Name: It's Not News, It's Fark
ISBN: 9781592403660

It's Not News, It's Fark

While comedy shows report funny fake news, Fark.com features funny real news. On slow news days, mainstream media still has to deliver. Fark founder Drew Curtis has noticed several distinct patterns used to turn non-news into the news you see each day. These include: fear-mongering in the absence of facts; the bogus press release, which states a new finding but fails to explain where the numbers came from; media fatigue, when the media exhaust every angle of an existing story rather than digging for something new; and the coverage given to such events as brides who don't want to get married, fake their own kidnapping, and escape cross-country. Such non-news should appear only once, if at all, in mainstream media. So why are we overexposed to such schlock from legitimate news outlets?--From publisher description.

What Hacker News says

protomythDec 2014

If you haven't read "It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News"[1] by Drew Curtis, then I highly recommend it to explain quite a lot of the process and thinking of the news. It might not be the most serious, and it is funny, but it digs into the truths of the beast.

1) http://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-News-Fark-Media/dp/1592403662/

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dublinbenApr 2013

I think the book "It's not news, it's FARK" is the best thing that Drew Curtis has ever done.

http://www.fark.com/2007/book/

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chasingsparksJan 2010

It's Not News, it's fark: http://www.fark.com/2007/book/

Not like the book said anything original, but it has some truly hilarious examples taken from years for following silly stories.

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CrazedGeekOct 2009

It's Not News, It's FARK by Drew Curtis

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

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protomythMar 2019

Its not on the coast or in Chicago or Denver, so it really will only get regional coverage. The book about fark.com "It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News" has a section illustrating this with a crane collapse in Manhattan and then one in St. Louis.

A few years back with that winter storm hit South Dakota and killed a lot of cattle (the cattle were mostly in the summer fields and the weather actually went from freezing rain to blizzard), it wasn't really reported and people wondered what the heck was going on with steak prices. I sometimes wish there was a "trend news" website that reported supply to consumer news.

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zimbabweMay 2009

In Drew Curtis's book It's Not News, It's Fark, he talks about how more than anything, the media loves talking about media, because they understand it the most. That means any huge story almost inevitably turns into reports of "Has the media gone too far?" and "What role do we have in stories' getting out of hand?"

I see no reason why this wouldn't apply to mass-market tech blogs.

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