I\u2019m to do a \u201cblog.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll be easy, Vin. You type in your thoughts. The readers respond. You respond to their responses.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI already do that. I use lots of reader mail in this thing we like to call my \u2018weekly column.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will be much faster. And it builds traffic!\u201d<\/p>\n
Ah. Just like a weekly column, but with even less emphasis on documentation, contemplation, or craftsmanship. No wonder the Web is awash in largely unsubstantiated but furiously fervent personal opinion. It\u2019s like giving every kid his own radio show.<\/p>\n
I acquired my third class license and did some radio in my college days, spinning Lord Buckley, obscure Tom Lehrer LPs, .78s by the California Hummingbirds, \u201cIt Wasn\u2019t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels.\u201d So I don\u2019t mean to malign my broadcast brethren, who live in fear of ever being caught with nothing to say. But have you ever done morning radio?<\/p>\n
You rise in the pitch dark and point your car into the rising sun. Arriving at the station, I feel like I\u2019ve fallen down a tunnel into a nest of chipmunks on speed. These people have been guzzling coffee since 3:30 a.m.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood morning. We\u2019re happy to have with us as our guest today on K-DOOM Vin Suprynowicz, executive assistant associate editor of the Thingamajig. Vin! What about this crisis in Outer Daggistan?!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBig Crisis! All over the news! The Grand Poobah of Outer Daggistan has kidnapped the oil minister of Lower Begonia! Begonian foreign minister says they\u2019re not going to stand for it! Troops moving toward the border! What do you think? Has Condi Rice been caught asleep at the wheel, which would be a good name for a country band? Could this be the start of the Third World War? And what does this mean to the price of oil?!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe what?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe price of oil! Outer Daggistan adjoins three major oil producing regions! Big crisis! What do you think?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, from what I remember of my geography, Outer Daggistan is one of the former Soviet Republics …\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGreat answer, Vin! But we\u2019re out of time for this segment! Now to Ferris Buehler, circling high over the Spaghetti Bowl in downtown Las Vegas in the K-DOOM traffic copter!\u201d<\/p>\n
I stagger down the hall to find the bathroom, thereafter fortifying myself with another half cup of coffee thick enough to patch potholes. By the time I\u2019ve got my earphones back on, the brain has started to click into gear.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been thinking about this problem in Daggistan …\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cVin! Next issue! What about this gas leak in downtown Las Vegas?!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBig gas leak! Six square blocks of the downtown closed down! Could the City Hall go up in flames? They want to build a new one, you know. Who could be behind this? And how will this affect the upcoming police bond?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPolice bond?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cVoters go to the polls in less than four months! More police officers to sniff for gas leaks! Don\u2019t tell me you think it\u2019s unrelated?!\u201d<\/p>\n
By now I\u2019ve started to \u2018get it.\u2019 Don\u2019t waste time trying to figure out if the gas leak is really of any significance. Just wade in and say something pontifical on some tangentially related subject.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, Tom, bonds for more police manpower almost always pass in this community, but there\u2019s something counterintuitive above police manpower and crime rates. People expect crime rates to go down, but statistics show when you hire more cops, reported crime rates actually go up! After all, you\u2019ve got all these new officers driving around, they need to keep busy, so you tend to see them writing people up for behaviors that previously would have been ignored.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd this isn\u2019t limited to uniformed officers. Same thing with \u2018Child Protection\u2019 workers. The more you hire, the more they go out and discover there\u2019s this supposed epidemic of new child abuse that creates a critical need for more \u2018Child Protection\u2019 workers. It\u2019s an endless cycle, designed to suck us deeper and deeper into dependence on the Nanny State.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although I\u2019m sure I\u2019ve read this somewhere, if someone asked me to pull those \u2018statistics\u2019 out of my hat I\u2019d be dead. But they won\u2019t. There\u2019s no time. This is radio.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreat point, Vin! Got to move on! We\u2019ve got time to take one caller! Jerry on Line One, you\u2019re On K-DOOM; talk to me!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHi, Tom.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHi, Jerry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGreat to hear your guest there, Vin Spickowitz.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAlways pleased when Vin can join us. You had a question, Jerry?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think everything you\u2019re talking about relates right back to the Bildersbergers and the British Royals and the way they\u2019ve been manipulating our economy through the Rockefellers\u2019 creation of the Federal Reserve Board in 1913, although we\u2019ll never read about that in Vin\u2019s newspaper, and I think we all know why!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe sure do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust look at his last name; no offense, Vin.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure he doesn\u2019t take any. You had a question, Jerry?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was wondering if Vin could comment on the first chapter of a manuscript I\u2019ve prepared on this topic. I\u2019ll just read the first five pages.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRunning short of time, Jerry. Can you formulate that as a question?\u201d<\/p>\n
What seems like moments later, I\u2019m being hustled out the door with a hearty handshake and a \u201cGot to do this more often.\u201d<\/p>\n
After decompressing with a cheese Danish and a large orange juice at the closest McDonald\u2019s, I wander into my own newsroom, where the day is just getting started at 11 a.m.<\/p>\n
I used to think the pace of daily newspapering was pretty hectic when I first arrived, 35 years ago. Newsrooms were full of clattering typewriters and AP tape-punchers that sat in little glass-walled rooms that were knee-deep in yellow confetti by the time the wire editor waded in each morning. Newspapers had names like \u201cThe Telegraph,\u201d reminiscent of the days when folks would gather outside the offices to see bulletins posted in the front window, dispatches received over the humming wires from the remote battlefields of the Civil War THAT VERY DAY!<\/p>\n
By comparison, today\u2019s newsroom seems almost Victorian in its leisurely pace. A few editors crane their necks to watch our morning stories being re-read by the lip-biting local TV spokesgals. The meeting to decide how the stories will be ranked for tomorrow\u2019s paper won\u2019t even be held till 4 p.m. I walk up to one of the early guys on the desk.<\/p>\n
\u201cBig gas leak downtown?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFalse alarm. Some homeless guy spilled a can of kerosene.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCrisis in Outer Daggistan?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a crisis in Outer Daggistan every week. It\u2019s all about getting more money for their pipeline rights. Four inches in the international roundup on page 12.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks, Warren.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
I can handle this \u201cblog\u201d thing. You just imagine you\u2019re an extremely pumped-up chipmunk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m to do a \u201cblog.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019ll be easy, Vin. You type in your thoughts. The readers respond. You respond to their responses.\u201d \u201cI already do that. I use lots of reader mail in this thing we like to call my \u2018weekly column.\u2019\u201d \u201cThis will be much faster. And it builds traffic!\u201d Ah. Just like a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-Z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}