of any business to provide a service that will invite available customers.

It is unfortunate that many newspapers, including the AJC, choose to ignore that requirement. Newspapers, the AJC in particular:

Choose to pedal influence rather than honestly research and tell all sides of the story;

Choose a political side rather than honestly report and offer opinions on multiple sides of issues; and

Choose to champion a small portion (The City of Atlanta) of the geographic area rather than support the entire region.

It is choices like these that cost newspapers like the AJC, especially in this time where other friendlier options exist.

Is it to late to change? Are the owners and management up to a change? No and no.

By Average White, Banned

March 4, 2009 8:29 AM | Link to this

To quote Mr. Badie: “*loss of a major daily — any daily — is the loss of reporting on issues, both the routine and in-depth. *”

No offense, Mr. Badie, but *those are some big assumptions you’re requiring to be made in that statement!

I like newspapers (generally), like any literate person, but to be honest with you the constant filler material from persons like Cynthia Tucker and etc. are not “real writing.” I want real stories and writing, not “pundits” and leaning-to-one-side-or-the-other ‘talking heads.’

By Steve

March 4, 2009 8:53 AM | Link to this

BW, you didn’t fully understand what I was saying. You have the same stories YOU like online. You like those extra stories in the print edition, that’s fine. You can see those same stories online, for free. I on the other hand have the ability to skip those stories if I wish. I simply don’t click on them if I don’t want to read them. I can tell what I’m interested in or not based on the headers, I don’t need the entire story thrown in my face about some local romance, or someones love for collecting plastic frogs.

By Alice

March 4, 2009 9:41 AM | Link to this

I prefer reading my news online. I can read the AJC online as well as CNN, FOX News, etc. Then I don’t have to go out in bad weather to get a newspaper. I only got the weekender anyway because of the coupons.

By ken pharr

March 4, 2009 10:44 AM | Link to this

When thee infamous Atl JC dies it will be a glorious demise brought on justly by the biased coverage. I for one will be the happiest when the AJC dies. Their liberal and beyond bias was their death wish.

By Gandalf, the White!

March 4, 2009 1:58 PM | Link to this

Can we get the AJC to close up shop? THIS PAPER IS A RAG! We quit taking it at home years ago, basically because of Jake Boogieman, (asshat supreme) and his lackluster supervisor, (that nappy-headed-ho) Cindi Tucker. OH Rick right about how many mexicans we have in Gwinnett and how they are screwing up are schools and how many gangs are here becuase of them…or STFU, most of your blog is blahhhhh.

By jim d

March 4, 2009 3:35 PM | Link to this

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter.

Thomas Jefferson

By Rob

March 4, 2009 5:14 PM | Link to this

Ermmm, that Thomas Jefferson quote has no relevence here. The news isn’t going anywhere. This isn’t a choice to get rid of the news, it’s a choice to get rid of a dieng way to distribute it. Newspapers are one trick ponies. Now you have the availability to read multiple news sources online so you’re not stuck with one opinion.

By Chip Douglas

March 4, 2009 5:39 PM | Link to this

The future is now! Soon every American home will integrate their television, phone and computer. You’ll be able to visit the Louvre on one channel, or watch female wrestling on another. You can do your shopping at home, or play Mortal Kombat with a friend from Vietnam. There’s no end to the possibilities!

By Chris Broe

March 4, 2009 6:21 PM | Link to this

Could you imagine when Ted Turner finally gets around to holographing the three stooges………. I’m getting that boxed set.

and now it’s time for today’s Think Tank Conclusion: All of you need to start buying insurance for assisted living homes. It’s pennies. Do it. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you’re gonna need it. You’re going to live a long, long time my friends. You spend one year being sixteen. You spend fifty being old and decrepit.

Please buy assisted living insurance today. That way none of us will ever have to look at you ever again once your booty falls. There’s nothing worse than the site of a person’s fallen booty. It’s truly over after that. My 57 year old Booty is still respectable. I’m getting turned on just thinking about it. Now I want YOU’RE mommy.

Am I perverted because I’m now attracted to Grandma Walton? I see the old episodes now and I’m like , “Grandma Walton was hot, man”. ( And I’m talking after the stroke!)

Jklol

By Jill

March 4, 2009 11:51 PM | Link to this

There is one thing I wonder about in the world of instant messaging as our only news source, and that is the loss of a permanent record as a personal keepsake.

Think Truman/Dewey; the JFK assassination; Obama’s election; the front page on 9/12/2001.

Will we make our own copies of historical news events from our own choice of websites? On discs you have to label and download to view, or on copy paper to file for future reference/memories?

Will the most innovative newspapers morph into news magazines such as “The Week” to deliver timely news stories in a medium one can keep on hand as historical mementoes?

I will miss the newspaper. I’ll miss reading it as I eat by myself at work or at a restaurant. I’ll miss the lazy comfort of picking up the paper when I’m relaxing at the pool or on my deck.

I’ll miss The Vent in print, the crossword, advice columns, the freedom to flip the pages as I choose, sharing sections with whomever is perusing it with me.

I’ll especially miss turning the page to come upon a Luckovich drawing that makes me think as well as gives me a good chuckle. And the opinion columns which give each of us a voice and a peek at how our community is responding to current issues locally, nationally, and around the globe.

By Chris Broe

March 5, 2009 1:20 AM | Link to this

Would Ted Turner dare colorize the stooges?

It’s just not the same now. Curly was from a world that was enmeshed in it’s ordeal, and people really were who they seemed to be. He never made much money because he came up through vaudeville where the managers booked the acts. The stooges never had a chance at any money. In the twenties and thirties, Slavery still existed in the comedy states. The one sided nature of the implied social contract in 1850 between slave and master in Georgia is still visible in contracts with artists and producers today. The industry wont let anyone make any money.

Today, a mannequin with a grease paint moustache could get his 15 minutes or star on talk radio.

Fact.

By Roska

March 5, 2009 7:30 AM | Link to this

When you think about the energy and resources associated with delivering a paper vs. putting it online don’t you think Al Gore and his possie would want papers to go out of business?

Liberal papers will be put out of business by the very left wing groups they touted.

Now that is justice.

By JSC

March 5, 2009 9:11 AM | Link to this

Another liberal newspaper going out of business? Good riddance. I, too, am waiting for the day when the AJC ceases to exist. I haven’t bought an AJC propaganda rag in years.

“Journalists” claim there is no liberal bias in the media, and I’m sure they believe that when they say it; more’s the pity. Delusion is a good thing, until reality bites you. And, instead of the “journalists” taking a good, long look at themselves and what they write, they want to believe that it’s an “illiterate” public that is to blame. Hubris, thy name is “journalism”.

By Jon

March 5, 2009 9:15 AM | Link to this

The only thing a paper gives you is 1-day old news. Those dinosaurs that read it don’t read it anymore for current news, since if you rely on the paper, than you are already behind what most people have already learned.

What importance does collecting old newspapers form? Do you really need that hard copy to show your grandkids? Is it really THAT important? No, it’s not. Let it go. Nobody wants your smelly old papers laying around for decades.

By Chris Broe

March 5, 2009 10:48 AM | Link to this

America to whoever got Rush Limbaugh to stfu: Thank you.

The newspaper was never a good idea. All it did was turn mankind into ditto heads, who basically think whatever they read. Thus a clever editor can mold opinion and take over a town.

The problem with news is that no story is followed for more than 8 babies, man..

The Nanny State Octuplet Mom had the nerve to demand 15 nannies from donations. She’s building a nanny state within a starbucks, or something. You can donate best by buying her autobiography: “I do more before 9am than our president does in 100 days”. (Chapter one: How they stopped me from having them all under water).

Twitterers need Followers.

Twitter “nanny state” for the Octuplets’ mom.

Wooten is telling us his approach to the constitution. He believes that you can adjudicate constitutionally. You can only legislate constitutionally. You can never adjudicate constitutionally. There’s a difference in the deliberation implied in the two words: adjudicate and legislate. Therefore, the supreme court had no legal right whatsoever to subpoena voting records from the state of Florida and ruin Gore’s victory in 2000. Even if it was an American coup, it was still a constitutional foe that led to the subpoena. The adjudication of that vote meant that by definition, there was no constitutional intersect with our legislature, nor with the American People.

Jerry Lewis to the Supreme Court: “Dont legislate from the bench or you’ll end up intercepting our votes, oh supreme lady person’s guy……LADY! ”

Doesn’t Cheney have a book to write about his Seven Days in May? It was in May 2002 when Cheney made his move to be our commander in chief concerning the invasion of Iraq. With Rummy, he conceived of a way to keep the Al Queda threat fresh so that presidential powers would be unlimited, AND then justify an invasion of Iraq: simply let Osama escape. If Osama is captured and his army destroyed, then there could have been no support for any war in Iraq. The American People would have expected the troops to come home. There wasn’t supposed to be a war in Iraq.

That’s what’s wrong now. We cant even gauge the damage to trust that W caused, so there’s no telling the bottom. I’ve been told my whole life that our dollar is based on trust. Americans were expected to trust that a dollar was a dollar. Then I was told about Fort Knox and why it was once thought important to have a huge pile of gold to print the dollars with.

True corrections never leave any money on the table. There’s always a Kudlow starting a rally. This sell-off could be the after-shocks of the market-closing after 911 and that ensuing stock market correction in 2002. The only thing that connects that-was-then to this-is-now is Iraq.

The market came back too shirley, and too quickly, after Oct. 2002. Buffet believes you have to find a bottom before you can value assets. That’s why shorts provide such a valuable service. Yet, at a critical time last year, Bush Banned Shorts. If the Government shouldn’t intervene in banks, then they shirley shouldn’t intervene in wall street. (will you stop calling me surely?)

Twitter “ninny state” for Sara Palin. (or Bush).

By Bruce Wilcox

March 5, 2009 10:57 AM | Link to this

Not everyone can afford a computer, sadly some schools still don’t have computers, good reason to keep newspapers around.

Smelly old newspapers, a relative saved one from the day I was born and LIFE of that week, interesting reading, now I do it. Of course I use the New York Times. Speaking of the Times, right now they have a deal for the weekenders, only $4.90 and it will keep you busy for a week.

It provides JOBS, remember them before the bush disaster? Editors, reporters, printers and so many more.

Liberal, you have to be kidding, if it’s not fox or rush in print it must be liberal. Let’s see, did the Liberal press in Georgia effect the last the three elections, not, the reddest of red states picked three losers in a row.

If I want to read online the deck I’d have to have a laptop, I wouldn’t be caught dead with one, it reminds me of an oversized pursse. But being a dinosaur I doubt I’ll have to worry about it for long.

By 1911A1

March 5, 2009 11:13 AM | Link to this

Bubba @ 3/4, 7:50 - very well said.

Somewhere along the way, journalists got the idea that they are supposed to change the world.

Wrong.

Journalists are supposed to inform the people; then it’s up to US to change the world.

Do you want to stay in business? Then give us “just the facts, ma’am” - don’t try to persuade us to a particular course of thought or action. By doing so you have sacrificed your credibility for the sake of your agenda.

By LT5000

March 5, 2009 12:38 PM | Link to this

No wonder Brucie is so upset.

Some of his prime Mexican “chorizo” got put in jail this week.

Laborer bust puts 4 in jail

NORCROSS - A Duluth businessman was jailed alongside three others when police busted a Singleton Road gas station packed with day-laborers soliciting work Tuesday morning, authorities said.

*Huy Tran, 49, was looking for a few extra hands to help with work around his Fairway View Court home when police moved in and arrested him, along with three alleged day-laborers, according to a police report. *

I would be surprised if Brucie didn’t bail them out and have them stay at his house. Maybe he is too busy practicing “Hope and Change” on his penis while staring at his Che Guvera/Jimmy Carter photo album.

And while Blubbering Badie posts articles on Human Trumpets and scooter sales, the Gwinnet Daily Post reports the real news. Don’t lament the fall of the newspaper Badie, you were throwing bricks to the drowning man.

LT5000

By LT5000

March 5, 2009 1:49 PM | Link to this

Only Brucie the resident teabagging moron would claim there is no liberal media bias. He has apparently touched himself so much that he has gone blind. That can be the only explanation.

See the Politico:

*Carville calls White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. *

*Emanuel calls ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent George Stephanopoulos. *

*A bit later, CNN commentator Paul Begala, who is not quite the early bird that his friends are, will complete the circle with a rapid set of calls to all three. *

The media cheerleaders did their best to ignore Obama’s scandals and tear down McCain/Palin and Bush every chance they go. This lead to electing the most incompetent President since Jimmy Carter to the White House.

When Brucie gets done servicing the needs at the local Inserectioin, can someone ask him where the Obama stock market rally is? Why Obama is trying to cut back door deals with Iran? Receiving mash notes from Hamas via John “Purple Heart” Kerry? Or why Obama’s financial advisor Franklin Raines drove Fannie and Freddie into the ground with the help of Barney Franks lovetoy Herb Moses…………..The list goes on and on.

LT5000

By Sam T.

March 5, 2009 2:39 PM | Link to this

I see our resident Klansman LT5000 slithered out from under his rock to get some sun today.

By Sam T.

March 5, 2009 2:40 PM | Link to this

I see our resident Klansman LT5000 slithered out from under his rock to get some sun today.

By LT5000

March 5, 2009 3:37 PM | Link to this

How dare I criticize the Obamessiah?

Therefore, I must be a Klansman.

Also known as, “How we shamed America into voting for Jimmy Carter Part 2”.

Has the Obama buyers remorse set in yet?

LT5000

LT5000

By JSC

March 5, 2009 11:25 PM | Link to this

Ah yes, the Kenyan worshipers have no defense against his terrible performance, ergo any and all criticism is “racist”. That card gets played EVERY TIME because that’s all they have. When you can’t defend, scream racism. Sad.