Making Use Of Media Twitter Freakouts

Or: What happens when you get a stupid idea in your head and can't make it go away.

This is one of the few good Seinfeldy images available via Creative Commons. Sorry I couldn’t do better, kiddos. (Source: here!)

Last week, Media Twitter had one of its collective freakouts over the news that Ben Smith is leaving the New York Times to start a new news outlet with Justin Smith of Bloomberg.

And let me start off by saying that I genuinely hope it succeeds, by which I mean that I hope it does something new and innovative and that pushes us all to be better. If so, the news industry will improve, we’ll all do better work, etc. etc.

And yet…I, like many people, was struck by the fact that the new outlet was described in maddeningly vague terms. From the New York Times writeup:

“There are 200 million people who are college educated, who read in English, but who no one is really treating like an audience, but who talk to each other and talk to us,” said Ben Smith, who is not related to Justin Smith. “That’s who we see as our audience.”

I believe I speak for many people when I say:

Huh.

Anyway, I went and was a smartass on Twitter about this:

Danielle Kurtzleben @titonka

KRAMER: you know what a good news audience would be? JERRY: who? KRAMER: the people who aren’t an audience. JERRY: sure. KRAMER: yeah and there’s a lot of ‘em. Globally. JERRY: uh huh KRAMER: it’s a [jittery hand gesture] market opportunity.

Which led Ms. Charlotte Clymer to respond:

Charlotte Clymer 🏳️‍🌈 @cmclymer

@titonka Damn, write the rest of it.

So, look. Unrelated to all this, I’ve taken a few days off to do family things. And the world continues to be bleak for MANY REASONS. Amid that darkness, in my downtime out here in the Midwest, my brain latched onto this idea and wouldn’t let go until I saw it through, even if it’s almost a week late. And so, amid bleakness, I give you one of the most useless things I’ve ever written: yep, an episode of Seinfeld about the 2022 news media, decades too late.

It’s not helpful to the world, it’s silly, it’s self-indulgent, it’s all that. I hope you enjoy, and I hope Misters Smith enjoy as well. I’m just whiling away my hours over here, watching the world burn, yadda yadda yadda, I’ll stop now.

I give you an episode entitled: “The Flora Fedora.”

---

[OPEN -- Jerry in comedy club]

JERRY: Do you ever think about the word "news"? It's a word that really doesn't make any sense. I mean, the word "new" is just a descriptor, like "large" or "upsetting." We've pluralized an adjective. I could call my pants "flatterings" if I wanted to, by this logic.

Are these people on your TV using this kind of syntax really the people you want writing the first draft of history?

[crowd chuckles]

Actually, the real problem might be that "new" is just a vague word. EVERYTHING is new. Now, if I saw Jake Tapper talking on TV as a far-right insurrection happened behind him, and he called it "today's deeply upsettings," I'd feel totally fine about that.

Well, not TOTALLY fine.

[crowd laughs]

----

[SCENE -- Jerry and Laura, his latest girlfriend, are eating at the cafe. He is reading something on his phone. She is picking at a large omelet.]

JERRY: [still looking at his phone] What exactly is a "strategist"? How do I become a "Democratic strategist"? Do I just *be* a Democrat and complain a little about how the party does things? Or do I get licensed somehow -- like, take a test and see if my strategizing is up to par?

LAURA: Ugh -- they overloaded my omelet again. There's too much filling for this to be a good omelet. [picks veggies out with fork]

JERRY: See? You're optimizing that omelet. *You* are an omelet strategist.

LAURA: [chuckles] Hey, what are you reading, anyway?

JERRY: Political news. New York Times.

LAURA: [unimpressed] Hm.

JERRY: [pause] "Hm"? What "hm"?

LAURA: I guess I just don't like the Times.

JERRY: You don't like the Times?

LAURA: I don’t like the Times.

JERRY: Why not?

LAURA: I guess I just don't like the news.

JERRY: [shocked, brief pause] Don't like the NEWS?

LAURA: I just don't feel like it's *for* me.