MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH: “For News Outlets Squeezed From the Middle, It’s Bend or Bust,” the New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg notes, in a piece built around the recent Buzzfeed stunt of streaming an exploding watermelon live, generating millions of views in what was basically a glorified 1980s-era Late Night with David Letterman segment. Rutenberg goes on to quote a downhearted freelance journalist who responds “the watermelon … is us,” and Politico co-founder Jim VandeHei who portentously adds, “journalists are killing journalism…[by] stubbornly clinging to the old ways.” That’s defined, Rutenberg writes, “as producing 50 competing but nearly identical stories about a presidential candidate’s latest speech, or 700-word updates on the transportation budget negotiations.”

But note the donkey in the room. At the start of his piece, Rutenberg writes:

Earlier this month, a couple of inventive young go-getters at Buzzfeed tied enough rubber bands around the center of a watermelon to make it explode. Nearly a million people watched the giant berry burst on Facebook Live. It racked up more than 10 million views in the days that followed.

Traditional journalists everywhere saw themselves as the seeds, flying out of the frame. How do we compete with that? And if that’s the future of news and information, what’s next for our democracy? President Kardashian?

Dude — if you’re wondering why, as AP recently noted, the vast majority of Americans don’t trust the MSM, it’s because President Kardashian is in the White House right now. And the Times, the Post, and the Politico and Buzzfeed (self-admitted Journolist member Ben Smith joined Buzzfeed as editor-in-chief in 2011) went all-in to both put him there and prop him up in 2012. So yes, journalists are killing journalism by stubbornly clinging to the old ways — the old ways of being Democrat operatives with bylines. They could change, but that would mean reporting White House scandals, instead of trying to whitewash them away. Until then, don’t be surprised if the public has caught on to the game.