Jim Bakker likes to build things.
In the old days be built really big things and news consumers with a long attention span will remember how that turned out. Click here for a recent news update.
Today he's building smaller things -- like Ozark cabins for the post-apocalyptic age. Buyers will need lots of Bakker approved religious-home furnishings, of course.
As you would imagine, there are people who want to write about that. The question is whether, in a social-media and Internet journalism age, WRITING about this topic actually requires journalists at a major newspaper in the Midwest to do any new REPORTING, other than with an Internet search engine.
Here's the Kansas City Star headline: "Televangelist Jim Bakker calls his Missouri cabins the safest spot for the Apocalypse." Read this story and count the online and streaming info sources. I'll start you off with the overture:
Televangelist Jim Bakker suggests that if you want to survive the end of days, the best thing you could do is buy one of his cabins in Missouri's Ozark Mountains. And while you're at it, be sure to pick up six 28-ounce "Extreme Survival Warfare" water bottles for $150.
Bakker, 78, made comments promoting his Morningside church community alongside his co-host and wife, Lori, on an episode of "The Jim Bakker Show," which aired Tuesday. The show is filmed there, near Branson.
Then there's a short flashback to the PTL Club days in Charlotte, with no attribution necessary. That's followed by a temptress Jessica Hahn update, care of reporting by The Charlotte Observer a few months ago. Then a bit more history, with no attribution.
Then we're back to information gained by watching the new Bakker show from Branson.
But wait. Read this next part carefully. Is anyone at The Star actually watching the broadcast?
Now, surrounded by buckets of food and "warfare" water bottles in the Ozarks, Bakker is in front of the cameras once again, preparing his viewers for the Apocalypse.
"Where are you going to go when the world's on fire? Where are you going to go? This place is for God's people. ... We need some farmers to move here," Bakker said on Tuesday's show.
The screen cuts to images of the pastor's end-of-the-world cabin homes in Blue Eye, Missouri.
Later in the show, Bakker says the Ozarks is "the safest place to live" versus living in large cities elsewhere in the country, like Chicago and New York, The Christian Post reported.
Right, this key Star Bakker quote from the broadcast appears to have been taken from a report by a Christian-market publication that is notorious for using information from other publications.
It's almost a Zen thing. But wait, check out this next online attribution:
The Friendly Atheist blog says it's unclear what specific research Bakker is citing.
"Bakker is just trying to sell property using the same fictional scare tactics he uses to sell buckets of disgusting glop," the blogger, Hemant Mehta, wrote Thursday.
So what is this, in journalism terms? The obvious answer is "clickbait."
However, as an old, old, old, journalist, I want to know what an editor says when she/he walks over to a young reporter's corner of a table in the common work area and assigns a piece of this kind. What is the noun that is assigned to this product? Help me get a clue, folks.