Much has been made of how the Daily Show is capturing the young, 18-34 year old demographic which newspapers would love to get their hairy palms on. For some reason, the big newspaper companies across the land think the way to do this is to print bigger pictures and fewer words and vulgar jokes. If possible, they’d like to reduce the paper to a lot of grunting. The main reason they insist on this tragically misguided approach is that, being big, they are also incredibly arrogant and corrupt with personnel issues. It makes no sense to hire a forty-something, mid-level company man or woman to edit a paper supposedly designed to attract a twenty-something reader, and yet that’s what they’re doing in Chicago, Denver, and elsewhere.
They seem to think–and we’ve heard their editors say—that they are creating papers for people who don’t read papers. But that is a much different thing than creating a paper for people who CAN’T read papers. (We think the reason the kids aren’t reading the newspapers is that they are more critical and savvy than their parents, and their parents’ friends who edit newspapers. In other words, the editors of youth papers are reducing the product to the purest form of what turns OFF young, smart readers.)
It is also an old prejudice and stereotype that, because a newspaper is cheap or free, then the content has to be compatibly low in value. (They’ve been hearing it for so long from advertisers that they actually believe it; why shouldn’t they? Advertisers are paying the bills, not readers! But if your publication is worth a damn, the readers pay the advertisers to pay you. See?)
But we’re not going to let the kids off the hook here. There is real risk in putting the kids in charge. We note with horror a few recent misfires, and we have some sound advice earned the hard way. Listen up, children: Humor does NOT work if you don’t care, in your heart, for your target. The difference between good satire and bad satire is this simple smell test—if the humorist lacks compassion or interest, it will show, and it will suck. Make fun of the things you care about. If you care about money and power, get out of the humor business now. (Hint: The Daily Show is genuinely funny because Jon Stewart cares.)
This is, by the way, a corollary of the longstanding Taking Candy From a Child principle. It is not funny to make fun of the weak, the infirm, the powerless, the dead, or the unloved. It is just mean, and you will go to hell where no one will ever laugh at you again.
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