TGIF Linkage 10/31

** To celebrate Halloween, here’s a great routine from underrated comedian Kevin Pollack, doing Christopher Walken opening the door for trick-o-treaters.

** Just like last week’s Gary Busey best moments, here’s another list that had to be hard to narrow down. The Top 15 Funniest Moments in Conan O’Brien History.

** For you sports fans out there, this quiz by Mental Floss may seem a lot easier then you’d think. Your task is simple: Name all 30 current NHL teams within 5 minutes. Good luck. I needed 4:22 to get them all, FYI.

** And for those of you who are avid fans of The Office like I am, here’s another cool quiz.

** Hey, Ben Roethlisberger, why exactly are you whining about this? Seriously. (Scroll down through this link to see what I’m talking about)

** Hey, Sarah Palin, do us all a favor and stay away from all sports references. Please?

** Notre Dame is one of 7 Big East men’s basketball teams ranked in the preseason AP Top 25 poll, released yesterday. Why is that relevant? Well, the Irish host the University of South Dakota on Dec. 2.

** This young guy has no idea how lucky he was last night. He was plowed over by a Cincinnati wide receiver during Thursday night’s win over ranked South Florida. Get run over, get interviewed by Erin Andrews.

Hope your night is full of all sorts of tricks and treats.

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TGIF Weekly Recommended Tune

“End of the line” by the Traveling Wilburys, one of the greatest collections of musicians there’s ever been. I heard this song on the radio last night and now I can’t get it out of my head.

Baiting the media.

If you’ve read and/or watched any major media these past few months, you know tensions are really high in this upcoming election because of the sorts of audiences the two major candidates attract. You see all the speeches, the rallies, all the smear attacks…everything that does not equate into the calm, moral campaigns we should expect from our prospective leaders.

But why are things so heated? To be honest, I think it’s due to the very media we consume. There are two major points/trends that I feel the media has failed the public dearly on.

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The first trend is how everything has to be a horse race. It’s clear that the goal of mass media these days is less and less about proper coverage and more and more about making money.  When ratings are high and interests are tweaked, life is good.

According to the mass media, this election is a deadheat…way too close to call. So here comes all the news personalities, all the pundits…everyone coming out of the woodwork to tell a nationwide audience why his candidate is better than that other guy or why this guy is a terrorist and why/or either of them is bad for America.

The pundity overkill concerning the race being too close to call is one thing, but it’s another thing when real poll numbers using legitimate statistics say that’s the farthest from the truth. Check out websites like Real Clear Politics or FiveThirtyEight for a more realistic idea of how the election is turning out. National polls mean very little! It’s the state polls that matter! And according to most of the polls coming out of battleground states, things just aren’t all that close.

Yet that reality isn’t exciting enough for the media. Everyone/everything has to be close and the race has to be exciting, or people won’t read or watch their content. It’s incredibly frustrating to me that the mass media has turned into tabloid journalism, where everything has to be exciting and raw for it to be given any sort of coverage. Real news that affects the world is not always exciting, and some people need to realize that.

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And with that, is the second point/trend. You can call it “Joe The Plumber”.

I watched the third Presidental debate and knew the second that John McCain uttered the term “Joe The Plumber” that there was an ulterior motive behind it. I knew it was total “bait” for both the general public and the national media. And sure enough, the mass media took that “bait” and “Joe The Plumber” became a national figure…even when the word got out that he wasn’t remotely what/who he said he was.

“Joe The Plumber” is apparently a voice of some large, mainstream portion of America, so much so that McCain decided to finish off his campaign with “Joe The Plumber” campaign stops. The whole thing strikes me as both intellectually and morally dishonest and frankly embarrassing. And yet the media continues to give him airtime.

So what does this have to do with selecting content for a daily newspaper? Well, the other night there were “Joe The Plumber” AP wire stories. I ignored them. I’m not ignoring “Joe” because he’s supporting McCain, as the same standards would apply even if he endorsed Obama or Bob Barr or even Chuck Baldwin. There were also numerous “attack” stories from both sides of the political spectrum.  I also immediately ignored them.

It’s because the average small-town newspaper has limited space each night, and there are far more relevant things that readers should know about. The financial crisis, things going on internationally, the war in Iraq, things like that. The average small-town newspaper has no room for “Joe The Plumber” or other forms of celebrity news. You can read all of that sort of news on places all across the Internet. When it comes to your daily newspaper, I personally think we have a moral obligation to try and offer as much relevant news as we can with the limited space we have.

But much of that news…isn’t the sort of exciting things some want you to hear about.

Phiiiiiiiiiillllllllllllllyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jerry Lodriguss/Philadelphia Inquirer

The 2-day wait is over.

The Philadelphia Phillies are World Series champions.

And the World Series MVP?

Cole Hamels.

In five playoff starts, Hamels — already the MVP of the National League Championship Series — was 4-0 with a 1.80 ERA, including two excellent starts in the World Series.

The 24-year-old lefthanded starting pitcher, who has now become a household name across the country, could have earned the win in Wednesday’s makeup game, but ended up with a no-decision. But hey, I can live with that. And apparently he can too.

“I’m definitely going to have to enjoy this moment because there’s a lot of times you don’t have everything go your way. To come away with a World Series ring is more important to me than an MVP.”

For now, let’s enjoy a Philly championship. It’s been a long time coming.

Yong Kim/Philadelphia Daily News

Politics and Sports

This is from an Associated Press story that came out today (Oct. 29, 2008):

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senators have asked the NFL commissioner to tackle the issue of making more game day TV broadcasts available to local fans for free.
The league has said it provides free broadcasts in the home cities of competing teams. But 13 lawmakers said in a letter this week to Roger Goodell that the NFL is too narrowly interpreting what is a home city.
“The policy leaves behind NFL fans across the country simply because they live outside cities to which the NFL has granted franchises,” according to the letter made public Wednesday. For example, the NFL does not consider the western Pennsylvania town of Johnstown part of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ home market, the letter said.
The senators want quick action so fans in every market receive free TV access to games played by their closest team or the team it has been historically aligned to.

The stock market is plummetting, people are losing their houses left and right, and our elected officials are spending time talking about there being too little free football on TV? This isn’t a political party bash, either, as there were senators on all sides — Republican, Democrat and independent — that signed the letter. One, disappointingly, was Senator John Thune (R-SD).

Yes, sports are important to a lot of people. If they weren’t, I wouldn’t have a job. But spending time worrying about who can watch a game on their antenna — which will be obsolete in a couple months anyway — really isn’t a good way to spend time, or taxpayer money.

Signing In…

Is it just me, or are there some people who wish this blog to not just be about the sports side and/or the triumphant adventures of Cole Hamels?

(I’m kidding, sports side! Please don’t shun me.)

Anyway, hello there! My name is Mike Keitges, and I serve as the Press & Dakotan’s primary news page designer. I also occasionally write stories for the newspaper. I’ve been in Yankton now for more than a year and honestly have enjoyed most, if not all, my time here so far. Yankton is the right size of town for me at this point in my life, as it’s not too large yet I can pretty much get anything I need or want here.

I hopefully will post entries here at a decent rate and I will try to write about work, newspapers and the state of journalism overall.

A lot of work each night goes into developing a daily newspaper. Choices concerning the importance/relevance of stories, good focus, lack of bias, lack of pointless “white noise” stories, available (but often limited) national art and within all of that — the lack of any space to put all we want to put in each edition!

It can be a challenge day in and day out! But when I have discussions with others about the future of the newspaper business, I’m still excited about print media’s needed transformation in the future. Even at 26 and someone who really does embrace the digital age, I like newspapers and think they still can play a needed role in the media.

I’m looking forward to writing more and more, as well as slipping in something fun into the staff blog every so often!