Bramble Tamble

"I'd be much more of a people person if it weren't for people," so goes the old adage. The same applies to journalists also – I'd be much more of a fan of journalism as a profession if it weren't for the people who deal in it. (The old joke about lawyers can also apply. You know: "What do you call 1,000 lawyers at the bottom of the Potomac? A good start.")

It used to be an admirable profession, journalism. But as biases and agendas become more transparent in this age of … well, transparency, I find myself feeling dirtier and dirtier for ever wanting to be a part of organized journalism. So, just like the "spiritual" person who is turned off by organized religion, I prefer to express my love for the written word in my own ways. So I blog.

Perhaps it's not journalism itself that's going down the tubes, but rather the newspaper industry in general. Not to veer off into an anti-corporate screed, because I love capitalism, but as more and more corporations who have no business being in the news business get into the news business, the local conversation gets trumped in the name of cost-cutting and a .001 percent increase in the profit margin. Which, if the reports of newspapers bleeding money are true, is like putting a Band-Aid on a half-amputated leg.

And so I raise a glass to James Lileks, who, thanks to some incredible short-sightedness by the paper's ownership, has penned his last Quirk for Minneapolis' Star-Tribune. On the bright side, he'll still be writing "straight local news stories." This is not unlike asking Albert Pujols to sell popcorn at Busch Stadium.

Fortunately, even though I'm talking about him like he's dead, lileks.com will still thrive. So his talent won't go completely wasted. Still, I can't help but wonder how the loss of reader goodwill stemming directly from the Quirk's deletion from the Strib couldn't possibly bite the paper's owners in the ass. Idiots.