The Fringe is a tantalizing and seductive thing. The Fringe is the stuff of water-cooler conversation, backyard gossip, Twitter and Facebook, 24-hour broadcast entertainers, and, of course, the news pages of your local paper and its website.
The Fringe is celebrity, fascinating and, like a traffic accident, irresistible to ordinary people. The Fringe challenges the status quo and forces us to face assumptions and stereotypes. The Fringe can be a force for good and a dangerous force of evil. We who live our lives along the middle need The Fringe as a catalyst for change.
Folks are clamoring for “no coverage” of the Florida loon who has decided he’ll hold the Quran burning hostage to the mosque building near Ground Zero — but what they really mean is “I want to know all about it; I just don’t think anyone else should know.”
That’s the paradigm journalists face every time we have to decide what to cover, how much to cover and how to present what is, most assuredly, The Fringe. And, because news is almost always those things that are a departure from the ordinary and the status quo, The Fringe can command an inordinate amount of attention from ordinary people.
When the Ku Klux Klan came to Rockford a decade or more ago, there were pleas that we give them no coverage, arguments that if we covered the KKK rally we were just caving into what they wanted — publicity.
Our Quran burning loon from Florida is a classic evil Fringer. He didn’t just spring to life a couple weeks ago; this story has been bubbling in Europe and the Middle East for a couple months.
And, now comes Louis Farrakhan to Rockford. He’ll be at the Kingdom Authority International Ministries Church on Sept. 18, supposedly delivering a message of peace and justice. Perhaps Farrakhan has had an epiphany over the past few years, but the Farrakhan who leads the Nation of Islam in the United States has never been a peace and justice kind of guy.
For those too young to remember, let’s simply say that Farrakhan and Martin Luther King are at different ends of the peace and justice spectrum.
We’ll not ignore that Farrakhan is in town. But this ongoing “look at me” coming from the the Kingdom Authority International Ministries Church is rapidly wearing out its news value. Repeat visits from Jesse Jackson, a speech by Farrakhan, statements from the NAACP don’t make for solutions and after a while, they don’t even make news.
And, now for the but …. But, The Fringe contributes to our understanding of the world and how things work. If we take the time for a bit of homework, we’ll understand far better the context in which the Quran burning story evolved, the roles Farrakhan played in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the evolution of the Nation of Islam in the United States.
If you’re reading this online, I’ve included several links for good context. If you’re reading in print, head for your local library or search engine of choice.
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Which is YOUR bigger issue? It is apparent that it is Farrakhan coming to Rockford. Your comments on the KKK and the burning of the Quran were only 3 lines and your comments on Farrakhan were 3 paragraphs. You need to look inside of yourself for your own racial issues.
Your goal is to sell newspaper advertising and you will choose stories that you hope will sell the most papers to generate the most Ad money.
Now, that wasn’t hard was it?
Kim: See my post yesterday on the Quran burning. Since I’d already written about it, I didn’t repeat it today.
joeapple1: Since when is making money a bad thing? I assume you make money selling tools and fasteners, or you wouldn’t be in business. But, the funny thing is, stories like the Quran burner or coverage of the KKK and Farrakhan don’t actually drive newspaper sales.
Does calling certain Alderman whiners drive newspaper sales?
What about blindly following ethically questionable politicians?
…Condescending and insulting comments directed at you readers?
…Censoring cartoons?
Do any of these drive newspaper sales?
“That’s the paradigm journalists face every time we have to decide what to cover, how much to cover and how to present what is, most assuredly, The Fringe. And, because news is almost always those things that are a departure from the ordinary and the status quo, The Fringe can command an inordinate amount of attention from ordinary people.”
This statement by you Linda shows why the media in this country has nothing to do with news anymore. Nobody would have even know about this if the “Fringe Media” had not reported this all over the place.
It would be a refreshing change, if the “LameStream Media” would report news, as news, rather than as (mostly) Left-slanted opinion pieces. Opinions belong on the editorial page, rather than being used as a substitute for the factual details of the issue. The public needs unbiased data from news organizations, not propaganda, in order to make informed decisions.
There was not a word or picture about Beck\’s Washington Mall event. Only Fox showed overhead views of the plaza.More people were at that event than “million”man march and MLK’\'s event combined (yes, it was explained well as to how to count properly). Big question is why does the news media totally ignore it? Bias I would say. but it is their right as owners of the newspaper.
Juice, you forget that this does not fix with the liberal medias template. That’s why the media is becoming nonexistent!
My theory:
In case you haven’t noticed, most of the editorial staff of the RRStar appears to be over-50 liberal to moderate Christians. The issue of race and gender has been a huge issue their entire lives, if not the biggest one, They can remember when the country was much different. The issue is at the forefront of their minds, rather than mine.
The biggest events in my life is the rise of computers and the polarization of right-left politics. If I were in charge at the Star, and people my age (mid-late 30s), the paper would look different. Beck might get a little press.