AP: “Everything Involving Britney Is A Big Deal.”

[Junkdrawer]

A.P. Says It Wants to Know Everything About Britney Spears

By BRIAN STELTER
Published: January 14, 2008

The Associated Press is bolstering its entertainment news coverage — and for many readers and viewers, Britney Spears is nothing if not entertaining.

An internal memorandum from The A.P.’s Los Angeles bureau dictating coverage of the troubled pop star was published by several media blogs on Tuesday, prompting some punch lines at the news service’s expense.

“Now and for the foreseeable future, virtually everything involving Britney is a big deal,” Frank Baker, the Los Angeles assistant bureau chief, wrote on Tuesday morning, three days after Ms. Spears was released from the hospital where she had been admitted in the wake of a custody dispute.

“Boy, that qualifies as an understatement,” Tirdad Derakhshani, a Philadelphia Inquirer writer remarked in the online column SideShow. On Romenesko, a popular online media site owned by the Poynter Institute, a commenter added, “Not a good day for journalism as a discipline.”

....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/business/media/14apee.html?ref=business

I mean, it's not like anything else should knock this from the headlines, right?

[muntrv]

1. They're just taking their marching orders from Chimpy. Can't talk about the

quagmire in Iraq.

[Junkdrawer]

3. Iraq...wasn't that something that happened a few years back?

:shrug:

[Olney Blue]

2. How did the U.S. sink so low?

[calmblueocean]

6. I wonder that, too. I think TV transformed us from a nation of thinkers into a nation of watchers.

Not that we were all thinkers, all the time, mind you... but the standard was there. People in positions of power were expected to show civility and intelligence. Not anymore. It's all infotainment, all the time, now.

[catnhatnh]

4. No, it's not...

you are supposedly a news service and to think so in the face of the problems of the billions on this planet....is past MY comment. Almost-WHORES!!!

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

5. Not for me.

I have seen this show before and I know how it will end.

You will know things are about done when she poses for Hustler. I wouldn't be surprised if she does.

[JeffR]

7. Britney who?

What's this all about?

[scarletwoman]

8. No, no, no. You've got it all wrong.

The line is: "What's all this then?"