Annapolis mass murder not Trump's fault - media types disappointed

This is an update of Walt's bare-bones report on the mass murder at the offices of the Capital-Gazette, in Annapolis MD, first posted just after 1700. At that point the body count was 5 dead and 7 wounded, some seriously. Local cops were keeping shtum about the suspect they had taken into custody, supposedly because he had mutilated his fingertips making it difficult to identify him by fingerprints.

Similarly, nobody was saying anything about the shooter's possible motivation. I suggested three possibilities:

- Crazed Islamic terrorist protesting President Trump's "Muslim ban", upheld Tuesday by the Supreme Court. But there are no reports of shouts of "Allahu akbar!" being heard.

- Crazed anti-Trumper protesting President Trump's "Muslim ban" after hearing the ladies of The View denigrate the ban, the President, and SCOTUS, all in one breath.

- Crazed... something or somebody else... maybe an ex-employee who went postal. Who knows?

The (((controlled media))) were quick to jump to the first or second conclusion, leaning to the second when it was learned that the killer was a white man. All too typical was Rob Cox, Global Editor for Thomson Reuters' Breakingviews who tweeted (@rob1cox): "This is what happens when @realDonaldTrump calls journalists the enemy of the people. Blood is on your hands, Mr. President. Save your thoughts and prayers for your empty soul."

Imagine the consternation of Mr Cox (and all the other liberal meeja types who were writing their own similar messages) when the shooter was revealed, by the Baltimore Sun, the owners of the Capital-Gazette, to be 38-year-old "Jarrod W. Ramos, a man with a longstanding dispute with the newspaper." Mr Ramos filed a defamation lawsuit against the paper and one of its columnists in 2012.

Mr Cox has since deleted his tweet and acknowledges "jumping to a conclusion." Although Mr Ramos appears not to be an ex-employee of the newspaper, I think my third guess is close enough to raise my lifetime pct to .989. Keep that in mind any time you want to know what's really going on.

Where to read the news online FREE

Walt's nomination for Worst Invention of the 21st Century (so far) is the paywall. Newspapers desperate to inflate flaccid revenue streams think paywalls are wonderful, but (let us hope) the wish may be father to the thought.

We shall see. Making people pay to read crap online is still highly experimental, as the lamestream print media juggle different models of pricing and content. The San Francisco Chronicle has abandoned its test, but I am unaware of any other major market newspaper that you can read online without paying after a handful of free articles each month.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that readership of online papers goes waaaaay down after they are cloistered behind a firewall. Canada's Globe and Mail has tacitly admitted as much, and now advises would-be readers, when they reach the "free limit" that there's still plenty of stuff to read without paying. Unfortunately the "stuff" is really fluff -- lifestyle, the arts, and similar dreck that fills up space in the print edition. Nobody reads it in print and methinks no-one reads it online either -- not even for free!

It is also reported that the New York Times is building a fairly large online subscriber base. So is The Economist -- the only one Walt pays for -- but it's hard to tell in their case because you get access to the online edition as part of a package with your subscription to the print version.

Can it be that we must rely on TV "news" to find out what's going on in the world? Where can we go to read the news online without being nickel-and-dimed to death? Walt has four recommendations for you, presented in alphabetical order.

ASSOCIATED PRESS - Hey, where do you think the US (and many other countries') newspapers get their stuff from? Cut out the middleman! Best source (IMHO) for US news. Since they serve media outlets from left to right, there's not much political commentary.

BBC - That would stand for "British Broadcasting Corporation", if you're from another planet and didn't know. The website is the Internet version of the BBC World Service. Comprehensive and balanced coverage of news from everywhere, plus sports (too much soccer) and entertainment and other fluff. Best source for news from the UK. Many weird foreign language versions, including Kyrgyz, Nepali and Pashto. Where else could you find that?!

CBCnews - What the BBC is to the UK, the Canadian Broadcorping Castration is to Canada. Very good news website, not quite so "foreign" to American readers. About the only place Canucks can find lots of stories from and about the Great Not-so-white North.

Reuters - The other big source for the lamestream papers. Strong on business and finance. Click on the drop-down menu beside the "Reuters" logo at the top, and you'll find 15 (count `em, 15!) regional editions, including sites for Canada and China.

So there you go. You can unbookmark whichever print rags you've been cursing. These four news websites are all ye need.