Suck

for 24 September 1996. Updated every TUESDAY.



	Lexis-Nexis meets Business Wire...
	*on the web!*

	An easily searchable web-based archive of
	official statements and advertising copy,
	Flacksis.com is the one-stop source that
	helps turn journalistic investigation
	into press-release regurgitation.

	Originally used mostly as a legal
	information service, the computer
	database Lexis-Nexis has profoundly
	changed journalism by giving "reporters"
	easy access to almost everything
	previously written about a given subject.
	The proprietary online service isn't
	cheap, but it saves so much time that
	even the most penny-pinching of newsrooms
	is reluctant to cut it, lest reporters
	actually have to leave their desks and
	rake through muck the old-fashioned way.
	*Unfortunately, what it doesn't* provide is**
	often the most important ingredient in
	today's news stories: a press release. If
	said spin were available in a searchable
	database, reporters could at last take
	their phones off the hook and concentrate
	on punditry and the ever-important
	business of interacting with readers.



	Flacksis.com solves this problem - for a
	profit-generating price. Based on the
	World Wide Web - where the line between
	hacks and flacks is already as fuzzy as
	the space between Pant-o-meter settings -
	the service scales pricing to a
	publication's size, thus ensuring that
	even the smallest zine can be reached by
	the circumlocutory powers of corporate
	spin control. If the Internet will make
	us all journalists, Flacksis.com will
	make sure we're not all up at 3 A.M.
	following firefighters. Naturally,
	companies will pay handsomely to have
	their promotional materials posted on the
	service. For an additional fee, clients
	will even be able to retroactively alter
	overly optimistic press release
	predictions to bring them in line with
	subsequent reality.

	While designing the Flacksis.com database
	would generate significant start-up
	costs, the project would be dirt-cheap to
	run from then on. Site maintenance would
	be fairly inexpensive, and all of the
	service's content represents profit - not
	expense. Best of all, the site requires
	no expensive promotion or advertising.
	Instead, plans call for giving free
	Flacksis accounts to high school and
	college newspapers, thus ensuring that
	the next generation of journalists never
	learns how to live without it. By the
	time those young people become
	professionals, they'll be so desperate to
	hide their lack of reporting skills that
	Flacksis's steep monthly charge will seem
	like a bargain. As "What? Are you on
	Flack?" comes to replace today's snappy
	rejoinder to slothful Zeitgeist surfing,
	Flacksis will release a particularly
	scathing statement denying the
	similarities between this
	try-now-pay-later promotion and the way
	hard drugs are sold. Easily accessible in
	the Flacksis database, it will slowly and
	inexorably take on the ring of truth.

courtesy of Dr. Dreidel