Uncyclopedia is proud to present a special editorial from Glenn Fitzgerald, author of the best-seller Why The National Socialist Party Still Pisses Me Off. Glenn is the senior editor of The Daily Weekly Times, but is currently on loan to us here at UnNews. 21 March 2010

Jimbo Wales looking down on everyone else. W hen he isn't too busy vandalizing his own online biography, Wikipedia "founder" Jimbo Wales puts on a shirt to cover his bushy chest and actually leaves his house to do what he thinks is contributing to the world. Ones of these self-inflating ego boosts he did recently was attend the "Changing Media Summit 2010", hosted by The Guardian. I attended the summit, being a highly respected senior editor of daily periodical, with high expectations of intelligent debate and original ideas, only to witness Jimbo Wales spewing his diarrhea of the mouth. Among the things of which he commented was that dying media known as the newspaper. It seems ol' Jimbo isn't too big on opinion pieces. One would immediately assume he simply doesn't want any competition to cut into his monopoly on personal bias and inaccurate information in place of objective fact, yet that doesn't seem to be the case. Straight from the horse's mouth: “ I find that the best of the political bloggers are easily equal of the best opinion columnists at the New York Times. I don't see the added value there and I question whether newspapers should be paying large sums of money for that anymore. ”

To be fair, I half-agree with him on this. The New York Times is in no way superior to a random blogger's brainfarts. He goes on: “ I do think the media is going to be strongly impacted by citizen journalism, by citizen participation. I think the models that are going to be successful are hybrid models. ”

Citizen journalism, eh? I suppose that's why he owns and promotes Wikinews, because he believes in this philosophy so dearly. Or perhaps he just wants large sums of money the easy way? Yeah, most likely the second one. See, Jimbo lives up in an ivory tower, one that he put very little actual effort into building himself. Sure, he placed the original framing, but from then on he mostly sat back and watched mindless drones build his majestic tower, all under the idioms of it being "free" and "anyone can edit" it. It's like the old slogan "SLAVERY IS FREEDOM" updated for the information age. While Jimbo is up there sipping his latte, he fails to notice that there is a small, but significant, demographic that still reads newspapers, thus keeping the business from going to way of the telegraph. They generally fall into two categories: Old farts who don't know how to turn on a computer. People too poor to afford internet access. We can skim over the first group, as they have nothing left to contribute to society except making children laugh by stomping on flaming poop bags and making adults laugh with their failed presidential campaigns. No, to whom we should place our focus is the second group. Yes, believe it or not, there are some people who don't have internet access! Rereading that sentence, I know exactly what many of you are thinking: "What?! How dare they spend what little money they have on frivolous things like "food" and "medical bills", instead of the one necessity in life. Yeah, fuck those asswipes!" Well, okay, some of you might not be thinking this, but I guarantee you Jimbo is. Right down to the "fuck those asswipes" comment. Jimbo seems blissfully unaware that the internet doesn't just come out of the wall. As with "free" government programs, you have to pay money to look at "free" porn. Now, $9.95 a month might seem like chump change to King Jimbo the Shit, but to hard-working middle-class folk like us, it's a pretty penny. Besides, you have to ask yourself, why would I pay $9.95 a month to read X's blog when I can pay $1.50 a day to read Y's daily column? This simple logic goes right over Jimbo's perfectly shaped head, demonstrating his painful inability to think things through. This guy never had a blog. Do you think you're a better writer than him? Secondly, there are actually two sides to a newspaper column. The readers, and the writer. Pick any columnist at random and I can tell you their backstory. They worked at fast food restaurants Summer after Summer just to raise enough money to take that college course in journalism. After years of rejection, they finally landed a nice place at the local Sunday newspaper, where they've worked for over 30 years. Struggling to pay bills, feed their children, and pay tithes to church, they have nothing to offer the world but their simple thoughts. It's truely a touching story that pulls at your heartstings. However, in Jimbo Wales' elitist mind, said columnist doesn't even exist. The final point I'd like to make is the fact that newspaper columns have given birth to some of the world's greatest writers, such as Mark Twain. When was the last time a blogger became a classic literary genius? Exactly. Never. Worse still, blogs will almost certainly make books obsolete some day. Is this the future of which you want your children to live? Speech should not be free. It should be profitable! Perhaps I'm a little old fashion? Maybe I need to quit waving my fist and join the 21st century? Very well. I concede that Jimmy Wales is probably correct with his assertion: Not many want to pay money for others to write their opinions. However, I stand by my conviction that even fewer care enough to hear Jimbo Wales' opinions for free. If fact, absolutely nobody would care at all if he wasn't a rich internet douchebag. Indeed, Jimbo Wales tops the list of people whose opinions are completely irrelevant.

Sources [ edit ] "Newspapers wasting money on expensive columnists, says Jimmy Wales" Journalism.co.uk, March 18, 2010