Been having a discussion with some friends about network news, reporters, and news shows. My latest thoughts (at 4:00 AM when I coulnd't go back to sleep).
First, I'm pretty close to being a news junkie. I read my local newspaper every day, I read Newsweek every week, I wake up to Morning Edition every weekday and drive home to All Things Considered every evening. During the day I'll find 10 minutes or so to browse cnn.com and nytimes.com. And this doesn't include the 5 - 10 geek web sites I look at pretty much every day and the computer news emails I get every day from the two professional organizations to which I belong. (it is my job, after all.)
But I hardly ever watch TV news and when I do, it is almost always PBS. Every few months I'll tune into one of the major network broadcasts but I'm always disappointed so I don't go back.
Why am I disappointed? Two reasons, I think. First, story selection. Most of the time the selection of stories and their ordering in the network newscast just turns me off. Really, has anyone counted how many times the network news led with a Michael Jackson story this summer? This, I think, is what other folks mean by dumbing down the news. Second, is story length. I'm sure that there are probably terrific field reporters for all the networks but I'll never know that because either their stories don't make it on the air or they are reduced to one minute sound bites. I realize both of these things are driven by network management and the fact that now networks are trying to make a profit from their news organizations, but it doesn't make me want to watch.
I listen to NPR _because_ of the story lengths. Yes, they can get sucked into stupid story sequences (they did too many Michael Jackson stories this summer as well), but generally the longer stories I get to listen to are wonderfully informative. It must be at least once a week that I end up sitting in my garage for 5 minutes or more so I can finish listening to a story on ATC. And because Morning Edition is 1 1/2 hours long and ATC is 2 hours long, they get to report a lot of stuff - stuff I might not hear or see on a network 23 minute broadcast. Neither NPR nor PBS is perfect, but neither am I, just ask my students or my wife.
And, frankly I don't have the time. I listen to the radio a lot because I can do other stuff while I'm listening. And at my age I've given myself permission not to care about some things, and I don't care about TV news anymore (well, except for the Daily Show, but that doesn't really count as news, does it?). I've got too many other things to do than have to sit and watch talking heads babble. And if that makes me a snob, so be it.
Finally, I like to think that all worlds are real. I live in one.
