Product Description

From the creator of Fark.com, an exposé on the media gone awry, revealing the hysterical, often outrageous non-news that passes for newsworthy today

Have you ever found yourself noticing certain patterns in the news you see and read each day? Perhaps it’s the blatant fear-mongering in the absence of facts on your local 6 o’clock news (“Tsunami could hit the Atlantic any day!” EVERYBODY PANIC), or the seasonal articles that appear year after year like clockwork (“Roads will be crowded this holiday season.” Thanks AAA.). IT’S NOT NEWS, IT’S FARK is Drew Curtis’ clever examination of the state of the media today and a hilarious look at the go-to stories mass media uses when there's just not enough hard news to fill a newspaper or a news broadcast. Who is to blame for non-news in the media? Is it the media, or the media consumer and their website-clicking habits? Or does the answer lie somewhere in between? IT'S NOT NEWS, IT'S FARK takes a crack at why

Drew exposes eight stranger-than-fiction media patterns that prove just how little reporting is going on in the world of reporters today. Regardless of whether it’s a slow news day, mainstream media still has to deliver. IT’S NOT NEWS, IT’S FARK examines all the “news” that was never fit for print in the first place, and promises to have you laughing (with the media, mind you, not at them...) along the way. Let the hilarity ensue.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #160179 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-31
• Released on: 2007-05-31
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The editorial principle behind Curtis's Web Site Fark.com is remarkably simple: readers submit news stories with their own wacky headlines, inviting snarky commentary from other readers. Here, he steps back to examine why "Mass Media" keeps churning out the sort of inane stories that are "supposed to look like news" that make the site so wildly popular. The critique is familiar—see Barry Glassner's The Culture of Fear, among others—but Curtis delivers it with richly sarcastic humor. A section on hysteria over unlikely disasters, for example, punctures alarmist stories with one-line synopses like "Oh my God, there's bacteria on everything." Other chapters explore fake news trends, such as "Equal Time for Nutjobs," which explains how 9/11 conspiracy theories manage to get public airing, or the proliferation of nonevents that are little more than publicity stunts. But the anger behind his criticisms of media companies for producing such nonsense is defused by the acknowledgment that readers actually want to be titillated. Unfortunately, the pleasure of reading Fark.com online, where you can always add your own two cents to the conversation, doesn't always translate to the printed page; old user comments aren't so much comic relief as tacked-on disruption. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Curtis, founder of the hugely popular Web site Fark.com, recalls how and why he got the idea to feature news that is really "Not News." The genesis for the site was correspondence Curtis exchanged with a friend he'd met while living in England; much of it was trading odd news stories. On a whim, in 1997 he registered the domain name Fark.com while he pondered what to post. He decided to use the site as a clearinghouse for odd bits of news and commentary by contributors. Curtis includes excerpts from Fark.com--searching for modern descendents of Genghis Khan, tools Britons use for flossing--and biting commentary on modern news gathering, which Curtis complains has grown inane under the pressure of a 24/7 news cycle. Among his criticisms: canned seasonal stories, out-of-context celebrity comments, articles that are actually advertisements, and headlines that contradict articles. What's most fun about Fark.com, which is used by radio DJs and commercial news outlets, is its rewritten headlines and streaming commentary. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
...a supremely simple set up. . . .Fark is a must read at many media outlets. -- Time, a 2004 article naming Drew Curtis as one of five Bloggers to Watch

It's Not News, It's Fark is an insightful examination of how mass media is drowning in filler and fluff. Still, it could have used a chapter on Boobies. -- The Smoking Gun

As a member of the news media, I can state authoritatively that this book will cure cancer AND end global warming. -- Dave Barry, humorist and bestselling author

Fark is to the mainstream media as something is to something. (I leave it up to Drew Curtis' innate cleverness to fill in the appropriate blanks.) -- Bill Schultz, Producer, Fox News' Red Eye

I find it hilarious and sadly disturbing that I've spent fifteen years of my life in a goddamned newsroom, and yet Drew Curtis has learned enough about what we do -- because our methods are so transparent and simplistic -- that he can write a book about media trends and pretty much nail it. -- Chez Pazienza, Producer, CNN

Lewd, crude, and traffic-generating Fark.com invites its community of ad hoc commentators to participate in an ongoing brutal but frequently witty dissection of current news stories that sometimes turns into news itself. When the site recently green lighted a news item under the descriptive headline "Anna Nicole Smith's condition downgraded to dead," Reuters and other international news outlets reported the crack. The enterprise is still primarily run by one guy: founder and smart-ass Drew Curtis. In January 2007, he launched Fark TV on the SuperDeluxe comedy video site. He is also scheduled to release a book titled It's not news, it's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass of Crap as News in May 2007. (Yeah, but your media watchdog wants crap!) -- PC World magazine on the "50 Most Important People online"

This is that absolute rarity: the right book at the right time. It puts the news in perspective--and Mass Media on the spot--by showing how little of it is news at all. I laughed, I cried, I wised up. In fact, at one point I laughed so hard I almost threw up. Readers who want to know where that happened need to buy this book and read the item about Homeland Security and goats. -- Stephen King

Customer Reviews

Fark Dis
The Fark.com website is a hilarious indictment of the ridiculousness and uselessness of Mass Media, and this here book is meant mostly for laughs. (Solid in-depth critiques of stupid news, usually with a focus on corporate/advertiser pressure, are easily found elsewhere.) On the good side, Drew Curtis has some pretty good insights on why news is so dumb these days, from the perspective of the informed outside observer. Good examples are his solid hatchet jobs on news coverage of Janet Jackson's Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction or Dick Cheney's face shooting incident. Curtis also has a pretty well-considered closing chapter on how Mass Media is failing in light of the Internet, shooting down the old boys who continue to live with their heads in the sand.

But Curtis keeps falling back into thin examples of ridiculous stories that amount to little more than a boring list. There is also a lot of unintentional irony here, as Curtis is guilty of many of weaknesses that he sarcastically condemns from Mass Media. For example, he blasts mainstream journalists for a lack of fact-checking. But here he states that Alexander Hamilton is on the $20 bill; and says he was in middle school when Johnny Carson left his show (1992) after earlier saying several times that he was in college in the early 90s. Also, Curtis slams journalists for pasting old material into new stories to take up space. But a large amount of space in this book is pasted submissions from the Fark.com message board. A few of these are surprisingly insightful but most are the cheeky pseudo-commentary that you'd expect.

This book is still good for laughs as you read about instances of stupid journalism from lazy journalists. But it's unclear how serious Curtis is trying to be in terms of analysis and insight on very important media issues. But in the end, this book gives the impression that it doesn't take its subject matter too seriously. Readers with the same mindset will enjoy it - for a while. [~doomsdayer520~]

Great book!
WOW! What an awesome book. My table has leaned to the right for years. I bought this book and now my table is level and doesn't wobble. Thanks Drew!

Don't read it, it's a trap!
Admiral Ackbar and a squirrel with nuts the size of bowling balls were huffing gold paint and being general attention whores and failed to inspire a huge manatee into bursting into flames. Really a boring story...