So I lurk a lot, both keep sane during the week, and to pick up some story ideas. I wanted to make this post a while ago and chickened out, but seeing that post about Maddow fawning over Biden's new dog made me want to try with this account again.
US media is absolutely a big-L Liberal institution. But you'd be surprised how many socialists, or socdems at least, write for smaller and mid-size newsrooms. So AMA about trying to be a reporter with leftist views in a decidedly anti-left racket, or about the inner workings of American news outlets that aren't CNN, MSNBC or Fox.
What do you think of the official podcast of this forum, Citations Needed?
Do cop associations and local business associations write into you guys to cover certain stories? Like certain stories about how workers don't want to work and just want to collect unemployment? Or stories about how a streak of thefts if destroying local businesses?
It's got amazing analysis and critique but it's also about as fun to listen to as the sound of paint drying.
Yes. Not so overt, but we're sometimes expected to do "feature" pieces for small business events that are basically just free advertising, and the cops pretty much expect us to always post their crime bulletins and PSAs. Also they get very mad if you write about a crime that happened without quoting them first.
I think the fact that I was raised on public access talk shows makes Citations Needed just scratch this weird itch for me. It's one of the few podcasts that I'm actually engaged with when I'm listening.
Same. I can’t stand the podcasts where all the dudes fart and burp into mics, but Citations Needed is just right.
I listen to WTYP and Citations Needed so that covers all my bases pretty well
WTYP?
:wtyp:
Where's The Youtube Poop?
I listen to Citations Needed when I want to learn and be very engaged. I listen to West Wing Thing if I want something more entertaining, especially when I’m doing a monotonous video game task like grinding or map clearing.
I used to listen to Bad Faith a little bit, but that got exhaustingly liberal and awkward because of Virgil shenanigans.
Luckily Virgil has escaped the third dimension so he's not around making it awkward atm
So you ever get pushback from businesses or cops if you report on them in an unflattering way?
Oh yeah, big time. Almost lost my job once over stepping on the wrong small business owner - and ad space buyer's - toes.
I once had a guy call into a talk show to talk shit about the sponsor and one of the station leads (read: one of the people that all the boomers know and love because they hear from them almost every day) got on the phone with the guy to bitch him out, then said if he ever wanted to be able to call again he needed to go on and apologize on air. Someone also once said the n word on air, but the reaction to that was less severe
From a minimal experience in a news room, every shift would start with calling to check at the end of the cops’ shift to see if anything had happened overnight. They’d often fax press releases that would just be reworded slightly to be less info-dump-y
Sounds about right.