READING THIS POST WILL MAKE YOU BLIND!!!!!

New Media is finding out what Old Media has known for a long time: Good news doesn’t sell.

Ben Popken and the other folks over at Consumerist know the feeling. They love the shrill stories about some buffoon outraged because (oh no!) a Wal-Mart employee asked to see his receipt before he left the store. They love to shriek about Amazon performing Stupid Shipping Tricks (forgetting to ask, in one instance, why someone absolutely had to order a cast-iron frying pan and a coffee pot from Amazon, when they could (oh no!) GO TO A FREAKING STORE).

Now Popken, apparently, is writing an article for Readers Digest. Yesterday, he was scrambling around for stories of consumers making egregious demands – on the day his article is due. (Apparently, RD had the audacity to ask for some balance in the story to contrast with the “kick-ass” stories of Corporations Gone Wild Popken is evidently writing about.) Good thing he’s scratching around for some ideas (came up with the Lost Suit Lawsuit guy in D.C., and some chick who flipped out to the tune of millions because the flowers for her wedding reception were the wrong color, same old recycled media garbage he could find in five minutes worth of googling). He’s looking for material on the day his story is due. That’ll be a well-researched, balanced piece of New Mediaocrity.

Yes, Readers Digest feasts on this kind of crapola, too. But it just irks me to hear New Media say they can do the job better, when they fall into Old Media’s tricks, the same tricks New Media claims to loathe. Plus ca change. . .

I used to be a newspaper reporter. I fell into the same trap all the time, rarely recognizing that it was the “good news” stories that people really appreciated and remembered. Oh, they remember the bad news stuff, too, but there’s a difference in their memories. For the bad news, they remember the bad news. For the good news, they almost always remember the good news in context with the person who wrote it. Good news gets writers better name recognition, at least in the smaltz department.

Speaking of Consumerist – they don’t particularly like good news about corporations. It’s always the bad news that gets top billing, and while they say they welcome good news about corporations, just try to get it on the front page. I know I have.