What's the point of Howard Kurtz's 2,600 word article? He has no idea.
November 23, 2009 4:55 pm ET by Jamison Foser
This morning, the Washington Post published Howard Kurtz's 2,600 word profile of Emily Miller, a former GOP flack trying to get her career back on track after getting caught up in the Abramoff scandal. A few hours later, a Post reader had a simple question: Why? And Kurtz had no answer:
Emily Miller story: Why? What was the point -- to get her resume in the Style section so she can get a job?
I read the whole thing and can't figure out for the life of me why it was written and published.
Howard Kurtz: But you read the whole thing. And based on the feedback I'm getting, lots of other folks did too.
Should we write only about people who are already famous? There are thousands of people in Washington who make the town run but ply their trade behind the scenes.
Offered an open-ended invitation to explain what is important or newsworthy about Miller, Kurtz couldn't do it. Worse, it didn't even occur to him to try. He just responded by saying people read the article (many, like his questioner, probably did so in hopes of finding a point, only to be disappointed) and by defending the concept of writing about people who are not already famous (a concept under assault from absolutely nobody.)
It seems rather obvious that the author of a 2,600-word Washington Post article should be able to ask the straightforward question "What was the point." When he can't, there's pretty clearly a problem here somewhere. That the reporter in question is a media critic and still can't see the problem is appalling.
Could it be that he had a 2,200 word column to fill and this was the best he could come up with?
It wouldn't be the first time someone filled a column with drivel, for no other reason than they had a deadline to meet.
Wow, my eyes are bugging.
People read it because it's sitting around in a major national newspaper for some reason. That's prized real estate, dillhole, which 20 million people can fill better than you.
Howie....do you think the cameraman actually took shots of the crowd that day? Weren't they good enough? What would prompt an editor or producer to say, 'Y'know, this would look a lot better if we got some of those crowd shots from a year ago?"
HOW in God's name would they manage to mix up footage from a year ago? What possible reason would they have for using year-old footage ???? Maybe to hype the appearance that the event drew more support than it actually did?
Now why would anyone want to do a thing like that on purpose?
So many questions about media integrity, fairness and balance Howie....and so little interest. Why?