Steve Rhodes takes the inimitable Dawn Taylor Trice to task for fatuous observations on “the air waves” the other night about the future of newspapers.

Can you imagine the civil rights movement without newspapers? Trice asked. If the Internet was around, certainly! [Rhodes commented]  Can you imagine! YouTube video of Bull Connor and Internet fundraising for SNCC and MLK blogging directly to the people. Progress would have come much sooner.

He’s down on “Old World journalists” in general.

The very idea that the facts of a new media world – and the underappreciated facts of the newspaper industry’s gross negligence and essential journalistic malpractice of the last three decades – are still dawning on our nation’s newsrooms is just incredible. The time to ask how and why is long past.

This is in Rhodes’s Beachwood Reporter, which rocks — that is, pleases me greatly — and will you too, I bet.

I pass this on unvarnished, from a reader:

A biker is riding by the zoo, when he sees a little girl leaning into the lion’s cage.

Suddenly, the lion grabs her by the cuff of her jacket and tries to pull her inside to slaughter her, under the eyes of her screaming parents.

The biker jumps off his bike, runs to the cage and hits the lion square on the nose with a powerful punch.

Whimpering from the pain the lion jumps back letting go of the girl, and the biker brings her to her terrified parents, who thank him endlessly.

A New York Times reporter has watched the whole event.

The reporter addressing the biker says, “Sir, this was the most gallant and brave thing I saw a man do in my whole life.”

The biker replies, “Why, it was nothing, really, the lion was behind bars. I just saw this little kid in danger, and acted as I felt right.”

The reporter says, “Well, I’ll make sure this won’t go unnoticed. I’m a journalist from the New York Times, you know, and tomorrow’s paper will have this story on the front page… So, what do you do for a living and what political affiliation do you have?'”

The biker replies, “I’m a U.S. Marine and a Republican.”

The journalist leaves.

The following morning the biker buys The New York Times to see if it indeed brings news of his actions, and reads, on front page:

U.S. MARINE ASSAULTS AFRICAN IMMIGRANT AND STEALS HIS LUNCH

Fr. Pfleger is saying he won’t change, now that he’s back in his St. Sabina pulpit.  At any rate, he’s still going to bus kids and others downtown to protest what he apparently views as random acts of violence, as in this emailed announcement:

On Thursday, June 19, 2008, from 11 am – 12 noon, we will meet at the Thompson Center to continue our fight for Common Sense Gun Laws.

“To continue our fight”: Fight?  What fight?  These are junkets for people in various degrees of funk and frustration about the lousy neighborhoods they live in. 

Does Fr. P. think these rote demonstrations make a particle of difference to the quality of life on their blocks or in the bosom of their families?  Who in his right mind would think so?

On Monday, Ulysses Simmons a student of Beasley Academic Center was gunned down on 92nd Street.

By whom, for God’s sake?  By a neighbor or at least someone who roves his neighborhood with impunity.

We must continue to fight for our children’s lives, we must end the
easy accessibility of guns on the streets.

There you go, the quick fix provided by government.  Always look to the government to protect you from your neighbor and yourselves or for that matter from yourself.

If you need a ride downtown on that day call the Rectory, there will
be a bus leaving from the church at 10 am. The number to call is
773-483-4300.

No thanks.

A very good Chi Trib rundown on Rev. Michael Pfleger has a neighborhood co-worker offering him some very bad advice:

“Father Pfleger has always been a community activist first and a Catholic priest second,” said Tio Hardiman, a longtime Chicago activist who has worked with Pfleger on anti-violence campaigns. “The black community accepts Father Pfleger as one of their own. But now I think he’s going to have to make a decision about whether he’s going to be a black community activist or a Catholic priest.”

Why bad?  Because Fr. P. ain’t nothin’ without holy mother church as his sponsor, and with all his fulmination and histrionics he knows it.

Meanwhile, if there’s a fellow member of the cloth who can get through to him, he has not done so as far as the general public knows.  Except the cardinal, who seems somehow to have made his point.  Maybe, maybe not.

Or maybe there’s no getting to him by anyone.

Here’s a slam from within the profession against a biased press:

[The] press corps has been ideologized into a part of the liberal establishment.  More and more, the members of the Washington press share in total the worldview taken by the dominant liberals who control the Democratic Party.  More and more they share axioms that profoundly influence their coverage of day-to-day events in the worlds of politics and government.

That was not yesterday but in 1972 from columnist Robert Novak at a Kenyon College conference on “The Mass Media and Modern Democracy,” from his The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington.

He zeros in on the journos of the day:

[A] rigid conformity has emerged among the Washington press corps, which reflects in part conformity in the colleges producing the new journalists.  But beyond this, the young journalist who violates these axioms can scarcely expect a rapid rise up the ladder of advancement.  . . . .

The result is a gap of widening proportions between the national journalist and the mass of Americans, paralleling a gap between liberal politicians and the masses, specifically the white workingman. [Italics added]

36 years ago, and still a problem.  Notice “the colleges producing the new journalists.”  Tenured radicals, twisted minds.