Feral Beast: AdAge rips 'Tough Issue'

Monday, August 13, 2007

AdAge rips 'Tough Issue'

Nothing beats "British dentistry" for enough jagged edges to rip up a supposedly indestructible advert. The teaser for a macho film release, which will be an insert inside the next edition of the lad rag Maxim, claims that no violent guy can wreck it with his bare hands. But two jovial lads over at AdAge rose to the challenge.
Advertising inside the upcoming Maxim magazine features "The Condemned," starring Stone Cold Steve Austin ("10 People Will Fight ... 9 Will Die.") The brash claim that this ad couldn't be physically destroyed caught the attention of Ken Wheaton and his rather wimpier editor, Jonah Bloom. Running in Maxim's "The Tough Issue," which hits US newsstands Sept. 20,

the ad is supposedly printed on special tough-guy paper and can't be torn or ripped by mere mortals.

Watch the Adage segment. It really tears Austin up.

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Feral Beast? Try Lemming

If the press were an animal, what kind of animal would it be? I’ve got my answer. A legion of lemmings, furry and well-intentioned, but ultimately condemned by their nature to follow each other mindlessly off a tall cliff, over the Paris Hilton peak or into the Invade Iraq crevasse. The words “feral beast” certainly wouldn’t come to mind. It’s not particularly accurate or particularly evocative. But that is how the departing British prime minister, Tony Blair, sees journalists: as malicious tormentors who have tried to tear him limb from limb.

--Gal Beckerman of the Columbia Journalism Review

“Journalism is a form of cartography,” write Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach of Pew. “It creates a map for citizens to navigate society. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping or being disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map.”

"Journalism is good at solving small problems or taking small bites of a big problem. It’s not good at solving big problems." Adapted from David Simon, creator of The Wire.

Retrospective : five decades of journalism as reported by CJR

Fake AP Stylebook reminds us: Unless you're doing a story on the Muppets, you are not a gonzo journalist.

"The once idealized information superhighway has become a parking lot of error, misinformation, rumor and junk." Poynter Institute, advocating a broader definition of who is a journalist.