It gets worse!

[yendi]

A follow-up on my post from earlier, in which Michael Starr, an alleged reporter for the New York Post, who shows all the intelligence of a unripened grapefrui*t, fell for a clearly humorous Ken Jennings blog entry: Now CNN and the AP have picked up on it. And they don't get it, either: In a posting Jennings made Tuesday, he calls the entry "a humor piece."

Yeah. He called it that because that's what it is. Ken's full response is here (and if any reporter or editor at CNN/AP had read it themselves, instead of assigning a summer intern who was too busy smoking pot to read the entry in detail, their story would be ripping the Post a new one, instead of attacking Jennings).

ETA: And more annoyingly, the CNN/AP article links to Ken's original post, but doesn't link to his follow-up post (from which the article quotes).

*Grapefruits get smarter when they ripen; it's just that even a smart grapefruit still can't talk, and dies a pathetic death.**

**Wanna bet how long until that "fact" shows up in the pages of the Post?

Comments

[laurel]

I just saw that USA Today picked up the story. Gah.

[yendi]

*sigh*

At some point, someone at one of these papers will figure it out. But at this rate, I expect to see tomorrow's NY Times and Wall Street Journal running headlines announcing that Ken Jennings attacked the show.

[yendi]

The thing is, the AP article had new information (the quote from Ken's latest blog entry), which means someone actually did "research." Really sad.

[demetria23.livejournal.com]

Man, I'm sure disappointed in the AP. It sounds like they just pulled all that from the Post article without reading the Ken Jennings posted himself.

[grandmofhelsing.livejournal.com]

I would say something, but I'm not supposed to attack the competition in public anymore.

[miintikwa.livejournal.com]

Yahoo has it on their Top Entertainment Stories (http://entertainment.tv.yahoo.com/entnews/ap/20060725/115386948000.html) at the moment.

Fun!

[litch.livejournal.com]

I wonder if this isn't some sort of pseudo conscious attempt to make the mainstream press look stupid. Showing that they literally are too stupid to read what's in front of their face.

[litch.livejournal.com]

I amfalling in love with wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Jennings

[thelastrobot.livejournal.com]

Maybe they are like me. Maybe it was funnier to them if they pretended it was real. Or maybe only I would do that.

[alison-says.livejournal.com]

Here's what Salon just said:

Dear Jeopardy: Ken Jennings, the "Jeopardy!" wonder who won $2.5 million on the show during his 74-game winning streak in 2004, recently wrote some words of advice for the show on his blog: "Maybe when Art Fleming was alive, America just couldn't get enough clues about 'Botany' and 'Ballet' and 'The Renaissance,' but come on. Does every freaking category have to be some effete left-coast crap nobody's heard of, like 'Opera,' or, um, 'U.S. History' or whatever? I mean wake me up when you come up with something that middle America actually cares about. I think it would rule if, just one time, Alex had to read off a board like:


PlayStation
The Arby's 5-for-$5.95 Value Menu
Reality TV
Men's Magazines
Skanks from Reality TV Who Got Naked in Men's Magazines
Potpourri

The over-the-top post was obviously meant to be taken as a joke, but that didn't stop the New York Post's Michael Starr from getting on his high horse, saying the note was "bashing" the show, which prompted Jennings to make a statement: "For the record: I've loved 'Jeopardy!' since I was a kid, as anyone who talks to me for about five minutes knows. Making goofy jokes about TV shows isn't 'bashing.' I believe it's the whole reason Al Gore invented the Internet." (TMZ, Ken-Jennings.com, N.Y. Post)

[beldar.livejournal.com]

Times like this I'm embarrassed to be a journalist.