• by Jack Feuer , November 10, 2009

This week, I invite you all to join me in beating the snot out of the pretenders in old and new media who think they know the communications business.

Let's start with the fools who use the Ad Age and Adweek online comment boards to shill for their own shops or enterprises. As in, "Great story, Bob/Barbara/Elie/Jonah. Check out my blog/agency/consultancy/sandwich truck at www.imabottomfeeder.com."

What a schmuckapalooza.

Whining is also a popular ad poster pastime. I'm particularly irked by the fury that erupts on the boards over agency reviews. It's not like this hasn't been a problem for 50 years already. Advertising's challenges are existential, yet industry discourse is dominated by tantrum-throwing toddlers who attack a smart guy like Joe Jaffe because he had the temerity to suggest in a column that agencies stop moaning about how unfair the review process is and actually grow a pair.

What part of "shut the hell up and do something about it" is so hard to activate?

Some questions just don't have answers, I guess.

Here's a concept: Do better work.

Jesus, I need a six-pack of Drank, a gram of indica, a fifth of Patron, some quality porn and a really long nap.

All right, let's move on to the next group of people who should be dipped in cat shit and locked in a cage with a starving pit bull: mainstream media ad reporters.

General-interest media believe advertising stopped in 1990. They call media shops ad agencies. They eschew chronicling the history-bending changes in communications --because they think those are technology or entertainment stories -- for an approach that was dated when Steve Urkel was a cultural touchstone.

With some exceptions (Vranica, Elliott), when the general outlets cover advertising, the results are ripoffs of TV commercial critics, like Garfield and Lippert. Take my local rag, the Los Angeles Times, which is currently running an advertising column written by Dan Neil ... its automotive writer.

Neil won a Pulitzer, so he's no slouch. But how does driving vehicles at high speeds on country roads during press junkets qualify someone to write about advertising? It doesn't. (In today's column, he wrote about Chia pet Obama!)

And of course, it's a Garfield-type column. But even Garfield doesn't just write about TV spots anymore. He also looks at consumer behavior, emerging media, the new digital world and other deep-thinking, big communications picture subjects, especially when he has a book to plug.

Lippert? Not so much. I think she's a sucker for a pretty face, which is probably why she  defended Alex Bogusky's new book this week -- after Neil slammed it, apparently because it's recycled bullshit that gives agencies all the credit and short shrifts the client's role.

Wow. Stop the presses.

This is ironic, considering all the crap we seniors have to take about analog versus digital, because if Dougherty or Lazarus were alive (look it up, children), you damn well know they'd be examining bigger issues than the latest TV spot.

People, you buy media. You should be ripping them a new one about their coverage of your business. Or maybe you're comfortable with the fact that Donny Deutsch is the media's idea of an industry thought leader?

Because if that's the case, there's a starving pit bull I'd like you to meet.