… and with close to zero income as online blogger you better be Superman!
Superman’s alter ego Clark Kent is to quit The Daily Planet newspaper in protest at the state of modern journalism.
Clark Kent is likely to become an online blogger rather than attempt to find work at another of Metropolis’s media outlets
– Superman quits The Daily Planet – over the state of journalism (Telegraph Oct 23, 2012):
For more than 70 years Superman has fought off a host of enemies, who have tried and failed to get the better of him.
But finally the Man of Steel has been worn down, to the point of submission.
It is not his arch nemesis Lex Luthor who has finally defeated Clark Kent however, rather it is the state of modern journalism.
In a new edition published on Wednesday, Clark Kent will quit the newspaper for which he has worked almost continuously since the superhero’s inception in 1938.
According to the man who wrote the script, Clark Kent is likely to become an online blogger rather than attempt to find work at another of Metropolis’s media outlets.
His bombshell departure will take place in the latest DC Comics offering, Superman 13.
Kent is summoned to the office of Perry White, the Planet’s publisher, and given a dressing down for his lack of stories.
When Kent complains that it has been a “slow news week” he is told, by Lois Lane, now a television producer, that it is a poor excuse, prompting him to begin a rant about the state of modern journalism which ends with him quitting the paper.
“Why am I the one sounding like a grizzled ink-stained wretch who believes news should be about – I don’t know – news?” he asks.
His question prompts White to respond with a devastating critique of newspaper journalism: “Times are changing and print is a dying medium.
“I don’t like it but the only hope we have of delivering any news at all is to give the people what they want to read and God help me if a front-page story about some reality star gets them to pick up a paper and maybe stumble on some real news ” the publisher continues.
After a second heated discussion with Morgan Edge, the paper’s owner, Kent quits.
Scott Lobdell, the writer behind the script, explained his motives behind Superman’s departure from the Planet in an interview with USA Today.
“This is really what happens when a 27-year-old guy is behind a desk and he has to take instruction from a larger conglomerate with concerns that aren’t really his own,” he said.
“Superman is arguably the most powerful person on the planet, but how long can he sit at his desk with someone breathing down his neck and treating him like the least important person in the world?”
Asked about where the superhero might next find gainful employment, Lobdell added: “He is more likely to start the next Huffington Post or the next Drudge Report than he is to go find someone else to get assignments or draw a paycheck from.”
It is not the first time Clark Kent has left the Daily Planet. When Galaxy Broadcasting bought The Daily Planet in 1971, he had a short spell as a broadcaster before returning to the paper.
A spokesman for DC comics confirmed the departure: “This is not the first time in DC Comics history that Clark Kent has left the Planet, and this time the resignation reflects present-day issues – the balance of journalism vs. entertainment, the role of new media, the rise of the citizen journalist, etc.”