The Economy in Media • SABEW.org: Member to Member [Society of American Business Editors and Writers] • 2009

The moment Editor and Publisher magazine shut its doors, it signaled what people already believed: no matter how many times they bought a newspaper: print is dying. The problem is, print is in decline, but it is not dying. The more people want to say it, the more we believe it. The more we believe our own opinions, the more we look to other media forms and doubt print’s appeal. And only then, will print actually fall into extinction.

I want to believe print’s decline starts from the beginning – fictional people kids read about and watch. Think about comic book-turned television characters created decades ago. Clark Kent and his love interest work at the newspaper. Spider-Man works as a freelance photographer, when he isn’t hanging upside down anyway, for a Manhattan newspaper resembling The New York Post

As we neared the millennium, we saw more influences like Murphy Brown, children’s cartoon and puppet characters as television news anchors and in more recent days, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. Freelance Statehouse Reporter: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, as expected, would have had a harder time succeeding at the box office.

Today, kids wanting to go into journalism are transitioning from wanting to be editors to alphabet channel anchormen and entertainment bloggers. It’s called “once you have a big enough name, you don’t do the work.” We live in a time when television people give someone else the job of writing and production yet put their name on the work. “No, it isn’t mine. The intern should do it, the production assistant. The assistant producer.” Brian Williams of NBC is the lone prime-time anchor fully responsible for all of his material. He purportedly discourages others from having too much input in his work, fearing it will change the newscast. Journalism is quickly turning into a glamour sport.

More than television’s effect on print, my real issue with print’s decline is the admiration future journalists hold for bloggers. Nowadays, your grandfather’s shaving cream review site earns the same “blog” title reserved for a top market newspaper’s op-ed columnist blogging for the publication’s web site. We almost need a new title to differentiate the two: real bloggers from the average Joe’s goofy online soapbox.

Bloggers have actually broken stories before traditional media. TechNewsWorld ranks bloggers’ top ten best, ranging from exposing eight U.S. prosecutors’ firings during 2006 to The Drudge Report’s initial coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and Dan Rather’s Memogate. The list also credits bloggers with building the iPhone’s popularity.

According to The Bivings Group, 95 percent of the top 100 newspapers in our country have staff blogs. So why do many journalists feel blogging lacks credibility? Because the blogs mixed up into what kids think of as journalism are often unreliable, poorly sourced or republishing random hearsay first reported in a British tabloid.

The common blogs we read revolve around faulty reporting. 95 percent of the time, they take a story halfway based on random hearsay that, I should point out, was fed to an outlet once upon a time by an anonymous source without serious fact checking and run with it. Political campaigns, ad companies, movie studios, celebrities and so on all fall victim to digging up real or not so true dirt on the opposing side.

A single side’s PR team can easily confirm something as “true,” and the story becomes true to some degree then – whenever we fail to publish both sides. Refusing to question a story’s authenticity may be worse than inaccurately reporting real facts. In a field built on necessary skepticism and detachment from any one point of view, why is it so hard for online blogs to lend deeper thought to their stories. Yes, even if it happens to be an entertainment site reporting about the status of Lady Gaga’s natural gender.or more importantly, when election cycle hits us with a can of worms’ worth of candidate scandal?

Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen called on genuine newspapers like The Palm Beach Post and Orlando Sentinel for publishing photos of noncelebrities’ unflattering mugshots – DUIs and minor offenses, of course, ranked together among anyone arrested for drugs, prostitution or shoplifting.

“The big problem – as critics inside and outside of the news business have noted – is that not everyone who gets booked into jail is guilty. Some are never prosecuted because the charges get dropped. Others are found not guilty at trial. Meanwhile, your downcast booking photo has been out there in cyberspace for all to see, including your boss, your kids, your spouse or your future ex-fiance,” Hiaasen said in October. The trend has reached nationally recognized newspapers such as The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, with more to follow.

Journalism is no longer an exclusive club. Our reputation and jobs are being snatched from us, thanks to everyone else taking a bite of our wedding cake and reselling it for half price. Any run of the mill actress, reality TV star, fill in the blank with a name that appeared in a tabloid once, instantly merits space on prestigious network coverage and print blogs. They have never studied journalism and never set foot on a college or newsroom that wasn’t originally part of a film set, thus often requiring that editors entirely rewrite their work. Still, real journalists must meet sufficient prior experience and qualifications standards to write for any nationally known outlet, appear on television, etc.

As if competition during this recession weren’t bad enough, talented writers and editors now fight non-journalists for what that is rightfully their spot. The perfect example: a recent female reality show contestant ended up a Good Morning America correspondent because in order to deliver excellent on-air reporting, television news requires reality dating competition experience. Kids and adults outside of journalism do not hold the same respect for the news anymore because it isn’t restricted to those with news experience.

Gina Chen, a 20-year print veteran writing on SaveTheMedia.com, said blogging is really just a form of modern Darwinism – journalism’s evolution from the old print jungle to a new online habitat – summed it up. “Is blogging journalism?” she wrote. “Blogging isn’t the threat to journalism – fear of change is.” The same could be true of television and the outrageousness print must bring to compete with other formats. It could be Chen is right about our fear stopping us from letting print finish where it wants to be. The day we stop asking how we can outdo television and new online media, print can return to how vibrant it was decades ago in terms of quality and appeal.

Remember that Beta tapes threatened the existence of movie theaters at one time in the 1970s. As stupid as it sounds now, we feared then too, that the convenience videotapes brought would make everyone watch new flicks from their couches. We could say the same about waking up in the morning and reading a newspaper at the table with breakfast. It’s an experience that with the right effort will never die, despite the new convenient journalism forms coming out every year.

Miss Texas USA: What Really Happens at Pageants • The Huffington Post • 2009

“Who is the most influential Texan in history?”

“Matthew McConaughey. He has funny movies and teaches us a lot about fitness.”

A contestant in front of me during the preliminary interview at Miss Texas USA actually gave that response. She gained her brilliance from experience as a former Miss Teen Texas USA, the answer earning her a spot in the Top 15 on pageant night. No offense to my fellow Longhorn University of Texas alumnus — he is a successful man with his own production company who will make any business think twice about a “no shirt, no shoes” policy — but I doubt Fool’s Gold will ever hold a candle to anything we remember throughout history about Sam Houston.

Now that the wind is dying down since the Miss California vs. Perez Hilton fiasco, I wonder when pageantry will stay where it belongs: the last century. I know you’re going to ask, why then, did you enter a pageant yourself? I entered Miss Texas USA for the same reason high school guys ask girls out to the prom: to put another notch in my belt. I want to say I have done everything humanly possible we consider accomplishments, whatever that means in today’s society, and having seen that a girl in Illinois earned speaking engagements before she ever even won Miss Illinois (and later Miss America), it seemed like a good idea at the time.

The pageant was good times, all right. I learned valuable information from eavesdropping in conversations among the over 100 contestants, things like the secret to losing weight in a weekend flush is Mexican laxatives you must buy online or across the border. If you spit out a pizza slice in a trash can after each bite you won’t gain weight. Who cares if it looks really gross to onlookers? You’re saving 500 calories! I also learned how restrooms smell after a load of girls vomit after catering or that if anyone sees you taking allergy medicine in public (me and my Benadryl) or ordering a fruity beverage at the bar as opposed to water (me and my pineapple juice fetish), you will be accused the rest of the week of having a severe drug addiction and possibly be on your way to the Promises facility in California. Seriously. If it weren’t illegal to gun down fellow contestants in the alley, these women would do it.

There was a pageant book with each contestant’s photo and title inside, and each time someone asked me, “Have you met this person?” I literally had no idea. None of the girls resembled their airbrushed photos whatsoever. Even more shocking was their attitudes. I don’t know about other pageants, but Miss Texas USA gives you “celebrity” treatment for a week: a police-escorted motorcade, security, catering, press coverage and so on. The girls, who in their day jobs work part-time selling makeup at department stores and attend one or two classes per semester — hey now, giving up any aspects of a social life, career or education for a one in 125 chance of being crowned Miss Texas and doing that each year takes patience and hard work! — all of a sudden turn into Mariah Carey. That’s all good and fine for Ms. Carey, a seven-octave Grammy winner. For unknown Miss Texas contestants to act disrespectful toward maids, waiters, and anyone “below” them behind chaperones’ backs is not. I recall a very nice lady who was a maid, a teacher who worked to supplement her income in the summer at the hotel in Laredo, telling me how girls would cuss her out to “hurry the fuck up” and so on, and another girl left human waste in a toilet, telling her it was her job as a maid to clean it.

The attitude spread to their boyfriends, who bragged to friends back home that they were visiting Laredo in support of their girlfriends, Miss Texas Contestants. It’s like holding up a trophy to the frat dudes that you bagged a pageant bimbo hottie. Never mind that all it really takes to arrive at the state pageant was either winning a city-wide contest or paying the entrance fee to bypass that right to Miss Texas USA (me). That’s right, people. You can buy your way to a pageant, and suddenly, people will consider you “one of the most beautiful women in Texas.” I should additionally mention that after curfew hours, boyfriends and alcohol were frequent guests at contestant hotel rooms and many girls recited historical facts about what it takes to win a pageant, knowledge learned from the pageant staple known as The Miss Universe Guide to Beauty. They could name state, local, national and international titleholders dating back to the 1970s.

Yes, the brilliance was apparent among the Miss Texas USA crowd. I remember an Asian girl from Houston asking me once when I was speaking Spanish with some restaurant staff, “Why are you like, speaking Spanish? Why are you white?” Actually, I’m part Hispanic, learned Spanish at school, and yes, I am really white looking thanks to that Irish/Eastern European side. But yeah, genetics never crossed her mind, or the fact that a lot of white people in Texas speak Spanish anyway. The fact that she was a minority herself asking that question makes all of it seem more ignorant.

When the Miss California organization created a huge buzz over reigning queen Carrie Prejean’s breast implants, I wondered why anyone cared. Half of the Miss Texas contestants had breast implants with nose jobs and arched Botox brows (not kidding) to match. Girls selling jewelry at teenybopper stores like Claire’s in rural towns have plastic surgery. Do you dare to tell me the current Miss Universe hailing from Venezuela is all natural, as well as the queens over the last decade, because I have seen Miss Universe 2008 Riyo Mori in person — a “natural” Japanese woman — and she looks like an Asian woman with Westernized facial features about to fall over forward from the weight of her chest.

I don’t want to imply that all the girls in this experience were psychotic sociopaths with axes under their sparkled dresses. There was a decent amount of nice girls. They were funny and smart, beautiful, really interesting individuals proud of who they were inside out with hobbies to boot. Some were dance instructors, graduating college and NFL/basketball cheerleaders. That’s why they were just left out of the “cool” cliques that have been involved in pageants since they were babies, girls who entered a pageant maybe this being their second time tops, who wow! Entered the pageant “for fun.” Who does that? You’re in this to bitch slap girls to the death until you earn that crown!

Having Miss Texas USA on my resume is pretty interesting. First, it causes people to remember who I am. Second, people forget and when speaking with me, ask me about what it was like to be first runner-up at the pageant or a former Miss Texas USA. If that’s the case, there isn’t a point to winning the pageant when people won’t remember anyway, right? Third, and this is the best part, there is a notion that beauty pageant women, especially those in the world-renowned Miss Texas USA, are gorgeous creatures in the vein of Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. It’s considered adequate experience for modeling and television and ask yourself, how many people on the street remember Miss Texas USA’s name or who won Miss USA three years ago? I would rather rank among Miss Texas USA’s famous “ugly losers,” like Eva Longoria Parker and Farrah Faucett.* Whoever picked on Ms. Longoria at that year’s pageant is probably at home barbecuing yesterday’s potroast for her 85 children while she landed on Maxim’s hottest women list.

I don’t know how much longer pageantry will last in this country. You would think by now with Playboy and women in bikinis everywhere that men could care less about watching girls in granny panties-sized swimwear prance across a stage to win a contest that’s rigged, predetermined a week in advance, a contest the real people don’t even get to vote in. What is the appeal? Miss America has already been reduced to a retirement community worth of viewers on an ever-changing cable network. Really, CMT must have given TLC a load of kickbacks to have it, saying, “Take this trash! We could get more viewers if we played ten year old Shania Twain music videos followed by Hee Haw reruns!” Worse, Miss USA and Miss Universe are “no talent required” competitions — quite obvious if you ever meet any of the talentless, brainless contestants — so you can’t claim people watch them for the great singing.

In the future, next time there is a vague statement balling into a massive political discussion, let’s not take gay rights advocacy from a formerly pink-haired celebrity blogger who became famous for drawing semen on people’s photos or hear the opposing side from a bikini-clad pageant girl each seeking their extended 15 minutes of cable news fame. Yes, she’s beautiful and will probably be a leading actress, his blog is a guilty pleasure even I have read every so often, but Harvey Milk would roll over in his grave if he knew the day we finally made gay rights a public matter, it would be between those two people.

*Purposely misspelled.