LOL - SH - APMP - Laughing Out Loud - So Hard - Almost Pissed My Pants!

I would put a smiley face here but I’m presently using it to wipe away the tears of a good hard belly laugh. Now please sit back and allow me to tell you a good tale. Go get a box of tissues, tears and laughter guaranteed to follow.

Roll time back to Sunday morning and I’m enjoying my second cup of joe, surfing the cyber-news and my wife, the last person under 60 who still reads the printed newspaper, has stumbled across an article by some whining ‘Post-y’ reporter.

Enter Ian Shapira from the far and away wings, here’s where the story gets good. Mr. Shapira’s dog ate his journalistic masterpiece, crapped it out, then the dog had the brains and balls to re-content at Gawker getting an additional 12,146 Post-y content aware readers - as of last count on August 6, 2009 at 9:30 AM. Now this fact adds true insult to injury, The Post got something unheard of for a present day newspaper publishers - new and fresh readership.

In case you haven’t heard this, all major and minor newspapers have a massively declining subscriber base, this includes The Washington Post which is losing some 39.9% of Sunday morning ‘news-geezers’ every year.

Our sad story continues, finally my wife hands me the newspaper and says, you should read this - it’s truly pathetic. I can’t wait, I love a sad story! Wow Now Brown Cow,’ I have just picked up the last tree with printed words upon it and I stumbled into the "library," to see how pitiful it has truly gotten at ‘Mr Post-y.’

Here’s what Mr. Shapira had to say in his well written and pitiful response in the article The Post article, "The Death of Journalism - Gawker Edition." It appears that Mr. Shapira has been sadly and softly crying on his Post Sunday edition after initially and excitedly realizing that Gawker picked up the original article and through the amazing technology of all those tubes called the internet, it re-appeared as, "Generational Consultant Holds America’s Fakest Job" By Hamilton Nolan, 11:52 AM on Thursday, July 9 2009, a funny story about the weird and baffling career choice of "generational consultant," well maybe not as weird as "life or career coach" but whose measuring except Mr. Shapira and ‘Mr. Post-y.’

Now may I present the first thing that popped into my little head after reading all three articles, this is the new online theater of the absurd - Washington Post vs. Gawker - in the "Thrill in Plain Vanilla!"

What do I mean by "vanilla"? I mean possibly the most plain and boring light weight battle ever put together in print, Vegas or cyberspace. No respectable promoter would touch this one with a ten foot pole or with Don King’s money. A real snoozer but a good illustration of future content use battles, legal copyrights ramification and a whole mess of future court battles enriching generations of future lawyers.

I ask you this question - Could there be anything more pathetic or boring than a bunch of Washington DC based middle-aged journalists sending semi-irrate emails about the end of journalism in the western world and the lifting of all their hard sweat filled work? All the while secretly biting their fingernails to the quick, sitting in all those neat rows of tan cubicals, as the worry rolls from every pore about the loss of their 401k’s, the big house on the hill, country club memberships, having to turn in the wife’s leased Range-Rover and the future prospects of JOBLESSNESS.

YAWN - join the real world printed news folks, with the rest of us! You’ve been giving your content away and now you want control back again? Is this the forward thinking coming out of this industry? How do the trees look?

Isn’t this exciting - THE THRILLER IN PLAIN VANILLA!

Now the point of my article, the impression based media is dying, the statistics don’t lie and especially the newspaper industry. It may be five years down the road or maybe longer but we will see less and less main stream newspaper media outlets. Look at the trend, content has moved to narrower and narrower niches oriented specifically to our individual interests and industries. Topic based journalism is the immediate result but certainly not the end game. It sure will be fun to see the outcome. Maybe there’s a real prize fight in there somewhere?

How does this affect your organization, better get busy building an online stream of content and connecting with a core and specific core audience or you very quickly, will start to sound a lot like The Washington Post, out of control and whining. You might be dying and don’t even know it just like The Post.

See what it has brought The Washington Post to, they went and hired a big Copyright lawyer to lobby for changes in present law, in hope it will hold back the crumbling and breaking dike. Just like little boy blue maybe they better concentrate on creating a real solution or they will end up just like another dying ‘dinosaur -’ please refer to the present day U.S. Car Industry. Dead, no matter how much of our tax dollars that get funneled into the car industry’s failed business model!

Stella Pop __ your content or message is king because you can now compete with the likes of The Washington Post for center stage. Although you might have to put with their whining.

Just in case your insane and the links to each article in this mythical battle:

1. The Original Washington Post Article - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/08/AR2009070803986.html

2. The Gawker Article - http://gawker.com/5310986/generational-consultant-holds-americas-fakest-job

3. Then last but not Least - The ReButtal from The Washington Post -http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/31/AR2009073102476.html

Full and complete credit given to all parties involved, please link to see each full length article..