He's Baa-aack

Chris Davis is a writer for the Memphis Flyer; he also does the Fly on the Wall column. We've emailed a time or two and though he's as far left as they come, he's not a bad egg. This fall he took the plunge and started his own blog, The Flypaper Theory. Mostly he was venting the usual anti-Bush spleen. As the Christmas holidays approached, he claimed pressures of work and real life (oh yeah, suuuuure....) and suspended the blog.

Well, he's back and with a bang.

It's no secret that Chris Peck, the CA'stop dog editor has a vision for the paper. He runs press releases createdby the PR departments of various organizations, and he runs them as bylined "special to the Commercial Appeal" stories. On at least one occasion--if memory serves--a colleague pointed out a business-related story written by the subject's mother. Pet pictures have popped up in the new M section. Boondocks has been moved to the Editorial page to appease all the small-minded racists who write letters and complain that the satirical strip is racist.

In previous conversations and e-mail exchanges I've had with the editor he's made it quite clear that he wants to give Memphis a newspaper that looks like Memphis, reflecting the city's values, and chock full of things that the average Memphian is dying to read. And that doesn't sound so bad, now does it? But there's a big problem with the theory.

Making the CAlook more like Memphis really means making Memphians look like they wantto be seen. It’s a funhouse mirror that makes you look 10-pounds lighter and 10-years younger. And that sort of approach is fine for society tabs like RSVP, or the dearly departed Elite Memphis (RIP), but not for the paper of record. In positioning itself as a flatterer and a suck up to institutions by treating unvetted press releases as news, the CA takes on a grating, untrustworthy, and decidedly Eddie Haskell-like smarm.

Much more where this came from. And you know when a loony lefty like Chris (he's so far out he's in the shadow of the "Here There Be Monsters" signs) and a libertarian righty like me agree on something, there must be a nugget of truth. When I first read that the New CA was no longer reporting but now in the business of "telling stories" and "telling the story" of "Greater Memphis," well I didn't need to smell the smoke to know the house was on fire.

Welcome back, Chris.