Quality Journalism? Who needs it?

So Rupert Murdoch is upset because he believes Google is stealing his 'quality journalism' and therefore his ad revenue. Well frankly I've never been impressed with 'quality journalism' the way he (or any other newspaper publisher) defines it. I want to know about the things that interest me , not about the things that Rupert's editors want to load up into the headlines. Sherlock Holmes summed it up best when he dismissed Watson's discussion of the Copernican system with the words:

"What the deuce is it to me? You say that we go around the sun. If we went around the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."

Amen brother! Talk to me about Domino v. Exchange or Gilbert & Sullivan or the American Civil War or World in Flames or dealing with a crying two-month-old baby and I'm all ears, but I really don't care if the Hawks beat the Demons on Saturday or who won the car races at Bathurst or that a bank was robbed somewhere and I'm probably not even interested if we change Prime Ministers because of some political scandal.

Murdoch's other problem is that no news organization carries a sufficiently high reputation that they can demand money for something that is available for free elsewhere. Mind you, I could be wrong on that point. Millions of people buy bottled water every day when they have a tap at home in their kitchen.

I pay my monthly access charges to my ISP to receive the news and I don't care who is stuffing the the pipeline with the factoids at the other end as long as they are accurate. I haven't parted with money to buy a newspaper for (probably) the last ten years and I can't remember the last time I turned on the television to watch the evening news. Quality journalism is in the eye of the beholder and Rupert Murdoch's publications just aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

Now where was that Wikipedia article on Jeffrey Dahmer ?
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