WHAT KILLED NEWSPAPERS?

A long time ago I wrote about this subject, and I might even have used some of the same Weegee pictures to illustrate it. If so, don't worry because I have a lot more to say about the subject now, and I don't think anyone will be bored. The subject is newspapers.

The question I want to ask today is, who killed the newspapers? Did the internet do it? Everybody seems to think so, but surprisingly the answer is no, it didn't. The short explanation is that newspapers were dying before the internet got anywhere near as big as it is now. What killed newspapers was TV news, which offered news in film clips for free, and which was more current in its updates.  Advertisers who could afford it simply moved to TV. 

What short memories we all have! This problem was much discussed at the time. I could say more about this, but I have bigger fish to fry here. Remember, this was the short explanation. There's a longer and much more interesting one.

What really killed the newspaper was its inability to adapt to changing times. When the whole population moved to a counter-culture, "Rolling Stone" sensibility in the 1970s, the newspapers retained the same stolid feel that they had in the Civil War. I'm no supporter of the counter-culture, and I almost admire editors for resisting it, but change was in the air and the newspaper people seemed to be clueless about it. Where previous generations could rely on newspapers to reflect some of the sensibility on the street, the 70s generation turned to magazines to do that, and used papers only for the hard news and sports.


I know what you're thinking. It was the fragmentation of America, the lack of consensus, that drove people to the magazines, but that's only partly true. There's no reason why newspapers couldn't have have offered articles catering to different ideas in the same volume. Actually they eventually did that, and it wasn't uncommon to see liberal and conservative columnists on the same editorial page. Really, the whole problem was bigger than simple political diversity. It had to do with the feel of the paper.

Newspapers felt irrelevant. While magazines were talking about The Playboy Philosophy, radical politics, libertarianism, rock and roll, sex & drugs, flying saucers, Small Is Beautiful, talking to the dolphins, the new conservatism, levitating gurus, Black Power, hippie pads, high and low fashion, underground comics, science fiction, the New Journalism, feminism, caricatures, gossip about movie stars, etc., etc....newspapers simply fell back on hard news and sports. What a disconnect! The times were interesting but the newspapers weren't. 

You don't have to be sympathetic to any of these new ideas in order to talk about them, but you'd have hardly known they existed if your only source had been the newspapers. And the format...people after the 60s wanted more intimacy, more pictures. Where were the pictures? 

Clearly by the mid-seventies the newspapers suffered from a severe lack of imagination. Actually the rest of society did too, but we're talking about newspapers here. Did the unions kill the papers by making it difficult to take on new blood? Did dwindling circulations make them timid about experiment? Were newspapers increasingly owned and run by committees? Were the editors too hidebound? How about tax and corporation laws that put boards in charge of companies that were previously run by one risk-taking individual? Did lawyers deliver the deathblow by suing over everything in the paper? Were their human resource departments weeding out aggressive and gifted people who didn't happen to have college degrees? What accounts for the shocking lack of imagination in this field, a field that once included some of the best minds of their generation? Somebody in the know should attempt to answer this.

The pictures I put up here are by a famous newspaper photographer of the 40s and 50s named Weegee. A lot of them were rejected by the papers so he put them in books.  You can see how stupid the newspapers were for rejecting these. This kind of intimate material was exactly what newspaper readers craved, but could only find in magazines. All the newspapers had to do was pay attention to what the magazines were doing to please the public, but they stubbornly refused.  Would this have diluted the news? Not in the least! It's possible to have serious news on page 20 and gossip about movie stars on page 30. There's no contadiction.

Newspapers killed themselves. It was a case of unnecessary death from severe lack of imagination.

COMIC STRIPS THAT DIDN'T MAKE THE CUT

It's amazing how many many good comic strips just never caught on with the public, maybe because  they didn't contain appealing regular characters. Sometimes it seems like people would rather see the blandest treatment of a regular character, than the most creative treatment of one they see only once.  I feel that way myself sometimes. I should be slapped for it, and so should the public. 

Anyway, here's some worthy strips that got the axe. All are from the indispensable "Stripper's Guide", which is on my list of links.

Hardy Hirah (above) is beaten up, first by a hen, then by her kids. Hiram's a bit grotesque but I still like him.


Slightly primitive drawing (above), but the artist has good ideas!

Early Herriman (above). Man, that guy could draw funny! How do you like the title?

The Bud Smith strip (above): can you believe how much work artists used to put in on these strips? And this was the day before syndication was widespread,  meaning the artist probably had to live on what he got from one just one newspaper!

Herriman did this strip (above)for the Shriners magazine. Good old Herriman, a real aristocrat of the cartoon world!

Mrs. Fret-Not (above): slightly primitive drawing but the figures are graphic and unrealistic, the way all good newspaper characters are. How do you like the body bend in the next to last panel?

One of Swinnerton's Embarrassing Moment cartoons (above): I like to see crowds in strip cartoons (but never in animation)!

Herriman again (above): Sigh! A genius at work!

Still more Herriman (above). 

The Boys' and Girls' Page (above). Why did something drawn this funny ever get nixed?

The weird strips (above) were among the first to go.

I threw this in just for fun. It's odd to see humans imitating the stance of cartoon characters!

NOEL COWARD & GERTRUDE LAWRENCE

That's Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence above. If you ever read a Noel Coward play, you might have come away wondering what all the fuss was about. The plays are good, but not great. Why, you might have wondered, was the man so famous? Come to think of it, why was his actor/singer friend Gertrude Lawrence so popular?

Thanks to YouTube we have an answer. YouTube won't allow the clip to be embedded, so I can't put it up here, but here's the next best thing: a link to a five-minute clip from Coward's play "Private Lives," recorded in 1931. Watch it now, then come back for commentary!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wme86SsWYJw

Wasn't that great!!!!!!!!????? Coward was a genius, but he wrote for his own unique performance style, and in the hands of anyone else the plays may come off as flaccid. You can't make those lines work unless you're willing to commit to style and go way over the top with them. Coward himself found that hard to do as the years wore on. I don't think the middle-aged Coward could have pulled it off, even with the help of Lawrence.

The reason I put this up is to underline the point that style and technique is everything in entertainment. The most professionally useful quote I've ever encountered came from Paul Fussell, who was talking about poetry when he wrote (paraphrase):  "you'll never be a poet unless you love words more than content. How you say something is even more important than what you say." That goes for cartooning and animation too. Content is important but technique trumps content.

More Coward and Lawrence above. For contrast here's how modern actors Alan Rickman ("Snape" in the Harry Potter films) and Lindsay Duncan handle the same play:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt-xYlkWoSQ&feature=related

If the link doesn't work, you can find the piece on YouTube under the title: "Noel Coward: Private Lives (Interviews)."

They 're proud that they do the piece without style, searching instead for the truth in their parts. Honestly, truth is over-valued in the theater. What we need now is less truth and more technique.

Stephen, a commenter, provides us with these additional links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp8pCpQJOLM

(YouTube title: NoelCoward in New York - I went To a Marvelous Party)

http://www.noelcoward.net/html/stephenfry.html

(Stephen Fry's address to the Noel Coward Society)

ABOUT NERD GIRLS

This is a post about nerd girls.


Just for contrast here's (above) a girl who's definitely not a nerd. Ditto for the two below.

Nope, nothing nerdy about the girls above.

The differences between a nerd face (above) and a normal one are so small that we all have trouble putting it into words. I don't think a man from Mars could tell the difference... and yet our brains seem to consider that difference so important that they equip us with instant recognition of it.

I don't think our brains are trying to warn us away, just the opposite. I think the recognition is there to allow us to instantly recognize someone who's non-threatening, intelligent and desirable. Other types of women have good qualities too, but you may have to get to know them before you discover them. The nerd girl is all up front. What you see is what you get, and it's usually pretty good.

I wish I knew some statistics on nerds. Do nerds girls have fewer children? Do they make good mothers? I wish I knew.  The ones I know who have kids are terrific parents.

Nerd girls are often fiercely loyal to their men, and their men return the favor by being loyal to them. These girls aren't the divorcing type. These are the ones you want to marry. These are the ones who, if you broke your leg in the primeval forest, would stay beside you through the moonless night with dagger drawn to protect you from wolves....and you'd do the same for them. Nerd girls inspire loyalty through example. They improve the men they're with.

Are nerd girls beautiful? Ask anyone about Audrey Hepburn, she was one. Some say she was the most beautiful woman ever photographed.  In spite of great beauty she had that vulnerable and fully human quality that so many nerd girls have.

Nerds sometimes have thick eyebrows, and so did Audrey. Looks good, doesn't it?

Of course, not all nerds are nice. How about the malicious nerd hackers on the internet? But it's amazing how many good ones there are out there. Most of them, in fact!

Nerd characteristics are not distributed equally. Some have only a touch of it (above)...

...and some (above) get it by the bucket full. My hunch is that nerds who have Aspergers fall into this category. You can get too much of a good thing.

Taken all in all, nerd girls are among the most desirable on the planet. If you're a guy, and you're connected to one of these girls, then you know what I'm talking about. It's Heaven on Earth!

EVIL IN KIDS MEDIA

There's different kinds of evil. What I'll be talking about here is creepy evil...the kind that gets under your skin and makes you almost nauseous to think about. Creepy evil was all over kids media in the 80s and 90s. It was an intellectual fad in the publishing industry.

That was the era when horror novels were big sellers and Stephen King was a household name. Amazingly PHDs in the book biz felt they had to bring that sensibility to little kids. Even Maurice Sendak bought into the idea. Sendak's a terrific artist but you have to wonder what he was thinking when he did the book above.

Evil kids media was all the rage.  Here's (above) an award winning book by Chris Van Allsburg. The cover looks like something out of "The Shining." And what is that medallion on the cover? Good Grief, did this get a Newberry Award?

I guess you could argue that creepy horror always had a toehold in kids media. When I was a kid I used to watch a puppet show called "Kukla, Fran & Ollie" (above). Yikes! They looked like something out of Hieronymus Bosch. Kukla, the round guy, was especially horrific. I can't tell you how many unsettling dreams he inspired. Watch out, I think he's giving the camera the Evil Eye!

But who am I to lecture? I did "Tales of Worm Paranoia" which was as creepy as anything else.

RAMBLING THOUGHTS ABOUT CURMUDGEONS AND CHRISTMAS

Boy, there sure are a lot of curmudgeons (above) out there! The whole idea of Christmas infuriates them!



Curmudgeons are organizing (above)! One of my favorite Christmas pastimes used to be needling curmudgeons and trying to make them feel guilty, but It's getting hard to do that now. They're fighting back. I read in a magazine that they even wear buttons with sayings like, "I'm not cheap, I'm principled!"



They circulate weird Christmas cards with pictures of armed animals, who intend to shoot down Santa.



Geez, poor Santa's going to have a rough time getting through this year.



Well, I'm going to celebrate Christmas just as I always do: with food, presents, and a cultivated air of smug moral superiority that'll make my curmudgeon friends grind their teeth.

Today I considered making a curmudgeon Christmas tree as a gift for these friends. It would be an artificial tree painted black with ornaments consisting of dead fish or pictures of Scrooge kicking orphans. Aaaargh! It's too late. Maybe next year!



I have a Santa Claus costume in the closet. Let me tell you, as soon as you put that thing on, you become a chick magnate!



I think I'll experiment this Christmas. Maybe I'll try a bottomless tree (above).

No, I need something more hip than that.



This (above) one's too hip...too much trouble.

Ah, now THIS (above) is a do-able hip tree! Tinker toys make great trees!

While I was looking for a picture of a Tinkertoy tree, I stumbled on this photo(above). Believe it or not, this (above) is Wilbur and Orville Wright's Christmas tree, dating from 1900, only a few years before the famous flight. The tree is the kind of tall, sparse, fragrant evergreen that was popular up until recent times when the full, bushy look took over. Look at the presents! I notice that bundles are more common than boxes, and the wrappings are plain...no fancy wrapping paper!

Here's (above) a detail of the picture above. Click to enlarge. I think I see a small rifle back there, and some doll house furniture and a tiny tea set. Are there candles on the tree? I can't see.

Before long I stumbled on another tree picture (above), this one from the 30s. This one looks like the kind my dad said he played under when he was a kid. Notice the big, metal electric trains with bridges and out-of-scale little houses and fences. The big trains were great because they were heavy and didn't jump off off the tracks all the time like the light ones do now. You could also cram a lot of toy soldiers into them. Then as now, Christmas and war toys just naturally went together.

I think the electric lights on the tree were the big bulb kind that are only used for outdoor lighting now. If there's tinsel, it's probably the vertical icicle variety. I like modern Christmas trees. They're thick and bushy the way artists like to draw them. They're not fragrant, which is a shame, but they do look friendly and cozy, and they work well with small indoor lights.



Well, enough goofing off! It's time to get back to cleaning the house for Christmas... but don't go yet! I have presents for everybody! I have to warn you that these are pretty primitive presents...actually, downright lame is what they are. They're tricks for fooling little kids! Watch the videos then find a kid and try them out!

OK, I warned you that these were going to be lame tricks!






A long time ago I pulled both these Penn & Teller tricks on my kids and they just about fell down and worshipped me as a white god. Of course they were at the age when I could wow them by making the supermarket door open just by waving my hand and walking in. Gee, kids sure are gullible!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!!!!! See you on the 27th!


BTW: I got a Love Nerds submission from Jennifer, which I'll post right now!