Abridged Daily News Columnists

Wednesday
Jill Porter: Last year, Jill Porter helped get Hershey’s to pull candy stamped “ICEBREAKERS” from the market because it sort of looked like crack (but not really). (It’s okay, Wired’s website agreed.) Anyway, Porter wrote about Michael Phelps and why marijuana should be legal. Color me surprised and proud.

Today
Ronnie Polaneczky: Hey, here’s the story of the cantor at police funerals at the Basilica.

John Baer: Now that Ed Rendell wants to legalize video poker to help get some money for the state (more on this later), some lawmakers have shot back with calls for legalized prostitution and marijuana. Yes, yes a million times yes! Oh, apparently they’re saying it as a joke. Sadness.

Michael Smerconish: Before the Internet nobody attempted to make money off a celebrity doing something stupid in public. Smerconish is all about narcing when he sees a drug deal, though, which is something that actually has real consequences (as opposed to selling a tape of Christian Bale being angry or whatever).

Stu Bykofsky: Oh, man, Stu Bykofsky has responded to the Phillymag article about newspapers with his own plan for how to save newspapers! The idea: Sue Google for sending the websites free traffic!

Publishers sowed the seeds of their own destruction - pre-Tierney - by stampeding to the Internet and giving away their content for free, overturning a business model that had sustained them for centuries.

We must stop the insanity - now! It’s time for some brave publisher - Hello, Brian - to stand up and howl: “No more free content!”

This company should charge online visitors a small fee, maybe $5 a month, for our content - which is copyrighted, then sue the pants off anyone stealing it.

Should Google “pick up” (steal) our stuff, if we successfully sued them for $1 billion, two good things happen: 1) Our money problems are solved; 2) everyone else will stop stealing our content.

Apparently indexing a site and sending readers its way is highly illegal. Or, rather, it would be if the site was behind a pay-wall. Which is why ESPN Insider is currently suing Google for giving away its content for free. Oh wait!

Bloggers can’t replace newspapers.

No one says they should, are or will. You sure stuck it to those non-existent people! This column was written in 2003. Maybe earlier. Bykofsky just decided to run it now.

The million bloggers comment mostly on what was revealed by resource-rich newspapers. No matter how many eyeballs they attract, blogs rarely “break through” because they are so many and so scattered. They lack newspapers’ broad-based public square, where the masses assemble. They also lack the public megaphone and spotlight, which may be the print press’ most important weapons.

Blogs are also not news-gathering organizations. This is like saying, “No way can one actor make a movie. It takes a lot of people! YouTube should be ashamed of itself!” This article is a giant strawman made of smaller strawmen, then lit on fire at Burning Man.

And, on a side note, how dare Burning Man think it can replace all other forms of recreation!

Was it a blogger who turned a spotlight, and publicly shamed, the Postal Service for dumping mail? No, that was the Daily News. Did a blogger have the resources in time, talent and staff to drag DHS onto the front pages and into the grand-jury room? No, that was the Inquirer. Every day newspapers run stories that would not otherwise be told.

Yes, and the other way around, too. Blogs cover stories newspapers can’t, won’t or don’t cover.

Do all (any?) bloggers have the training or the inclination to post only what is verifiable? Working for a newspaper means you have been vetted by virtue of education or experience, and you hew to ethical norms of accuracy, honesty and objectivity. Do we always succeed? No. But almost all of us make an honest effort, and we have angels on our shoulders (called editors) to ensure that we do.

Fun fact: The Daily News runs more corrections than most blogs — and not because the blogs write something stupid! Of course, that comparison is dumb, but I’m working with what I’m stealing from the newspaper here.

That’s why I’ll trust the Associated Press’ reporting of President Obama’s recovery plan over anything I’ll read at DailyKos.com or TownHall.com.

Good job, cherrypicking two random sites, one where anyone can post, and another that’s a cesspool of nonsense. That’s why I trust BatBoyNews.com’s reporting on BatBoy’s wedding more than anything I read in the Weekly World News!

As Volk writes from his smug platform, doesn’t he realize that maybe half the stories in each issue of his magazine had their genesis in earlier newspaper reporting? We also provide the material for WIP and other talk radio to gab about all day, not to mention providing leads for TV-news-assignment desks. I’m not bragging or complaining. It’s just true.

There’s a rule in advertising — I know a lot about advertising, I’ve seen both Trust Me and Mad Men — that if you’re the big fish, you don’t attack the smaller ones. It’s why you usually don’t see ExxonMobil doing attack ads against BP. So, yes, newspapers have been the most trusted and dominant news medium for a long, long time now. Everyone knows that. You don’t get a bonus for pointing it out.

But what makes it even funnier is Stu’s most recent column on Monday was about something he heard on the radio. How dare he take information from someone he heard on a radio broadcast! They ought to charge for radio, and if Stu writes about it, radio can sue.