Category Archives: media news

media news, national news

AI scares the bejeebers out of me

For as long as artificial intelligence has been on the worldwide radar, I have been reluctant to weigh in on its benefits or its burdens.

Until this moment. I am going to declare that AI scares the living crap out of me.

I worked in a profession for nearly four decades that relied on human beings reporting the truth as we understood it. Journalism places strict rules on accuracy and fairness. AI has managed, in my view, to scramble it all up and turn what we know to be real into something that could be made up.

I am sickened by the images I see and audio I hear depicting people commenting on matters that they cannot possibly know or understand. The images are products of AI-generated computers. For instance …

I recently watched a video of two American presidents — John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan — carrying on and joking about an issue that post-dates their deaths by decades. A friend of mine in Germany sent me a video of President Barack Obama declaring that Donald J. Trump screamed at a judge that he is “above the law!”an event that hasn’t been reported by any legitimate media anywhere on Earth.

I used to trade in truth-telling. It is the AI-produced nonsense that has me melting down at times at the thought that I could be listening to computer-generated fakery being passed off as the real thing.

I get that AI is used for entertainment purposes. Some top-of-the-line artists have used it to produce fabulous music videos.

The possibilities for abuse of this astonishing technology, however, is giving me the heeby-jeebys.

I am afraid of it. Very afraid.

media news

No taking it back … Donald

Social media can be a blessing, but they also can be a burden … a curse if you will, given the immediacy of the message delivered.

With that, I want to visit the hideous issue of a social media message that flashed from the White House showing President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, as apes. Yes. As apes.

As they say about social media and its immediacy … you cannot unhonk the horn!

Trump or his immediate underlings have blamed a White House staffer for putting the image out there. Pretty damn lame excuse. It speaks graphically to the type of individuals that this White House hires to do the things required of White House staffs. I guess in this case one of those duties is to concoct ghastly images of previous presidents and their spouses, blast them into cyberspace and — I reckon — have a huge laugh over it.

The only Black Republican member of the U.S. Senate, Tim Scott of South Carolina, railed against the image and demanded the White House take it down. The Trump team did so. It does not absolve them of culpability in delivering a hateful message from the very center of the U.S. government.

Donald Trump once promised while running for POTUS in 2016 to surround himself with “the best people.” If this is his example of the “best” this country has to offer … God help us!

media news

Not missing the TV noise

A while ago I decided to keep the TV turned off during the day while I was home piddling and putzing around the house or playing with my puppies.

My concern at the time was whether I would miss what has become “white noise” associated with the chatter coming from what my Dad used to call the “boob tube.” I am happy to make this announcement.

I haven’t missed the noise. Not one teeny, tiny little bit.

I couldn’t have done this as a much younger man or a teenager. I was addicted to TV. I admit it freely and without reservation. That addiction has cured itself partly because I am much longer in the tooth these days and also because the programming bores me out of my pointy-headed skull.

The news? Hah! Fuhgetabout it!

The news might be the most boring element all the programming I formerly watched. Why does it bore me? Partly because it doesn’t tell me what I don’t already know. I am not being snobby. I merely am telling the truth. I follow issues of the day pretty closely through a variety of media forums. TV doesn’t provide much context or new info for me to digest.

Anyhow … the decision awaiting me now is whether I continue to keep the house quiet during the day. Hey, there’s no real decision to make. Of course I intend to keep doing what I’ve been doing.

The news? I’ll stay ready to weigh in when the time is right for it.

local news, media news, Uncategorized

If I had a dollar …

You’ve heard others say it, or perhaps you have said it yourself, that “if I had a dollar for every time … blah, blah, blah.“

I am an old-school media guy. I grew up reading the newspaper that was delivered to our home from front to back. I did so each day. Every day!

My love of newspapers didn’t end when I left home when I was in my quite early 20s. I got married at 21 to a young woman who was 19. We built a nice life together and it involved newspapers. I worked for four of them over the course of nearly 40 years. Two in Oregon. Two in Texas.

My full time career ended in August 2012. The media world was in the midst of a huge change. It’s still underway.

Americans aren’t ready newspapers the way we all once did. So, when someone tells me they still “prefer to read an actual newspaper” that blackens their fingers with printer’s ink, all I can do is chuckle.

Why? Because if I had a dollar for every person who said such a thing to me I’d be a gazillionaire.

I hang out, I reckon, with too many old timers like me, folks who grew up as I did reading newspapers. That includes the advice columns and the horoscopes, man.

I’m all but absolutely certain that were I to hang with younger folks that I would see a much different world than the one I have left behind. Which I suppose brings me to my point. The media are looking for ways to appeal to the younger among us. They are the future. People like me are part of the fading past.

I get it. Totally and completely.

I want to wish the media companies well in their quest for new readership audiences. I also want to wish the younger Americans out there looking for sources to inform them of the events of the day. They’re out there. You just have to look carefully and decide who among those sources are giving it you straight and which of them are foisting their own world view on a gullible ocean of empty skulls.

media news

Texans of the Year? Yes!

I am cheering loudly for the Dallas Morning News’s selection of its 2025 Texans of the Year.

Notice the plural reference because the DMN went outside its norm in making its latest award. It chose the parents and assorted loved ones of the 100 victims of the Hill Country floods that overwhelmed Central Texas on the Fourth of July.

These men and women didn’t spend a lot of time grieving over the loss of their family members and friends. Instead, they got to work pressuring Texas legislators to write laws that they hope will prevent future cataclysmic tragedies of the type that inundated the region near Kerrville, Comfort and the rest of the Hill Country.

Most of the victims were girls who were staying at a Christian camp — Camp Mystic. They got caught in the torrential current of the Guadalupe River.

As a general rule, I often think of these group awards as something akin to participation prizes. Not this time.

The men and women who lost their precious family members and friends chose to use their grief and their anger for something noble and constructive.

They responded like true-blue Texans.

local news, media news

Explaining changes in the media climate

In just a few weeks, I will receive an opportunity to do something I haven’t given much thought about doing … which is to tell a group of friends, associates and maybe even a stranger or two about why the media climate has changed so dramatically in the United States of America.

I will speak to the Farmersville Rotary Club, of which I have been a member for the past few years.

I told our club president this week that I have come up with a concept of the talk I intend to deliver. My task now is to organize it into a document that spells out what I have witnessed and what I have experienced.

I have told friends over the years that I was a victim of the changing media climate. Readers of this blog have read about my tale already. My daily newspaper career came crashing to a halt in August 2012. I have moved on and have rebuilt my life. I had hoped to retire gracefully from my job in Amarillo, but I was denied that opportunity when the publisher decided to hire someone else to do the job I had done there for 18 years. But, hey … that was then. As for the here and now, I am still writing for newspapers, as a freelancer who writes for a group of weeklies in Collin County. Therefore, I am not extinct!

I am not alone among journalists who have been shown the door in unceremonious fashion. Declining newspaper circulation provides plenty of testimony to what has happened to that medium.

Now I get to explain it all to my friends in Farmersville. Why write about this in my blog? I just want to share with you the opportunity I have received to put a little personal perspective on on a worldwide phenomenon.

The good news for me is that my talk will be brief. The difficulty might come in trying to condense it into a bite-sized tale that I believe will have a happy ending.

media news, national news

Change of heart on pledge

A few years ago — I cannot remember precisely when — I pledged to no longer make a resolution to begin the new year.

Why promise to do something that I didn’t expect to be able to do, or so I thought in the moment. Today I am taking back that pledge and declaring a new year resolution for 2026. I believe I can keep this one alive and functioning. I am pledging to use High Plains Blogger to make life as miserable as possible for Donald J. Trump, his administration of yes men and women and the MAGA crowd that remains loyal (for reasons that escape me) to the pretender in chief. I am acutely aware that my reach is somewhat limited. I don’t have a huge audience that reads my rants. I’ll start by asking those who do read them and who agree with my view that Trump is a threat to this country, that he is unfit for the office he occupies and he must be stopped … well, you can share those thoughts on your social media network of friends and acquaintances. Those of you who read this blog but who continue to support the dipshit in chief, you can react to my rants any way you see fit. It’s your call. I’ll be commenting throughout the year on issues that present themselves. My immediate aim is to flip the U.S. House from Republican to Democrat when the ballots are counted for the midterm election. One more word on this issue. If Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents knock on my door, I’ll have my birth certificate and passport handy to prove that I am an American patriot who has read the Constitution … and who understands the free speech liberty it grants for all citizens of this great country.
media news

Living the editorialist’s dream

I guess you can date this phenomenon back to around 9/11, the day the terrorists declared war on the United States of America and thrust us into the global war against terrorism.

It fell on the laps of people like me — who was writing editorials and columns and editing the pages on which we would publish them — to seek to provide context, perspective and leadership through the written word.

The phenomenon of the moment took place in this fashion: Hardly a day went by while I was working as a full-time opinion journalist where I didn’t have something on which to say. That’s right. The task I faced almost every morning when I reported for work was to decide what to set aside for a later publication date.

Many of those who have done what I did for a living for nearly 37 years faced the opposite … finding topics on which to comment to fill a gaping hole on the page. Not me, man! 9/11 introduced us to a whole host of terror-related and national security issues that required commentary from the newspaper. This occurred during the time when newspapers actually meant something to the comunities they served.

Writer’s block? Fuhgettaboutit!

I had a brief bout with writer’s block. It’s passed. My A-game has returned. I am grateful.

I now will continue living the dream … a life as a semi-retired blogger who gets to foist his views on the rest of the world.

media news

Cure for writer’s block?

I am suffering at this moment from a mild case of writer’s block. How do I know it? Because I am writing about it … that’s how!

I never heard this tip from the source himself. It came to me via a fellow editorial writer and editor. He’s a dear friend and he told me that Paul Greenberg, the late, great editorial writer who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 writing for the PIne Bluff (Ark.) Commercial, that the “best way to cure writer’s block is to read the Psalms.”

You’re thinking: How does reading Old Testament Scripture cure writer’s block? My answer? Beats the stuffing out of me. I cannot ask Paul now, sadly, because he’s gone to his great reward.

I figure it will pass. I have gotten them before. They fade away eventually. To be honest, the events of 9/11 I thought had all but cured me of writer’s block. That terrible day unleashed a torrent of responses that demanded commentary, which I was doing in September 2001 writing for the Globe-News in Amarillo, Texas.

I know the president provides grist. To be candid, Donald Trump is boring me. The commentary I hear online and on TV also bores me.

I said the other day I was returning to my bash-Trump self. I still intend to do so.

Just not today.

 

media news, national news

Right-wing response has been laughable

Our friends on the right wing of the political spectrum make my stomach turn with laughable excuses for why some of them seemingly justify Donald Trump’s hideous statement on the stabbing murders of Rob and Michele Reiner.

Some of them have speculated that the left’s response to the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk has given them justification to make crass comments out loud about the Reiners’ murder.

Let me be clear about something. Many GOP pols have criticized Trump’s response as being “callous,” “unpresidential,” “beyond the pale,” and “just plain wrong.” Some of the critics have been longtime MAGA supporters of Trump, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene … who’s now on Trump’s sh** list of former friends turned foe.

I just will add this. The president of the United States should always exercise restraint and good judgment when deciding to comment on matters such as the murder of celebrities whose fame spans the globe. Rob Reiner was an acclaimed filmmaker, director, actor, producer and, yes, a political provocateur. He despised Trump and said so regularly.

That was his right, as guaranteed under the free speech clause in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Believe it not, the president of the United States, by virtue of his very title, really isn’t entitled to speak as openly as Trump frequently does about his political opponents. Sure, he can do so without being prosecuted. However, custom simply means that just because he can do something that he really shouldn’t do it.

Trump crossed an important line of demarcation with that ghastly message sent out over Truth Social. One critic of this blog suggested to me that someone on POTUS’s staff likely wrote it and published it. Well, it still went out over Trump’s name and Donald Trump has seized control of its message.

It just goes to show what kind of individual this nation has elected to its most revered public office.