What’s with certain journalists these days. Everyone is making us ill. This week, it’s the rubbernecking deadline hacks of the movie world.
It started like this: The L.A. Times wrote a quick and innocuous story with neckbeard George Lucas where he talked about his upcoming Stars Wars TV show.
The slight problem was twofold, with the writers and the readers. The headline was “George Lucas Planning ‘Star Wars’ TV Series” and the news world lit up like wildfire (google news? 351 related stories on this topic).
The only problem? This story is at least a year old and Lucas has talked about this series ad nauseum to any one within earshot (and also very recently); people at the mall, your mom, Wired, TV Guide, you name it, they heard it. However, the world took it as a bonafide announcement (look we don’t write about Star Wars or Lucas often, but even we knew this had been in the works forever – here’s just one example from March 2006).
So there was at least new information in the L.A. Times piece, yes? Survey says: absolutely fucking not. While there is very recent news this week about screenwriters being hired to work on Lucas’ Star Wars TV show, the Angeles Times has no mention of that whatsoever (take this as the power of a headline and the power of general stupidity and laziness).
So why the hubub and all the ‘OMG’s’ fatuous reporting ? Because apparently if any even semi-respectable rag writes “Fatty Arbuckle to Star in ET Sequel Directed By Alfred Hitchcock,” the pay-check cashing lazy asses in the media (not really the blog world this time) will regurgitate it happily like last week’s dinner.
