Yes, print media is officially dead for Superman who is leaving The Daily Planet to become a blogger.
His reasons? Clark Kent has become something of a media critic and no longer wants to work for a newspaper that is pushing entertainment over news.
From Newsarama.com:
. . . this week’s new issue, and the first regular issue by writer Scott Lobdell and artist Ken Rocafort. Superman’s alter ego has been a reporter at the Daily Planet since the 1940s, and his central supporting cast has included employees Perry White, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen for as long.
I wasn’t going to test the waters. I was just going to do a cannonball in the Super-verse,” said Lobdell to USA Today of the big move. The writer is having Kent focus more on his life as Superman, saying that the most powerful man on Earth would have a problem sitting “behind a desk and” taking “instruction from a larger conglomerate with concerns that aren’t really his own.”
This isn’t just a kid having a tantrum though, as Clark will take a stand against the media’s move towards being more entertainment and less news. He even makes a comment about “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” being the goal that media, and people in general, should strive towards.
Entertainment reporter and longtime Daily Planet mainstay Cat Grant will be quitting alongside Clark, completing his Jerry Maguire moment, and joining up with him to create “the next Huffington Post or the next Drudge Report,” said Lobdell.
So if you’re a blogger and don’t need to go to the office everyday as a superhero in disguise, what becomes of the Clark Kent character? For the moment, the newspaper man will still be around since he – like all journalists making this move – will have to deal with the ramifications of leaving the paper and working online. Whether or not he still appears in the future probably depends on whether or not the superhero has to make public appearances as a blogger. He could always be like the late Andrew Breitbart and take over a press conference or two, or like Andrew Sullivan and do interviews with other media outlets.
If this doesn’t signal the death knell for traditional news media, I don’t know what does. Perhaps the bankruptcy of The Daily Planet? Having it sold for a dollar?
