NY Times Jumps the Shark, or, Trolling Becomes Journalism’s New Standard

Glynn Marshes writes:

So a few days ago, in the comment thread on “What’s wrong with white boys playing the blues,” jr dismissed the LA Weekly article cited as an “exercise in trolling.”

Now comes the New York Times, in a piece titled “Men, Who Needs Them” by Greg Hampikian.

The bait comes in paragraph 5 with the we’re-not-in-Kansas-anymore claim that “women are both necessary and sufficient for reproduction, and men are neither.”

Oh. Hold on! There’s a caveat a little later. It turns out women do need “some very odd tiny cells” that men “shed.” But not to worry. The cells are easy to obtain and store, and we women can impregnate ourselves at our personal discretion and leisure. Using turkey basters. Or straws.

Anyway. Taken together w/ the LA Weekly piece, it makes me wonder: is trolling now an accepted marketing strategy for struggling mainstream papers?

And if so, what are the rules?

“Anything for attention,” maybe?

Or: “If our core readers believe we’re publishing this in good faith, we can pull it off”?

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8 Responses to NY Times Jumps the Shark, or, Trolling Becomes Journalism’s New Standard

  1. Fabrizio del Wrongo says:

    The whole culture is based on trolling.

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  2. Sir Barken Hyena says:

    “…we can expect to see more women choose to reproduce without men entirely. Fortunately, the data for children raised by only females is encouraging.”

    Bull. Totally untrue.

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  3. Funny how often the MSM people complain about the malign influence of bloggers … Yet they seem to be stealing from them/us more and more all the time. Long live trolling.

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  4. Glynn Marshes says:

    Or perhaps we could make the case that Yellow Journalism never really went away — it was just shamed temporarily into dormancy.

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  5. It is the Daily Mail’s world and we all live in it. This article is, as the Glenn has correctly noted, the shameless attempt to get the page views. The end game involves NY Times photo specials featuring Maureen Dowd nip-slips.

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  6. Fenster says:

    I don’t know why but for some reason I can’t keep straight what the term “jump the shark” means. It is used constantly and I keep having to go online to remind myself what it signifies. I have done that enough by now that I *think* I remember it now. There’s just something unintuitive about it for me.

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  7. Glynn Marshes says:

    Here you go. You’ll never forget again and you’ll have me to thank for it. 😀 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpraJYnbVtE

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