Pure Twaddle

The Columbia Journalism of Review is running a great piece about the ridiculous heights network TV newsreader salaries have reached. To wit:

…Katie Couric’s annual salary is more than the entire annual budgets of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered combined. Couric’s salary comes to an estimated $15 million a year; NPR spends $6 million a year on its morning show and $5 million on its afternoon one.

And further down, a solid point:

What’s striking is how little notice this received in the flood of coverage of Sawyer’s appointment. With the notable exception of Jack Shafer in Slate, who cheekily urged Sawyer to turn down the job “and persuade ABC News to divert the millions it ordinarily pays its anchor and spend it on 50 or 80 additional reporters to break stories,”

So perhaps it’s a myth that good journalism has to be expensive.

Popularity: 24% [?]

As we all know, Kanye is a self-absorbed waterhead without a thought filter on his mouth. His stupid interruption of the WMA awards revealed his coarseness. Everything that could have been said about the incident has been said (though some more insightful than others) and, barring any more ridiculous outbursts from Kanye, this matter should die a quick death.

What is noteworthy, however, is the complete inability to find the actual video on YouTube. A simple search reveals pages and pages of what seem to be the actual video, but then turn out to be vapid commentaries by anonymous people from across the blogos-net. Each one talks about how rude the interruption was and how he/she is outraged by Kanye’s actions. And yet, here we have thousands of people using this very transgression to further their own internet stardom. So much so that even the original video isn’t even readily available on the most popular video sharing site.

We’re only a few years away from Ruby Rhod, folks.

There’s only one thing that can keep growing without nourishment: the human ego.

—Marshall Lumsden

Popularity: 32% [?]

T.V. viewing is at an all-time high, according to the Nielsen Company, at 151 hours per month per average adult. That’s three-tenths of each waking day sitting in front of the boob tube. This news is disturbing, considering a majority of Americans don’t even read one book a year anymore. So how much T.V. do you watch?

I find television to be very educating.  Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book.  -Groucho Marx

Popularity: 65% [?]