Random Thought #1

I found that I really like The Wall Street Journal. Here’s why:

1. Lack of the more common sets of bias in newspapers. The Wall Street Journal’s bias is not shady and underhanded like other newspapers. It’s bottom line is simple; money. It’s a paper about business for business. It doesn’t care who’s in power and what is happening; it merely cares about what is happening and what kind of effect it’s having on the markets. I like that. I really like the fact this newspapers bullshit isn’t all hidden in the background to the point that they’re lying to you. The Wall Street Journal’s bs is right out there in the front. Hey, we’re about making money. That’s our gig, that’s our bs. End of story. I like that a lot.

2. Lack of opinion. Because it has no opinion on say, republicans vs. democrats, it has a tendancy to both support both and attack both at the same time. It’s fairly neutral on things like abortion or the war in iraq. It barely ever gives it’s own opinions on things like that.

3. Lack of glaring spelling errors. The New York Times is terrible at this. I bought one of those recently and I refuse to read another when the Wall Street is around because of all sorts of blatant, ugly spelling errors. How am I supposed to respect your intelligence if you can’t spell correctly? I understand where you might have things spelled wrong in a blog or a letter, but in an international publication you had better be damn well sure you’re on the ball. Big lack of respect towards the NYTs. Not to mention TNYTs is hellishly slanted. Either way, TWSJ doesn’t do that.

4. Crossword is more difficult.

5. It’ll talk about weird, random issues. It won’t always focus on the things that will catch the public eye. TNYTs had 5 articles on the shooter and the shootings at V-Tech that I read. There were more. It spent a couple pages covering it and barely talked about the rest of the world, it seemed. The rest of the world does not stop moving because of one minor (and yes, it was minor. More people died in Iraq that day. At least 4 times more. That’s more major than this in sheer volume alone. There were many other things going in the world that day as well) incident. There are other things to cover, other important things to look at and bring about to the public’s attention. TWSJ will do that. It’ll bring up weird points of view and weird news that you never would see in any other paper. For example, did you know that the chinese partner for GM split from GM and is starting to build it’s own luxery cars? It’s speculated that it’s only a short amount of time before they’re available around the rest of the world. And by luxery cars, I mean Mercedes-Benz level cars. They’re insanly nice by all accounts.

6. TWSJ focuses on the world more than just the US. We’re not alone here, we aren’t the only ones who have a lot of influence. That’s why you see about as many major stories (or more) about things happening in other parts of the world as well as the ones about the ones here. Point and Case. The V-Tech shootings. It was a minor blip. Nothing more.

7. The language is more intelligent. TNYTs and the Orlando Tribune feel dumbed down. So does the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to an extent. Sun times, too.

8. Stocks. Yey ;d

9. Comments I get for reading this particular paper. Some are priceless.

10. Lack of frivolity. If I want frivolity I’ll play a video game. Don’t waste my time with relatively unimportant things to my day like who’s drafting whom (there’s no sports section in TWSJ) or babbly about Paris Hilton or whoever is doing whatever these days. If it doesn’t have a major impact in major business then it’s probably not there. Now I’m not saying that sports aren’t big business or that they’re unimportant because they are. But TWSJ doesn’t care about who won what or who drafts whom or such and such’s game plan. They’ll talk about teams if something on the business side comes up (and I’ve seen that already). That’s worthwhile, that’s worth something to me because it’s information that I can use. They ignore the rest, the sort of things that traditionally go in the sports section. That is, descriptions of games, descriptions of players, etc. I honestly don’t see any use to knowing who hit how many home runs this season. What good is that to me? I’d much rather know about what sort of things the team is doing on the business angle.

11. Lack of sensationalism. I’ve inferred this a couple times, from the lack of focus on the V-tech shootings as well as lack of looking at paris hilton or looking whatever. They don’t buy into that.

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I’m sure I could think of more, but that’s it for now. I’m going to order the wall street journal, I think.