Great news coverage is often a combination of great ideas and luck.
Somebody at NBC had the great idea of putting a reporter inside the Superdome as Hurricane Katrina approached on Sunday.
Hard to say who had the idea, but I know this: when it became apparent that the hurricane was a major storm, possibly history-making, most news organizations called a brainstorming session. The primary question: if Katrina is to make history, how do we best capture that history? This question’s source goes back to a famous quote about journalism, and I wish I could remember the source. The quote: journalism is history shot on the wing.
At NBC’s meeting, all sorts of data lay in front of the editors, producers and reporters. It became known that the Superdome would be put into use as a shelter for those who couldn’t obey mandatory evacuation orders or find shelter elsewhere. The idea must have become quickly obvious: thousands of people in a landmark stadium, closed to the heat but maybe not to noise. Why not put a reporter inside the stadium with the “refugees” on Sunday and let him or her ride it out? A great source of human interest quotes and stories, if nothing else, and maybe an interesting storm experience as well . . .
My guess is that Brian Williams, the new NBC Evening News anchor and also the “managing editor” of NBC News, had the idea. If he didn’t, he quickly seized the authority to be the reporter inside the Superdome. As he did, he was remembering another great reporter. In 1961, cars and trucks were streaming inland from Galveston as Hurricane Carla approached the Texas coast. One car, though, was going the other way, toward Galveston and the beaches. In the car was Dan Rather, who reported Hurricane Carla’s arrival from the Galveston sea wall.
NBC News, via the “Today” show this morning, went straight to Williams inside the Superdome, who told of the stadium’s ceiling being peeled away by the hurricane winds, and rain spouting to the Superdome’s floor, as if from a garden hose. Strange, anywhere else but a newsroom, to call such an incident luck, but Williams, by being there, had walked into what would emerge as the headline image of Hurricane Katrina.
For 20 years, when a major disaster story broke, I always went straight to CNN. Seems like it didn’t take CNN more than a couple of minutes to be on top of disaster, whether it was in Turkey or Northridge. But today, CNN’s reporter on the scene stood outside the Superdome, reporting what she could, but obviously distressed that she didn’t have more to report.
I didn’t survey all the channels; maybe another organization had a reporter inside the Superdome. But it sure raised my opinion of NBC, and of its decision to create its 24-hour news cousin on cable and the Web, msnbc. It is a brilliant fit in the new journalism world: a leading national broadcast news organization with a celebrity anchor, feeding its Web arm stuff that was literally inside. The msnbc.com lead story at noon today: “NBC’s Brian Williams hunkers down with Katrina refugees inside Superdome.” Ten minutes later, a new Web post, written by Williams. The lede: “Tonight’s (Evening News) broadcast may be one of those forays into seat-of-the-pants television that we attempt on occasion. We’re in the cement catacombs of the Superdome, which is sopping wet throughout, the roof long since having yielded to Katrina’s persistent advances . . . . Tonight’s broadcast ought to be interesting, and we hope you’ll join us for it.”
Brilliant use of journalism’s powerful new technologies. But the idea was ages-old: go to where the news is or is likely to be.
August 29, 2005
August 28, 2005
Karen in light
Karen’s skin does amazing things with light as it comes in from the window.
It was something that I needed to be captured and interpreted in a portrait. I commissioned Dottie Stanley, the San Diego artist whose work is noted for the way she sees and handles light.
She came to Alta Mira and did a photo study, taking maybe 100 photos of Karen by the window in the kitchen nook, in the study, and by the French doors that open onto the west terrace. When they were developed, she brought back about a dozen to show me.
I selected one, and gave Dottie a second photo, that she liked and that I had taken, of Karen in a red jacket in light from the west windows. Dottie thought the light in that photo was terrific, and hit Karen in just the right way, and I couldn’t disagree.
Dottie said she would do a portrait from both photos, then I could select one, and the other would go into her portfolio. Six or seven weeks later, she came back with the portraits. Both were terrific, but I immediately fell in love with the one of Karen by the French doors. In it, she is not looking straight at you, but down and to the side, in a pensive posture with arms folded in front of her.
As we talked, it became apparent that Dottie liked the other one best, and I agreed it was a great portrait, Karen in the light, smiling in this one and looking at me. Karen liked that one best, too. It caught her eyes perfectly, she said. But viscera is viscera, and all my visceral content wrapped around the pensive Karen and held her tight.
Dottie said she could leave both portraits with us for awhile, and as friends dropped by, we would ask which they liked best. A month passed, and all friends who dropped by preferred the perfect-eyes portrait. I gave them their say but clung to my favorite.
A couple of days ago, Dottie called. She was having a showing at a café, and would I bring the portrait we weren’t going to keep. It was a hard choice, even when my choice was so clear. Both portraits were on display, one by the front door and the other where we could see it both from the living room and kitchen.
Karen has not been exactly comfortable with either portrait, as I might not be, either, if there were two oils of me in the living room. Not too many people, in fact, would know how that felt. Talking about which one to keep, Karen’s comfort with her portraits had a definite lean to one over the other. The one she preferred was not her pensive self.
It was an easy decision. Didn’t take me a minute, sitting there in silence. It didn’t ease my visceral grip any. For two days now I have clung to the pensive portrait, but this afternoon I will take it to the café and give it back to Dottie. My compensation – there is always compensation – is knowing how romantic it will be, to let this portrait go, a love forever lost, not know where it is, who purchased it (I'm not going to let Dottie tell me), where it hangs, who is the person who loves it as I do. With its element of a beautiful woman caught in a moment of pensive mystery, it is clearly the more commercial painting of the two, and thus the appropriate one to return, to find its special admirers in the world, and I like that.
And there is the chance I will walk into the grand salon of a beautiful residence one day and there she will be. Romantic as hell, I tell you. Meantime, every morning, I see Karen with her perfect eyes and red jacket by the front door, and I love her there, and then I see the subject herself, and I see in what her face is doing with that morning’s light what the artist will never see, and that, naturally, is forever original, and priceless.
It was something that I needed to be captured and interpreted in a portrait. I commissioned Dottie Stanley, the San Diego artist whose work is noted for the way she sees and handles light.
She came to Alta Mira and did a photo study, taking maybe 100 photos of Karen by the window in the kitchen nook, in the study, and by the French doors that open onto the west terrace. When they were developed, she brought back about a dozen to show me.
I selected one, and gave Dottie a second photo, that she liked and that I had taken, of Karen in a red jacket in light from the west windows. Dottie thought the light in that photo was terrific, and hit Karen in just the right way, and I couldn’t disagree.
Dottie said she would do a portrait from both photos, then I could select one, and the other would go into her portfolio. Six or seven weeks later, she came back with the portraits. Both were terrific, but I immediately fell in love with the one of Karen by the French doors. In it, she is not looking straight at you, but down and to the side, in a pensive posture with arms folded in front of her.
As we talked, it became apparent that Dottie liked the other one best, and I agreed it was a great portrait, Karen in the light, smiling in this one and looking at me. Karen liked that one best, too. It caught her eyes perfectly, she said. But viscera is viscera, and all my visceral content wrapped around the pensive Karen and held her tight.
Dottie said she could leave both portraits with us for awhile, and as friends dropped by, we would ask which they liked best. A month passed, and all friends who dropped by preferred the perfect-eyes portrait. I gave them their say but clung to my favorite.
A couple of days ago, Dottie called. She was having a showing at a café, and would I bring the portrait we weren’t going to keep. It was a hard choice, even when my choice was so clear. Both portraits were on display, one by the front door and the other where we could see it both from the living room and kitchen.
Karen has not been exactly comfortable with either portrait, as I might not be, either, if there were two oils of me in the living room. Not too many people, in fact, would know how that felt. Talking about which one to keep, Karen’s comfort with her portraits had a definite lean to one over the other. The one she preferred was not her pensive self.
It was an easy decision. Didn’t take me a minute, sitting there in silence. It didn’t ease my visceral grip any. For two days now I have clung to the pensive portrait, but this afternoon I will take it to the café and give it back to Dottie. My compensation – there is always compensation – is knowing how romantic it will be, to let this portrait go, a love forever lost, not know where it is, who purchased it (I'm not going to let Dottie tell me), where it hangs, who is the person who loves it as I do. With its element of a beautiful woman caught in a moment of pensive mystery, it is clearly the more commercial painting of the two, and thus the appropriate one to return, to find its special admirers in the world, and I like that.
And there is the chance I will walk into the grand salon of a beautiful residence one day and there she will be. Romantic as hell, I tell you. Meantime, every morning, I see Karen with her perfect eyes and red jacket by the front door, and I love her there, and then I see the subject herself, and I see in what her face is doing with that morning’s light what the artist will never see, and that, naturally, is forever original, and priceless.
August 25, 2005
Cindy Sheehan, manipulatrix?
Cindy Sheehan is the woman who has made camp up the road from the Texas White House, the President’s ranch near Crawford, Texas, insisting on an audience with President Bush about the Iraq war, where her son was killed.
National Public Radio did a story on Sheehan, in which it described her as "unsophisticated." This brought a response from an NPR listener, who objected to the word "unsophisticated." It did not apply, he said, to a woman who was as skilled as Cindy Sheehan at manipulating the media.
I object to the word "manipulating," in its suggestion that Sheehan, in her supposed sophistication, used some specific manipulative skill, knowledge or tricks to get the media to do her bidding.
What was the media supposed to do? Suppose I am the editor of the Crawford Daily Paralyzer, and I get a phone call from a farmer on the way into Crawford with a load of hogs when he sees Sheehan on the first day, setting up her camp on the side of the road.
"Say," he says to me. "There’s a woman out here, down the road about a mile from Bush’s place, pitched a tent, some signs up about her being the mother of a guy killed in Iraq and she says she’s going to stay there until Bush comes out and talks to her about it."
As the Daily Paralyzer editor, and a seasoned journalist, I am always going to have one of two reactions to any such telephone call as that (and believe me, they come into newsrooms all the time). I am either going to say, "Well, thanks for the call, but it doesn’t sound like a story to me," or, "I’ll have a reporter check it out."
So I listen, and I think: dead soldier’s mom camped out on the caliche, must be 100 degrees outside and severe thunderstorms in the forecast, and she says she is going to stay there until Bush comes out and talks to her. Classic David and Goliath story. So I say: "I’ll have a reporter check it out."
Should I feel manipulated? If somebody called and said, "There’s a lot of people staring at the water tower, say they sure do see a likeness of the Virgin Mary there," should I feel manipulated when I holler at a reporter to go check it out?
Then it’s up to the reporter to go out and get the facts, bring them back and write the story. When I read the story, if there’s something about it that doesn’t sound right, I won’t run it. I’ll give it back to the reporter to go get whatever information the story needs. As the by God editor of The Crawford Daily Paralyzer, I am not going to be manipulated by some media hound, I can tell you that.
Media editors make these kinds of decisions every day, all day long. It is possible that Cindy Sheehan prepared press releases and sent them to the Crawford and Waco papers. Is that manipulation? When I hand the press release to a reporter and say, "Go check it out," should I feel manipulated? Here we have a dead soldier’s mom camping on a Texas road in Texas summer weather waiting to talk to the President of the United States, and I don’t go check that out?
So I check it out, publish the story, the Waco stringer in Crawford reads it, the Waco paper picks it up, and the television news, and pretty soon NPR is sitting on the caliche, nervously watching the thunderstorms approaching, and talking to Cindy Sheehan. Is she sophisticated? Unsophisticated? A manipulatrix?
It really doesn’t matter. She isn’t the story. Her dead son is, the war in Iraq is, and the President is. Cindy Sheehan is such a small part of the story that she would give anything not to be there.
National Public Radio did a story on Sheehan, in which it described her as "unsophisticated." This brought a response from an NPR listener, who objected to the word "unsophisticated." It did not apply, he said, to a woman who was as skilled as Cindy Sheehan at manipulating the media.
I object to the word "manipulating," in its suggestion that Sheehan, in her supposed sophistication, used some specific manipulative skill, knowledge or tricks to get the media to do her bidding.
What was the media supposed to do? Suppose I am the editor of the Crawford Daily Paralyzer, and I get a phone call from a farmer on the way into Crawford with a load of hogs when he sees Sheehan on the first day, setting up her camp on the side of the road.
"Say," he says to me. "There’s a woman out here, down the road about a mile from Bush’s place, pitched a tent, some signs up about her being the mother of a guy killed in Iraq and she says she’s going to stay there until Bush comes out and talks to her about it."
As the Daily Paralyzer editor, and a seasoned journalist, I am always going to have one of two reactions to any such telephone call as that (and believe me, they come into newsrooms all the time). I am either going to say, "Well, thanks for the call, but it doesn’t sound like a story to me," or, "I’ll have a reporter check it out."
So I listen, and I think: dead soldier’s mom camped out on the caliche, must be 100 degrees outside and severe thunderstorms in the forecast, and she says she is going to stay there until Bush comes out and talks to her. Classic David and Goliath story. So I say: "I’ll have a reporter check it out."
Should I feel manipulated? If somebody called and said, "There’s a lot of people staring at the water tower, say they sure do see a likeness of the Virgin Mary there," should I feel manipulated when I holler at a reporter to go check it out?
Then it’s up to the reporter to go out and get the facts, bring them back and write the story. When I read the story, if there’s something about it that doesn’t sound right, I won’t run it. I’ll give it back to the reporter to go get whatever information the story needs. As the by God editor of The Crawford Daily Paralyzer, I am not going to be manipulated by some media hound, I can tell you that.
Media editors make these kinds of decisions every day, all day long. It is possible that Cindy Sheehan prepared press releases and sent them to the Crawford and Waco papers. Is that manipulation? When I hand the press release to a reporter and say, "Go check it out," should I feel manipulated? Here we have a dead soldier’s mom camping on a Texas road in Texas summer weather waiting to talk to the President of the United States, and I don’t go check that out?
So I check it out, publish the story, the Waco stringer in Crawford reads it, the Waco paper picks it up, and the television news, and pretty soon NPR is sitting on the caliche, nervously watching the thunderstorms approaching, and talking to Cindy Sheehan. Is she sophisticated? Unsophisticated? A manipulatrix?
It really doesn’t matter. She isn’t the story. Her dead son is, the war in Iraq is, and the President is. Cindy Sheehan is such a small part of the story that she would give anything not to be there.
August 23, 2005
Speeding toward 2055
I was doing some research, making notes on the commercials shown during the CBS Evening News. Only during programs like the CBS Evening News can you find the only remaining commercials aimed at my 60-something male demographic, and I thought it worthwhile to gather some details.
But as I was gathering, I started unconsciously itemizing the news elements as well. At the end of the 30 minutes, the CBS Evening News had presented 14 news stories and 20 commercials.
That means the program gave us 34 elements in 30 minutes, or an average of one element every 53 seconds.
The result begs two questions.
Where is the depth?
How can we possibly absorb information that fast?
The answer to the first question is that there is no depth. You get depth from print, not from television.
The answer to the second question is that we can in fact absorb information much faster than one element every 53 seconds. Two or three of the commercials were five seconds long. Two or three of the stories were 10-second stories. Hardly any of the commercials were more than 15 seconds long.
Slowly but surely in the last 30 years, humans have been programmed to save corporations money. The ATM card was an early example, and then phone trees, and other technical examples where the work load of expensive tellers, cashiers and clerks has been shifted to individual consumers.
In the case of the CBS Evening News, consumers have been trained to interpret images quickly. The quicker we can interpret an image, the more bang the advertiser gets for every buck. Say the program charges $100,000 per 30 seconds of commercial time. If an advertiser has an image it thinks we can understand in five seconds, why buy a 30-second commercial for $100,000, when they can do the five-second shot for $17,000?
In this way, 20 commercials can be fitted into a 30-minute evening news program that supposedly encapsulates all the major events happening that day in a very busy world. The news side obviously is behind the commercial side, able to present only 14 news elements in the half-hour. Journalism is not yet to the point where a news anchor can look into the camera and say, "Osama bin Laden," and expect the consumer to know exactly what he is talking about, the way we understand the message when someone comes on the screen and says, "Pepsi."
At this point I am compelled to look backward 50 years, and then forward 50 years. In 1955 in my hometown there were two television stations, there was no evening news, and the commercials were 60 seconds long, or more. I was able to process these images well enough to understand what was going on.
If, however, you lifted me out of 1955 and transported me to 2005, sat me down and put a remote in my hand, it wouldn’t be five minutes before my head exploded.
As it is, it took me 50 years, one day at a time, to learn to process images fast enough to make sense of the CBS Evening News in 2005. That I can do it at all, affirms the suggestion of the neuro researchers that we have only begun to explore the power of the human brain.
Now I am imagining the year 2055, 50 years from now, and looking back to 2005, amazed by how primitive we were, able to absorb only 34 elements in the CBS Evening News. In 2055, we have learned to see and process two images at the same time, so that we’re watching 30 straight minutes of news and commercials side-by-side, or super-imposed, or whatever.
How weird could such a world be? No weirder than 1955, I can tell you.
But as I was gathering, I started unconsciously itemizing the news elements as well. At the end of the 30 minutes, the CBS Evening News had presented 14 news stories and 20 commercials.
That means the program gave us 34 elements in 30 minutes, or an average of one element every 53 seconds.
The result begs two questions.
Where is the depth?
How can we possibly absorb information that fast?
The answer to the first question is that there is no depth. You get depth from print, not from television.
The answer to the second question is that we can in fact absorb information much faster than one element every 53 seconds. Two or three of the commercials were five seconds long. Two or three of the stories were 10-second stories. Hardly any of the commercials were more than 15 seconds long.
Slowly but surely in the last 30 years, humans have been programmed to save corporations money. The ATM card was an early example, and then phone trees, and other technical examples where the work load of expensive tellers, cashiers and clerks has been shifted to individual consumers.
In the case of the CBS Evening News, consumers have been trained to interpret images quickly. The quicker we can interpret an image, the more bang the advertiser gets for every buck. Say the program charges $100,000 per 30 seconds of commercial time. If an advertiser has an image it thinks we can understand in five seconds, why buy a 30-second commercial for $100,000, when they can do the five-second shot for $17,000?
In this way, 20 commercials can be fitted into a 30-minute evening news program that supposedly encapsulates all the major events happening that day in a very busy world. The news side obviously is behind the commercial side, able to present only 14 news elements in the half-hour. Journalism is not yet to the point where a news anchor can look into the camera and say, "Osama bin Laden," and expect the consumer to know exactly what he is talking about, the way we understand the message when someone comes on the screen and says, "Pepsi."
At this point I am compelled to look backward 50 years, and then forward 50 years. In 1955 in my hometown there were two television stations, there was no evening news, and the commercials were 60 seconds long, or more. I was able to process these images well enough to understand what was going on.
If, however, you lifted me out of 1955 and transported me to 2005, sat me down and put a remote in my hand, it wouldn’t be five minutes before my head exploded.
As it is, it took me 50 years, one day at a time, to learn to process images fast enough to make sense of the CBS Evening News in 2005. That I can do it at all, affirms the suggestion of the neuro researchers that we have only begun to explore the power of the human brain.
Now I am imagining the year 2055, 50 years from now, and looking back to 2005, amazed by how primitive we were, able to absorb only 34 elements in the CBS Evening News. In 2055, we have learned to see and process two images at the same time, so that we’re watching 30 straight minutes of news and commercials side-by-side, or super-imposed, or whatever.
How weird could such a world be? No weirder than 1955, I can tell you.
August 22, 2005
That old-time journalism
Classes begin today at the community college (Grossmont College in El Cajon, near San Diego)where I teach journalism.
It is the beginners’ course, pure, unadulterated Journalism 101, and I will teach it the same way I taught it 10 years ago, and the same way I learned it 35 years ago.
My goodness, journalism has changed in 35 years. The newspaper where I began my career was still using linotypes, mats and printing plates, and computers were still huge machines in large rooms with carefully controlled air conditioning.
Many changes in journalism have been for the better, and many changes have been for the worse, and it is the second set of changes that gets all the headlines these days. The news media is under attack from the left, the right, the government, academia, the intelligentsia, and most every online pundit in the blogmos.
The attacks are mostly political and mostly economics-driven. For example, one influential poll suggests that 79 percent of Americans believe that a news organization would be in no hurry to run stories about a corporation that was one of the organization’s heavy advertisers.
And that’s just corporations that are advertisers. Since corporations now own many of the most visible and influential news organizations, you see how the public mistrust can grow.
But that’s all politics and economics. Something is going to have to be done about the effects of economic competition on news organizations, and it will.
The news, however, has not changed. The three cardinal rules of journalism have not changed, nor have the three priorities. The definition of news is the same as it was 16,000 years ago, at the birth of media. The news values have changed somewhat, as people have changed. Sex is an outright news value now, whereas 40 years ago sex was officially taboo. The prominence value has changed, too. It is much more prominent in a nation of celebrity worship.
And so we take that into account. But at the end of the day, news is still the result of raw information that journalists are sent to investigate, to see if news is there. My class begins with analysis of raw information because that is where the news begins. If the analysis shows that news is there (and by far, most raw information is not news), we move on to organizing the information, using the classic Inverted Pyramid model, and then we write the information into a story, using short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
First we learn to do this for newspapers, and then for television (I wish we had time in the semester for radio, but we don’t). Time and again, I tell my students it is totally necessary that they know how to write for both print and broadcast, because the two are rapidly converging on the World Wide Web.
It starts again today. The news about journalism has changed, but the way that news is written has not, and won’t be, if it is to remain believeable. And where news is not believeable, a democracy, with all its colleges and universities, can't exist.
It is the beginners’ course, pure, unadulterated Journalism 101, and I will teach it the same way I taught it 10 years ago, and the same way I learned it 35 years ago.
My goodness, journalism has changed in 35 years. The newspaper where I began my career was still using linotypes, mats and printing plates, and computers were still huge machines in large rooms with carefully controlled air conditioning.
Many changes in journalism have been for the better, and many changes have been for the worse, and it is the second set of changes that gets all the headlines these days. The news media is under attack from the left, the right, the government, academia, the intelligentsia, and most every online pundit in the blogmos.
The attacks are mostly political and mostly economics-driven. For example, one influential poll suggests that 79 percent of Americans believe that a news organization would be in no hurry to run stories about a corporation that was one of the organization’s heavy advertisers.
And that’s just corporations that are advertisers. Since corporations now own many of the most visible and influential news organizations, you see how the public mistrust can grow.
But that’s all politics and economics. Something is going to have to be done about the effects of economic competition on news organizations, and it will.
The news, however, has not changed. The three cardinal rules of journalism have not changed, nor have the three priorities. The definition of news is the same as it was 16,000 years ago, at the birth of media. The news values have changed somewhat, as people have changed. Sex is an outright news value now, whereas 40 years ago sex was officially taboo. The prominence value has changed, too. It is much more prominent in a nation of celebrity worship.
And so we take that into account. But at the end of the day, news is still the result of raw information that journalists are sent to investigate, to see if news is there. My class begins with analysis of raw information because that is where the news begins. If the analysis shows that news is there (and by far, most raw information is not news), we move on to organizing the information, using the classic Inverted Pyramid model, and then we write the information into a story, using short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
First we learn to do this for newspapers, and then for television (I wish we had time in the semester for radio, but we don’t). Time and again, I tell my students it is totally necessary that they know how to write for both print and broadcast, because the two are rapidly converging on the World Wide Web.
It starts again today. The news about journalism has changed, but the way that news is written has not, and won’t be, if it is to remain believeable. And where news is not believeable, a democracy, with all its colleges and universities, can't exist.
August 18, 2005
Acorn Fever 2005
In Southern California, we have a thing called Acorn Fever you have to watch out for.
It’s still August, with September almost two weeks away, and we have had a mild attack here in San Diego already.
For three weeks, it was hot and humid, all the way to the coast. Summer is monsoon season in the American Southwest as desert weather patterns pull moisture northward from the more tropical regions of Mexico. Monsoon season came as usual this year, but with the extra kick of moisture left over from a Gulf of Mexico hurricane, Emily.
This would be more fun if the clouds and rain and thunder reached all the way to the San Diego coast. Instead, the fun weather usually stops at the mountains, so we can see the big thunderheads but not enjoy their effects. West of the mountains, we just get the heat and humidity.
It was hot and sticky enough, even with the cooling effects of the Pacific Ocean, to run our home air conditioners.
Then the weather patterns shifted, and the monsoon was cut off, confined to Arizona and New Mexico. In San Diego, meanwhile, the ocean pushed in cool air and morning low clouds and fog.
Going outside in the morning, after the monsoon conditions, it felt almost chilly. A dangerous condition. This is the condition in which Acorn Fever strikes.
A person with Acorn Fever feels the urge to pull on sweat clothes when he rises in the morning. He takes hot coffee outside and snuggles his chin into his sweatshirt and watches the wispy heat rising off his coffee. He gets the urge to build a fire. He looks around for leaves to rake. There aren’t any, but Acorn Fever has been known to generate mirages. Men and women in heavy Pendleton shirt-jacs will be seen raking invisible leaves into invisible piles on perfectly green lawns beneath perfectly green trees.
He gets the urge for a lumberjack breakfast. He feels a need to go to Julian, which is a mountain town 35 miles east of San Diego famous for its cider and apple pies. He gets a craving to go to Julian and drink cold cider from a jug off the back of a vendor’s truck, and go into town for a thick wedge of warm cinnamon-scented apple pie with a slice of cheddar cheese melting into the crust.
He has been thrust into this fever by a temperature that has not dropped below 60 degrees. August 20 is still days away, and in downtown office corridors you see turtlenecks and plaid skirts and wool blazers.
Then out in the deserts the weather patterns shift again. Overnight, the morning fog disappears. Oblivious Fever victims build fires, take up their rakes, wear their sweaters to work. By noon they are caught in temperatures approaching 80 on the coast and 90 in the inland valleys. Emergency crews are called, but when they arrive, normally they only find puddles of sweat and wet woolens, where the Fever attacks were reported.
These are the earliest Acorn Fever conditions I can remember, and I have lived in San Diego for 33 years. You’d think in that time I’d get wise, but this morning I pulled on my sweats, had a nice bowl of corn meal mush and was laying a fire when I suddenly felt hot. I heard the TV weatherman say a high of 85 today. I looked down and saw splashes of sweat on the hearth.
I took a cool shower and felt better, and I will be fine after a couple of chili dogs for dinner.
It’s still August, with September almost two weeks away, and we have had a mild attack here in San Diego already.
For three weeks, it was hot and humid, all the way to the coast. Summer is monsoon season in the American Southwest as desert weather patterns pull moisture northward from the more tropical regions of Mexico. Monsoon season came as usual this year, but with the extra kick of moisture left over from a Gulf of Mexico hurricane, Emily.
This would be more fun if the clouds and rain and thunder reached all the way to the San Diego coast. Instead, the fun weather usually stops at the mountains, so we can see the big thunderheads but not enjoy their effects. West of the mountains, we just get the heat and humidity.
It was hot and sticky enough, even with the cooling effects of the Pacific Ocean, to run our home air conditioners.
Then the weather patterns shifted, and the monsoon was cut off, confined to Arizona and New Mexico. In San Diego, meanwhile, the ocean pushed in cool air and morning low clouds and fog.
Going outside in the morning, after the monsoon conditions, it felt almost chilly. A dangerous condition. This is the condition in which Acorn Fever strikes.
A person with Acorn Fever feels the urge to pull on sweat clothes when he rises in the morning. He takes hot coffee outside and snuggles his chin into his sweatshirt and watches the wispy heat rising off his coffee. He gets the urge to build a fire. He looks around for leaves to rake. There aren’t any, but Acorn Fever has been known to generate mirages. Men and women in heavy Pendleton shirt-jacs will be seen raking invisible leaves into invisible piles on perfectly green lawns beneath perfectly green trees.
He gets the urge for a lumberjack breakfast. He feels a need to go to Julian, which is a mountain town 35 miles east of San Diego famous for its cider and apple pies. He gets a craving to go to Julian and drink cold cider from a jug off the back of a vendor’s truck, and go into town for a thick wedge of warm cinnamon-scented apple pie with a slice of cheddar cheese melting into the crust.
He has been thrust into this fever by a temperature that has not dropped below 60 degrees. August 20 is still days away, and in downtown office corridors you see turtlenecks and plaid skirts and wool blazers.
Then out in the deserts the weather patterns shift again. Overnight, the morning fog disappears. Oblivious Fever victims build fires, take up their rakes, wear their sweaters to work. By noon they are caught in temperatures approaching 80 on the coast and 90 in the inland valleys. Emergency crews are called, but when they arrive, normally they only find puddles of sweat and wet woolens, where the Fever attacks were reported.
These are the earliest Acorn Fever conditions I can remember, and I have lived in San Diego for 33 years. You’d think in that time I’d get wise, but this morning I pulled on my sweats, had a nice bowl of corn meal mush and was laying a fire when I suddenly felt hot. I heard the TV weatherman say a high of 85 today. I looked down and saw splashes of sweat on the hearth.
I took a cool shower and felt better, and I will be fine after a couple of chili dogs for dinner.
New in the Back Booth
Two new entries in the Back Booth.
One is in the Cookbook, in Other Recipes, a recipe that will cool you off on a hot day.
The other is the next chapter in Her Breast Cancer and Mine, the story of a woman's breast cancer from the husband's point of view.
One is in the Cookbook, in Other Recipes, a recipe that will cool you off on a hot day.
The other is the next chapter in Her Breast Cancer and Mine, the story of a woman's breast cancer from the husband's point of view.
August 12, 2005
Consciousness train
This consciousness train began with a truck from a concrete service backing onto a job site right next to an identical company truck, both white, both new. I saw them on the way home from the gym.
At the lumberyard where I worked in high school, there were Chevrolet trucks, same year, same flatbed model with dump feature, but one was blue and one was green.
Usually when there are two identical trucks, you still develop a preference for one or the other. But blue or green didn’t make any difference to me.
I believe it was the green truck with which I tried to bring down the telephone service on the south side of Abilene, Texas, late one afternoon. It was a house site, the foundation just poured, and I was delivering the framing lumber – studs, two-by-sixes, etc. – all neatly boomed down on the flatbed.
I drove up the alley and backed onto the lot, which was muddy after an earlier thundershower. I placed the junk-lumber cross pieces on which to dump the load, got back in the cab, pulled the “Dump” lever, and up went the front of the flatbed. When I felt the load slide, I pushed in the lever, slid into first gear, and pulled forward to slip out from under the load.
But I couldn’t pull forward. The wheels spun and spun until I noticed a motion over my head and saw poles swaying for a couple of blocks in either direction. The top of the flatbed was hooked beneath cables overhead.
I had no choice but to risk my life and unboom the load, then back up on it, scattering the neat stacks like pick-up sticks. Then I dropped the bed, pulled out and had to re-stack the entire load. It was after 5, and I had a date. But I wasn’t too mad, because they were telephone cables. If they had been power lines, there would still be crispy wisps of me in the dirt under the lawn where that house now stands.
I had earlier cheated death on an airplane, a DC-3, carrying the high school football team – I was a sophomore fullback – that in November, 1958, missed by 25 feet being in a mid-air collision. Our pilot saw the other guy, cut the power to his engines, stood the DC-3 on its wingtip, and dropped several hundred feet before recovering and flying on.
The airplane in “The High and the Mighty” is a DC-4, the earliest four-engine airliner in the DC line. The movie, from 1954, has just been released in DVD, its first release of any kind by its owner, Batjac, a company partly owned by the late John Wayne, who is one of the stars in the movie. We ordered it from amazon.com and just watched it last night.
Boy, disaster movies sure have changed since the 1950s. The trip in “The High and the Mighty,” from Hawaii to San Francisco, took more than 12 hours, which is about how fast the movie moved. Too many flashbacks and actors chewing the scenery, Phil Harris being the worst.
I misspelled Lucille Ball’s name in a blog yesterday. Left out an l. The consciousness train is now half an hour old. I’d like to say something about how fabulous the human brain has turned out, to enable such interesting trips that start with concrete trucks. But it’s time for lunch.
At the lumberyard where I worked in high school, there were Chevrolet trucks, same year, same flatbed model with dump feature, but one was blue and one was green.
Usually when there are two identical trucks, you still develop a preference for one or the other. But blue or green didn’t make any difference to me.
I believe it was the green truck with which I tried to bring down the telephone service on the south side of Abilene, Texas, late one afternoon. It was a house site, the foundation just poured, and I was delivering the framing lumber – studs, two-by-sixes, etc. – all neatly boomed down on the flatbed.
I drove up the alley and backed onto the lot, which was muddy after an earlier thundershower. I placed the junk-lumber cross pieces on which to dump the load, got back in the cab, pulled the “Dump” lever, and up went the front of the flatbed. When I felt the load slide, I pushed in the lever, slid into first gear, and pulled forward to slip out from under the load.
But I couldn’t pull forward. The wheels spun and spun until I noticed a motion over my head and saw poles swaying for a couple of blocks in either direction. The top of the flatbed was hooked beneath cables overhead.
I had no choice but to risk my life and unboom the load, then back up on it, scattering the neat stacks like pick-up sticks. Then I dropped the bed, pulled out and had to re-stack the entire load. It was after 5, and I had a date. But I wasn’t too mad, because they were telephone cables. If they had been power lines, there would still be crispy wisps of me in the dirt under the lawn where that house now stands.
I had earlier cheated death on an airplane, a DC-3, carrying the high school football team – I was a sophomore fullback – that in November, 1958, missed by 25 feet being in a mid-air collision. Our pilot saw the other guy, cut the power to his engines, stood the DC-3 on its wingtip, and dropped several hundred feet before recovering and flying on.
The airplane in “The High and the Mighty” is a DC-4, the earliest four-engine airliner in the DC line. The movie, from 1954, has just been released in DVD, its first release of any kind by its owner, Batjac, a company partly owned by the late John Wayne, who is one of the stars in the movie. We ordered it from amazon.com and just watched it last night.
Boy, disaster movies sure have changed since the 1950s. The trip in “The High and the Mighty,” from Hawaii to San Francisco, took more than 12 hours, which is about how fast the movie moved. Too many flashbacks and actors chewing the scenery, Phil Harris being the worst.
I misspelled Lucille Ball’s name in a blog yesterday. Left out an l. The consciousness train is now half an hour old. I’d like to say something about how fabulous the human brain has turned out, to enable such interesting trips that start with concrete trucks. But it’s time for lunch.
August 11, 2005
New in the Back Booth
Two new entries in the Back Booth today, both dealing with personal topics.
The first is the new installment, "Dark Skies in Tuscany," in "Her Breast Cancer and Mine," the account of a woman's breast cancer experience from her husband's point of view.
The other is the next chapter in finding my father, and what it meant to my life, and taught me about fathers. You will find "A cold trail" in Fathers and Sons.
The first is the new installment, "Dark Skies in Tuscany," in "Her Breast Cancer and Mine," the account of a woman's breast cancer experience from her husband's point of view.
The other is the next chapter in finding my father, and what it meant to my life, and taught me about fathers. You will find "A cold trail" in Fathers and Sons.
August 10, 2005
Mourning Peter Jennings
In the morning, I like NBC’s “Today” show.
For the evening news, I went with CBS until Dan Rather’s production team (which includes him) messed up and he left. Now I am shifting to NBC and Brian Williams.
Why? Same reason I brush with Crest, dress with Jockey and drink with J&B. A deep, mysterious affiliation the marketing professionals call “branding.”
Like most people, I never paid any attention to Peter Jennings. Only 25 million people, about 8.5 percent of the United States population, watch the ABC, NBC and CBS evening news shows combined. If eight million of that total watched the ABC evening news, that means 2.6 percent of Americans were fans of Peter Jennings. The other 97.4 percent paid him no attention.
Now he has died, and the obituaries, eulogies from Brokaw, Rather and Walters, two-hour specials and full-page ads of recognition and condolence fill a huge amount of media space. And I, no fan of Peter Jennings, read them, and listen to them, and I mourn the man.
Or, more precisely, I mourn what he represents. I am sure he was an honorable, respectable, likeable man, to be missed for his humanity. But it’s like Lucille Ball. When she died, I didn’t mourn her. I mourned what she meant to me.
It would help explain the reaction to his death if we could say that people who were otherwise neutral about Peter Jennings now are mourning what he meant to them. As a member of that group, I can say that I am mourning the loss of a professional. Peter Jennings was one of the top four names in American journalism. Cronkite, Rather, Brokaw, Jennings.
You don’t get that good without being that good. It means a lot to people, when somebody is that good, whether it’s Dan Marino, Luciano Pavarotti, J.K. Rowling, Eric Clapton, Frank Lloyd Wright, or Albert Einstein. Because of dedication, work, native and acquired skill, loyalty and love, Peter Jennings became a ranking professional in his line of work.
In The New York Times Book Review two weeks ago, the noted judge, economist and educator Richard A. Posner wrote a long summary of the media, which began:
“The conventional news media are embattled. Attacked by both left and right in book after book, rocked by scandals, challenged by upstart bloggers, they have become a focus of controversy and concern. Their audience is in decline, their credibility with the public in shreds.”
Among these attackers and challengers, who don’t call it “conventional media,” but “mainstream media” or “MSM,” it is popular to wonder aloud, as a device to demean the profession, who decides who is a journalist. Are they licensed? Commissioned? Accredited? Even graduated?
The answer is simple. People decide who is a journalist. People created and bestowed upon journalism the principles, definitions and tools with which journalists work, and if a person in the newsgathering business uses those tools conscientiously and well, then the people will anoint him a journalist.
Peter Jennings was a journalist, one of the top four names on the news side of MSM. It is not a good time to lose (literally) one of the anchors (literally) of the embattled MSM. If a critic wants an answer to the question, what make a professional journalist, he needs only to look at Peter Jennings.
That’s why his death is such a big story. Is he the last of the MSM anchors? Is it not only his passing, but the passing of an era, the last milestone in the decline and fall of mainstream media?
Well, no, as long as there are mainstream people around to have a say about it. Posner cited statistics saying that “14 percent of Americans describe themselves as liberals, and 26 percent as conservatives.” Not even all of those will be so far left or right of the mainstream not to participate in it, which means there is a steady market out there, of 60 or more percent of all Americans who support, or even insist on, professional, objective and balanced information-gathering and dissemination, or what we call “news.”
They possess the values and principles and accrediting power, and those in mainstream media who use those values and principles well, will be the new journalists, some of them becoming as valued as Peter Jennings. After writing 10,000 words on the subject, Posner arrived at his last paragraph, which read:
“So when all the pluses and minuses of the impact of technological and economic change on the news media are toted up and compared, maybe there isn’t much to fret about.”
I can hear Peter Jennings, in his measured, erudite way, saying the same thing.
For the evening news, I went with CBS until Dan Rather’s production team (which includes him) messed up and he left. Now I am shifting to NBC and Brian Williams.
Why? Same reason I brush with Crest, dress with Jockey and drink with J&B. A deep, mysterious affiliation the marketing professionals call “branding.”
Like most people, I never paid any attention to Peter Jennings. Only 25 million people, about 8.5 percent of the United States population, watch the ABC, NBC and CBS evening news shows combined. If eight million of that total watched the ABC evening news, that means 2.6 percent of Americans were fans of Peter Jennings. The other 97.4 percent paid him no attention.
Now he has died, and the obituaries, eulogies from Brokaw, Rather and Walters, two-hour specials and full-page ads of recognition and condolence fill a huge amount of media space. And I, no fan of Peter Jennings, read them, and listen to them, and I mourn the man.
Or, more precisely, I mourn what he represents. I am sure he was an honorable, respectable, likeable man, to be missed for his humanity. But it’s like Lucille Ball. When she died, I didn’t mourn her. I mourned what she meant to me.
It would help explain the reaction to his death if we could say that people who were otherwise neutral about Peter Jennings now are mourning what he meant to them. As a member of that group, I can say that I am mourning the loss of a professional. Peter Jennings was one of the top four names in American journalism. Cronkite, Rather, Brokaw, Jennings.
You don’t get that good without being that good. It means a lot to people, when somebody is that good, whether it’s Dan Marino, Luciano Pavarotti, J.K. Rowling, Eric Clapton, Frank Lloyd Wright, or Albert Einstein. Because of dedication, work, native and acquired skill, loyalty and love, Peter Jennings became a ranking professional in his line of work.
In The New York Times Book Review two weeks ago, the noted judge, economist and educator Richard A. Posner wrote a long summary of the media, which began:
“The conventional news media are embattled. Attacked by both left and right in book after book, rocked by scandals, challenged by upstart bloggers, they have become a focus of controversy and concern. Their audience is in decline, their credibility with the public in shreds.”
Among these attackers and challengers, who don’t call it “conventional media,” but “mainstream media” or “MSM,” it is popular to wonder aloud, as a device to demean the profession, who decides who is a journalist. Are they licensed? Commissioned? Accredited? Even graduated?
The answer is simple. People decide who is a journalist. People created and bestowed upon journalism the principles, definitions and tools with which journalists work, and if a person in the newsgathering business uses those tools conscientiously and well, then the people will anoint him a journalist.
Peter Jennings was a journalist, one of the top four names on the news side of MSM. It is not a good time to lose (literally) one of the anchors (literally) of the embattled MSM. If a critic wants an answer to the question, what make a professional journalist, he needs only to look at Peter Jennings.
That’s why his death is such a big story. Is he the last of the MSM anchors? Is it not only his passing, but the passing of an era, the last milestone in the decline and fall of mainstream media?
Well, no, as long as there are mainstream people around to have a say about it. Posner cited statistics saying that “14 percent of Americans describe themselves as liberals, and 26 percent as conservatives.” Not even all of those will be so far left or right of the mainstream not to participate in it, which means there is a steady market out there, of 60 or more percent of all Americans who support, or even insist on, professional, objective and balanced information-gathering and dissemination, or what we call “news.”
They possess the values and principles and accrediting power, and those in mainstream media who use those values and principles well, will be the new journalists, some of them becoming as valued as Peter Jennings. After writing 10,000 words on the subject, Posner arrived at his last paragraph, which read:
“So when all the pluses and minuses of the impact of technological and economic change on the news media are toted up and compared, maybe there isn’t much to fret about.”
I can hear Peter Jennings, in his measured, erudite way, saying the same thing.
New in the Back Booth
A couple of new topics today in the Back Booth.
In the Cookbook are new entries for "Stretching It," featuring a couple of ways to fix red beans and corn bread. And a new Cookbook entry titled "Big Bang Barbecue," explaining the origin of true barbecue and the technique for preparing it. - MG
In the Cookbook are new entries for "Stretching It," featuring a couple of ways to fix red beans and corn bread. And a new Cookbook entry titled "Big Bang Barbecue," explaining the origin of true barbecue and the technique for preparing it. - MG
August 05, 2005
Baseball in a Blizzard
I had not been to the San Diego Padres’ new ballpark, which opened last year. Then last week, friends, and they are dear friends, gave us tickets and we went. The game – Padres vs. St. Louis – was a totally new experience for me.
Well, not totally new. I took a bite out of a bratwurst and momentarily considered placing it back in its plastic container and taking it to the city attorney to see if there were any laws against calling a very pale, cool to the touch length of dense protein colloid a bratwurst and selling it for $7.95 in a public place.
But I went ahead and ate it. No sense having the city attorney stalking the concourse, waving handfuls of dense protein colloid under the noses of employees, when I’ve eaten equally remarkable fare at any number of sports events in San Diego. No one who has spent several hundred dollars over the years on what stadium concessionaires call “Nachos” can speak too severely against the PetCo bratwurst.
What was new was the tenuous hold that the game of baseball had on the event. Since I last attended a major league baseball game – four years, at least – the half-innings of actual play seem to have become miniaturized intervals between promotions. Looking around the place, I thought about pinball machines I played as a kid, including one that was a baseball pinball game. Lots of lights flashing, and lots of noise effects, and, oh yes, the game itself.
That’s how this event felt. Many other new ballparks have opened recently in other big-league cities. If PetCo is the typical ballyard of the 2000s, baseball’s executives have engineered for real baseball the look and sound and feel of having a seat behind first base inside a pinball game.
But it was more comprehensive than that. The ultimate business model of entertainment media technology is to turn the outdoors into the indoors, the ominous “virtual reality.” You get a feel of that sitting outside at PetCo.
In the old days, 10 years ago, it was the difference between going to a live event and watching it at home on television. At the live event, the viewer enjoyed the freedom of subjective choice. At any moment, your eyes could go where they would, in the setting before you, to a player, to the dugout, to the sideline, to the stands, to the moon. Watching it on television, you lost that subjective freedom. The cameras and the screen objectified the view: you could only see what the camera was showing you.
At PetCo, there were constant video demands for your attention. It never stopped: screens and bright quick-cut montage visuals demanding attention from your eyes, enforced by booming digital-fidelity surround-sound commands from extremely high-energy speakers. Before last week, the loudest sustained noise I ever heard at a sports event was the crowd at Jack Murphy Stadium in 1984 when Steve Garvey hit the home run off Lee Smith to beat the Cubbies in Game Four of the NLCS.
That was a natural sound, the analog output of 45,000 throats, and lovely to plunge into and get squeezed and scoured by until you couldn’t breathe or feel, and eventually surface into the night air and survival, carrying with you out of the ballpark a sound you would tell about for the rest of your life, because there was a reason for it.
At PetCo, the sound was ear-ringing but couldn’t compete on the Garvey scale for loudness. As sustained sound, however, it was surpassing, and tireless, barrages of sub-woofing, subjectivity-gobbling sound scouring you not in a passage of glory, but with promotions, commercials, goofy quizzes, heavy metal riffs and aggressively mediocre humor shots. Just like TV. Visuals and sounds, objectifying space. On the field, interludes of miniature baseball. Beyond the outfield, a city skyline. Both were hard to see, through the digital blizzard.
Well, not totally new. I took a bite out of a bratwurst and momentarily considered placing it back in its plastic container and taking it to the city attorney to see if there were any laws against calling a very pale, cool to the touch length of dense protein colloid a bratwurst and selling it for $7.95 in a public place.
But I went ahead and ate it. No sense having the city attorney stalking the concourse, waving handfuls of dense protein colloid under the noses of employees, when I’ve eaten equally remarkable fare at any number of sports events in San Diego. No one who has spent several hundred dollars over the years on what stadium concessionaires call “Nachos” can speak too severely against the PetCo bratwurst.
What was new was the tenuous hold that the game of baseball had on the event. Since I last attended a major league baseball game – four years, at least – the half-innings of actual play seem to have become miniaturized intervals between promotions. Looking around the place, I thought about pinball machines I played as a kid, including one that was a baseball pinball game. Lots of lights flashing, and lots of noise effects, and, oh yes, the game itself.
That’s how this event felt. Many other new ballparks have opened recently in other big-league cities. If PetCo is the typical ballyard of the 2000s, baseball’s executives have engineered for real baseball the look and sound and feel of having a seat behind first base inside a pinball game.
But it was more comprehensive than that. The ultimate business model of entertainment media technology is to turn the outdoors into the indoors, the ominous “virtual reality.” You get a feel of that sitting outside at PetCo.
In the old days, 10 years ago, it was the difference between going to a live event and watching it at home on television. At the live event, the viewer enjoyed the freedom of subjective choice. At any moment, your eyes could go where they would, in the setting before you, to a player, to the dugout, to the sideline, to the stands, to the moon. Watching it on television, you lost that subjective freedom. The cameras and the screen objectified the view: you could only see what the camera was showing you.
At PetCo, there were constant video demands for your attention. It never stopped: screens and bright quick-cut montage visuals demanding attention from your eyes, enforced by booming digital-fidelity surround-sound commands from extremely high-energy speakers. Before last week, the loudest sustained noise I ever heard at a sports event was the crowd at Jack Murphy Stadium in 1984 when Steve Garvey hit the home run off Lee Smith to beat the Cubbies in Game Four of the NLCS.
That was a natural sound, the analog output of 45,000 throats, and lovely to plunge into and get squeezed and scoured by until you couldn’t breathe or feel, and eventually surface into the night air and survival, carrying with you out of the ballpark a sound you would tell about for the rest of your life, because there was a reason for it.
At PetCo, the sound was ear-ringing but couldn’t compete on the Garvey scale for loudness. As sustained sound, however, it was surpassing, and tireless, barrages of sub-woofing, subjectivity-gobbling sound scouring you not in a passage of glory, but with promotions, commercials, goofy quizzes, heavy metal riffs and aggressively mediocre humor shots. Just like TV. Visuals and sounds, objectifying space. On the field, interludes of miniature baseball. Beyond the outfield, a city skyline. Both were hard to see, through the digital blizzard.
August 02, 2005
The Three Media Realities
A “reality” is the way something is. A reality is there, and there is nothing you can do about it. Every day we wake up to the realities in our lives like school, work, money problems, traffic, all those things we have no choice but to deal with.
People who are in media production, people who make television programs, movies and records, and who publish newspapers and magazines, wake up every morning with their specific set of realities. These are the realities they face in making their media business a success. They have no choice but to deal with these realities. The first law of media states: "The media is a business."
The first media reality is balance. This is particularly true of the non-narrative (news and information) media, but it also applies to entertainment media as well. Media consumers insist that their information be presented in a balanced way, that is, both sides of the story are provided. If only one side is provided, or not enough of the other side is provided, the consumers will think the media is biased and unfair in giving so much attention to just the one side.
Of course no story can be perfectly balanced, because no two consumers will see the story in exactly the same way. Think of the population as describing a standard statistical bell-curve, that plots political and social preferences of the people. The curve will be flat at the left and right ends and rise from either end toward the middle in a bell-shape. The curve is flat at the left and right ends because only a small number of people possess extreme left or extreme right views. From both sides, those views moderate as the curve rises toward the center. Hence in the political dialogue, we hear adjectives like “the extreme left,” “the hard right,” “moderates,” and “centrists.”
The majority of the population exists out in the bell part of the curve, and at some point on the left and right, their preferences, whether from the left or from the right, enter the “mainstream.” This is the audience served by the “mainstream media,” both non-narrative (news and information) and narrative (entertainment).
Let’s look at a story in a mainstream media newspaper: The New York
Times, The Miami Herald, The Washington Post, The Kansas City Star, The San Jose Mercury-News, The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, The Stockton Record, The South Bend Tribune.
If all the reactions to this story fell directly in the center, the story would be perfectly balanced. But the 12 news and event values tell us that each person reacts to a story in his or her specific, individual way, no two exactly alike. Because of this, one person will see this story as balanced, while another will see it biased to one side or the other, either by a little or by a lot. Sociologically, a person’s views place him or her in one of two general categories. People who consider their views “liberal” are said to be to the “left,” while people with conservative views are to the “right.” A moderate liberal looking at this story might see it as biased to the right of center, but not by much. A stronger liberal might see it biased farther to the right, but not so far that it is out of balance. Conversely, a moderate conservative will see it biased to the left of center, but not so much as to be out of balance. Of course there are extreme liberals and conservatives who will look at a story and claim it is completely out of balance, completely biased, though the majority claims it is balanced, but not perfectly.
In order to be believable, the information media must present stories that the majority of consumers believe is balanced. Information media producers wake up every morning to that reality.
Balance is also necessary to the success of entertainment media. A simple but good example is a football game. If one team is ahead 35-0 at the half, the consumers are going to turn it off and watch something that is more in balance. Good dramas need balance, whether it is in a love story or in the conflict between good and evil. Good sitcoms need balance, between humor and the believability of life situations. Good novels need balance, to provide tension between the two sides struggling to prevail. A good story can’t be all black, or all white.
Of course much very carefully produced media content appears every day in the media, that has no balance at all, and we look at them with interest. They are called commercials, or ads. There are also extremely liberal, or extremely conservative, news and information organizations, both in traditional print and broadcast media, and also (very much so) in the new blogger media. Their content is mainly advocacy (like a commercial) of a point of view, and criticism of the opposing point of view.
The second media reality is professionalism. Whatever the presentation, media people wake up every morning knowing it must be professional. In journalism, either newspapers or broadcast, the three cardinal rules are accuracy, accuracy and accuracy. The story must be accurate, both in its content and also in its presentation. Spelling, punctuation and grammar must be correct, or the story loses credibility.
Journalists strive every day to be professional, and they do much work that is never seen. A news story is like the tip of the iceberg, the 10 percent poking up above the water, and that is what the consumer sees. But below the water, unseen, is the 90 percent of the iceberg, the work the journalist did to make sure the story was strong enough to sink a ship.
Other people in media go to those same professional lengths. All those wonderful, carefree people in sitcoms and soap operas didn’t win their positions without years of training and practice. It’s no secret how long and hard actors in movies must work to become successes. The musicians in the recording industry, and the technicians who record them, do not just sit down at pianos and mixing boards and make wonderful music. Even the most casual music is a result of careful planning, hard work and perseverance, on both sides of the microphone.
Professionalism is vital to all aspects of the production. Appearances and sets must be professional, both in information and entertainment media. Lighting and audio must be professional. Newspaper and magazine layout, book production and camera angles must all be professional. Continuity must be professional. If one part of a scene is shot at noon, all parts must be shot at noon, on the same day if possible, because the light changes. If half of a noon scene is shot at noon and the other at 9 a.m., the consumers will notice. Likewise there are famous stories of telephone poles showing up in gladiator movies.
Professionalism is even important to tabloid journalism. One television tabloid show, “Hard Copy,” showed a man and woman anchors, beautifully dressed, sitting in a newsroom, narrating the show. In fact they were sitting in front of a blank wall covered by a blue “chroma-key” screen onto which was projected video footage of a newsroom. If you watched “Hard Copy” carefully on successive nights throughout the week, you could see people making exactly the same movements through the newsroom, night after night.
The third media reality is competition. Every morning, media producers wake up to the very hard reality that there are only so many hours in a day, and so many dollars in the consumers’ pockets. And this day will be jammed full of media content, a blizzard of signals from hundreds of television channels and radio frequencies, thousands of newspapers and magazines, racks full of books and CD recordings.
All of them are competing for the consumers’ attention, all fighting to make a profit and stay in business, or (and this is dangerous) all driven by a corporate bottom-line. Advertisers want to see which programs give them the best opportunity to reach consumers and compete for the limited dollars in the consumers’ pockets. What can a media producer do, to enhance his product’s chances of success against the relentless competition?
If the media producer tries to make his product better, to improve its quality, in order to be more competitive, then the effect on the media is good. This happens all the time. There are many examples of quality media products introduced each year.
But often, more and more often, media producers decide to make their product more interesting in ways that are not so professional. They will use the fourth value, sex, the ninth value, novelty, and the twelfth value, sensationalism, to lure curious visitors to the product. Viewers will tune in to a program just to see someone eat a huge South Pacific cockroach on television. It would be hard to argue that this is quality media programming. Producers of the XFL football league tried to create a television product that was a big, sexy macho party at which football was played.
Some of these ideas work; some don’t. “Survivor” was a success; the XFL was not. The ideas that work, encourage the media producers to keep looking for other “sensational” ideas (leading to the proliferation of reality shows) that are meant to manipulate consumers as much as entertain them.
The competition reality is also at the heart of a major news media debate these days, and that is the rush to get stories published, to “beat” the competition. This has been going on forever, but now much of the media operates under corporate ownership, with competition elevated to fierce and counterproductive (in terms of media quality) levels. The most painful example is the decision by CBS News executives to go on the air with allegations about President Bush’s military service records before completely checking and verifying the story’s accuracy. The media must work hard in the months to come, to restore balance between accuracy and competition.
People who are in media production, people who make television programs, movies and records, and who publish newspapers and magazines, wake up every morning with their specific set of realities. These are the realities they face in making their media business a success. They have no choice but to deal with these realities. The first law of media states: "The media is a business."
The first media reality is balance. This is particularly true of the non-narrative (news and information) media, but it also applies to entertainment media as well. Media consumers insist that their information be presented in a balanced way, that is, both sides of the story are provided. If only one side is provided, or not enough of the other side is provided, the consumers will think the media is biased and unfair in giving so much attention to just the one side.
Of course no story can be perfectly balanced, because no two consumers will see the story in exactly the same way. Think of the population as describing a standard statistical bell-curve, that plots political and social preferences of the people. The curve will be flat at the left and right ends and rise from either end toward the middle in a bell-shape. The curve is flat at the left and right ends because only a small number of people possess extreme left or extreme right views. From both sides, those views moderate as the curve rises toward the center. Hence in the political dialogue, we hear adjectives like “the extreme left,” “the hard right,” “moderates,” and “centrists.”
The majority of the population exists out in the bell part of the curve, and at some point on the left and right, their preferences, whether from the left or from the right, enter the “mainstream.” This is the audience served by the “mainstream media,” both non-narrative (news and information) and narrative (entertainment).
Let’s look at a story in a mainstream media newspaper: The New York
Times, The Miami Herald, The Washington Post, The Kansas City Star, The San Jose Mercury-News, The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, The Stockton Record, The South Bend Tribune.
If all the reactions to this story fell directly in the center, the story would be perfectly balanced. But the 12 news and event values tell us that each person reacts to a story in his or her specific, individual way, no two exactly alike. Because of this, one person will see this story as balanced, while another will see it biased to one side or the other, either by a little or by a lot. Sociologically, a person’s views place him or her in one of two general categories. People who consider their views “liberal” are said to be to the “left,” while people with conservative views are to the “right.” A moderate liberal looking at this story might see it as biased to the right of center, but not by much. A stronger liberal might see it biased farther to the right, but not so far that it is out of balance. Conversely, a moderate conservative will see it biased to the left of center, but not so much as to be out of balance. Of course there are extreme liberals and conservatives who will look at a story and claim it is completely out of balance, completely biased, though the majority claims it is balanced, but not perfectly.
In order to be believable, the information media must present stories that the majority of consumers believe is balanced. Information media producers wake up every morning to that reality.
Balance is also necessary to the success of entertainment media. A simple but good example is a football game. If one team is ahead 35-0 at the half, the consumers are going to turn it off and watch something that is more in balance. Good dramas need balance, whether it is in a love story or in the conflict between good and evil. Good sitcoms need balance, between humor and the believability of life situations. Good novels need balance, to provide tension between the two sides struggling to prevail. A good story can’t be all black, or all white.
Of course much very carefully produced media content appears every day in the media, that has no balance at all, and we look at them with interest. They are called commercials, or ads. There are also extremely liberal, or extremely conservative, news and information organizations, both in traditional print and broadcast media, and also (very much so) in the new blogger media. Their content is mainly advocacy (like a commercial) of a point of view, and criticism of the opposing point of view.
The second media reality is professionalism. Whatever the presentation, media people wake up every morning knowing it must be professional. In journalism, either newspapers or broadcast, the three cardinal rules are accuracy, accuracy and accuracy. The story must be accurate, both in its content and also in its presentation. Spelling, punctuation and grammar must be correct, or the story loses credibility.
Journalists strive every day to be professional, and they do much work that is never seen. A news story is like the tip of the iceberg, the 10 percent poking up above the water, and that is what the consumer sees. But below the water, unseen, is the 90 percent of the iceberg, the work the journalist did to make sure the story was strong enough to sink a ship.
Other people in media go to those same professional lengths. All those wonderful, carefree people in sitcoms and soap operas didn’t win their positions without years of training and practice. It’s no secret how long and hard actors in movies must work to become successes. The musicians in the recording industry, and the technicians who record them, do not just sit down at pianos and mixing boards and make wonderful music. Even the most casual music is a result of careful planning, hard work and perseverance, on both sides of the microphone.
Professionalism is vital to all aspects of the production. Appearances and sets must be professional, both in information and entertainment media. Lighting and audio must be professional. Newspaper and magazine layout, book production and camera angles must all be professional. Continuity must be professional. If one part of a scene is shot at noon, all parts must be shot at noon, on the same day if possible, because the light changes. If half of a noon scene is shot at noon and the other at 9 a.m., the consumers will notice. Likewise there are famous stories of telephone poles showing up in gladiator movies.
Professionalism is even important to tabloid journalism. One television tabloid show, “Hard Copy,” showed a man and woman anchors, beautifully dressed, sitting in a newsroom, narrating the show. In fact they were sitting in front of a blank wall covered by a blue “chroma-key” screen onto which was projected video footage of a newsroom. If you watched “Hard Copy” carefully on successive nights throughout the week, you could see people making exactly the same movements through the newsroom, night after night.
The third media reality is competition. Every morning, media producers wake up to the very hard reality that there are only so many hours in a day, and so many dollars in the consumers’ pockets. And this day will be jammed full of media content, a blizzard of signals from hundreds of television channels and radio frequencies, thousands of newspapers and magazines, racks full of books and CD recordings.
All of them are competing for the consumers’ attention, all fighting to make a profit and stay in business, or (and this is dangerous) all driven by a corporate bottom-line. Advertisers want to see which programs give them the best opportunity to reach consumers and compete for the limited dollars in the consumers’ pockets. What can a media producer do, to enhance his product’s chances of success against the relentless competition?
If the media producer tries to make his product better, to improve its quality, in order to be more competitive, then the effect on the media is good. This happens all the time. There are many examples of quality media products introduced each year.
But often, more and more often, media producers decide to make their product more interesting in ways that are not so professional. They will use the fourth value, sex, the ninth value, novelty, and the twelfth value, sensationalism, to lure curious visitors to the product. Viewers will tune in to a program just to see someone eat a huge South Pacific cockroach on television. It would be hard to argue that this is quality media programming. Producers of the XFL football league tried to create a television product that was a big, sexy macho party at which football was played.
Some of these ideas work; some don’t. “Survivor” was a success; the XFL was not. The ideas that work, encourage the media producers to keep looking for other “sensational” ideas (leading to the proliferation of reality shows) that are meant to manipulate consumers as much as entertain them.
The competition reality is also at the heart of a major news media debate these days, and that is the rush to get stories published, to “beat” the competition. This has been going on forever, but now much of the media operates under corporate ownership, with competition elevated to fierce and counterproductive (in terms of media quality) levels. The most painful example is the decision by CBS News executives to go on the air with allegations about President Bush’s military service records before completely checking and verifying the story’s accuracy. The media must work hard in the months to come, to restore balance between accuracy and competition.
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