MaxRedline

Welp,They Finally Stuck A Name On That Big Winter Storm

They're not going to keep calling it "big winter storm". Nope, they've decided to pin a name on it: "Orlena". Whatever, it's in the news now.

In any case, if you're heading out to the liquor store, you probably better get a move on.

 

Time To Find Real Work

Newsroom layoffs reached a record high in 2020, growing nearly 200% compared to the previous year, according to a new study from the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The grim numbers come as multiple news organizations and TV news networks, including Fox News, ABC News, BuzzFeed, Vox Media, Vice Media, the New York Post, The Atlantic, Fortune magazine, the Tampa Bay Times and the New York Times, announced layoffs across their news and business divisions in 2020.

"Layoff" seems to be a more politically-correct term than the somewhat more bruising term for what's really happening: "you're fired". Are you going to miss any of them?

 

CNN - Your Source For News You Can't Use

They can't even find Minnesota on a map.

 

CV-19

People are dying! Everybody panic! Stay home!

Works for me.

The more people who imprison themselves, the greater my freedom.

I've already had CV-19, several weeks ago, and fully agree with others who have also had it and claim that it's horrible. They're masters of understatement. But after a couple of weeks, we pulled through.

Our forebears made it through times that were much more deadly, but they didn't have media relentlessly and breathlessly "reporting" the horrors to them on an hourly basis.

When I was a kid, an uncle of mine lived in what they called an iron lung. If you want to talk about life, death, and weirdness, try visiting a relative who's in an iron lung. So my view goes something like this:

There is good evidence that being alive on the planet is deadly. 100% of people on this planet will die.

Most of the people who have died from CV-19 have had underlying infirmities ranging from old age to diabetes, while many healthy people tend to survive. I fall into the latter category, even as an old fart. But I'm a healthy old fart.

It's not CV-19 itself; it's CV-19 combined with underlying conditions that results in death - the virus itself is less lethal by far than many of the other illnesses and evils to which we've been exposed in the past. And to which we'll be exposed in the future.

The difference, really, comes down to media exposure.

But since everyone's staying at home, the roads are clear. That's really nice, as it greatly reduces the likelihood of getting into a wreck. So why haven't your car insurance rates gone down?

 

CBS closes NYC offices after two employees positive for coronavirus

Both of the network's viewers are reportedly disheartened.

Finally, Good News On MSNBC!

Always classy, Matthews left in the middle of his show.

 

Killer Ride

VAIL, Colo. (AP) — A skier appears to have suffocated to death at a Colorado resort after he fell through an opening in a chairlift seat and became caught with his coat wrapped around his head and neck, officials said. Jason Varnish of Short Hills, New Jersey, died of positional asphyxia Thursday at Vail Mountain’s Blue Sky Basin area, according to Eagle County Coroner Kara Bettis.

Apparently, we should ban chairlifts, as they're proven killers.

On another note: how, exactly, does someone "suffocate to death"? Of course, it's an AP article, so they probably needed to take up some space. In the real world, the term "suffocate" would suffice.

(1) : to stop the respiration of (as by strangling or asphyxiation)

 

No News Is Good News...

New Jersey Trump rally in Wildwood was YUGE. So big, in fact, that the venue was quickly filled to the brim, leaving some 165,000 people to tough it out around the arena. With that kind of crowd, police closed several streets in the area to parking in order to facilitate a relatively free flow of traffic. CBS News didn't think it applied to them. They were wrong.

Live and learn, guys....

Put that in the "OOPS!" file....

 

Print Media Decline Continues

Locally, the latest casualty is Portland Tribune, which has announced that it's cutting back its print edition to once a week, beginning next month. Beginning January 1, it's also paywalling its site.

In a letter to readers, Pamplin Media Group President Mark Garber said reducing the number of publication days "will save us money, it's not so much a retreat, but a shift in how we can best cover local news."

The print edition will - for now - continue to be free of charge at outlets in the city of Portland; suburban editions will cost $1 per copy. In essence, they want suburbanites to pay a buck to peruse printed ads, as those now constitute roughly half of the "newspaper's" content. It's unclear as to how they've come to think that this approach will keep them in business:

Advertising revenue for U.S. newspapers peaked in 2000 at $49.4 billion, according to the Pew Research Center. Since then it's fallen 70 percent to an estimated $14.3 billion.

Garber claims that Tribune publications continue to receive strong advertising support from local businesses. Alrighty, then.

 

Door Meets Butt

The Newsweek “journalist” who penned an inaccurate report about President Donald Trump allegedly frittering away his Thanksgiving break doing nothing substantive has reportedly been terminated, though her firing has in turn sparked a new controversy. The original controversy erupted after Newsweek published a report by Jessica Kwong early Thanksgiving morning titled, “How Is Trump Spending Thanksgiving? Tweeting, Golfing And More.”

Some believe that "New-Speak" fired the wrong person:

The editor should be sacked. She is a grunt and they turned her into a scapegoat.

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) December 1, 2019

She was assigned the story the week before Thanksgiving, but how could she be expected to "report" on event before the event itself has even occurred? Seems as though the blame was unevenly applied at NewSpeak.