She must be out of the loop

It’s obvious that Peggy Noonan didn’t get the memo.


UPDATE(s) 090711 17:26:

Credits:

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Ready - or Not?

Is your city prepared for a home-made nuke?

Radio Unprepared for Another 9/11

How is an industry that can’t stop the voice tracking and can’t even do the weather going to cover another emergency the level of 9/11 or worse?

The short answer is – it can’t.

Read ’em both.  And pleasant dreams.

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TV snooze

Alarmed by a stabber-on-the-loose, Fillyjonk looks to the “local” newscast for more information:

Oh, you might be relieved to know that Michael Jackson is still dead.  And that his family is still fighting over custody of his kids.  And that that NFL player was killed by the girlfriend he was cheating on his wife with, because she suspected he was cheating on her with someone else.  Oh, and OH NOES OBESITY! More Americans are fat than ever were before.  And the poor economy is leading more people to abandon pets in shelters.  Oh, and if you live alone, you’re lots more likely to develop Alzheimer’s, apparently.

NONE OF THIS IS NEWS.

What I WANT to know is this: Is it safe for me to leave my house, or will I be set upon by someone with a knife?

Not a WORD breathed of that.  Then they shifted to a segment advertising a local “oxygen bar” (the heck?).

So, I took a deep breath, opened the door, walked to my garage, and got my car out.  Obviously I was not stabbed or I would not be writing this.

But it FRUSTRATES me: is not the point of having a “local” channel to broadcast news that is happening “locally”?  If I wanted to hear extended speculation on Jackson’s estate, or discussion of 20 year olds who date married football players, or scaremongering health news: well, there’s CNN, and CNN headline, and MSNBC, and Fox News, and I think a couple of others?

So I don't know.  I felt the same way a couple of years ago when we were having regular escapes from the local county jail (which is about 7 blocks from me the opposite direction of where the stabbing this morning was).

Real reporting is hard, and one dirty little secret of television news is that, despite all the trumpeting of “live, local, and first,” stations have never had the manpower to do it properly.^[1]  (It’s a paradox: The staff is so pressed to produce x minutes of material every day that they don’t have the time for digging into complex stories.^[2])

The fluff gets added for a number of reasons.  It’s not (particularly) time-sensitive, it’s predictable (so no surprises in the production process), and it’s cheap(er).^[3]  Plus, there are still a few stations that operate under the misconception that women aren’t interested in hard news.

And, of course, the cheapest part of the news is the chat across the anchor desk.


Related:
Previously:

Via: CGH
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Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 19:20:32 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Yes, they are...

SayUncle is discovering some differences between cats and dogs.

Related:  Meet Shadow and Diamond.

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Latest: Stories from Beyond the Grave!

Jack Silverman:

I was caught off-guard when Scene art director Rob Williams called yesterday to ask if I had seen this week’s Davidson A.M. [a weekly neighborhood supplement to The Tennessean - o.g.].  He had been shocked to pick up his copy (in Germantown), only to find the following headline as the lead story: “McNair opens Gridiron9, hopes to add others.”  With jaw dropped, I ran out to find mine wedged in the monkey grass along my walkway, and sure enough, Rob was right.  The lead story talks about McNair’s new restaurant and features quotes from the now deceased quarterback.  And the paper is clearly marked “Wednesday, July 8, 2009.”
…
Is it... common practice to go ahead and deliver said paper if it makes you look ridiculous?

Well, newsprint is expensive!  Credibility, I guess, not so much.

Via:  the comments at Gannett Blog

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Clipfile - July 9, 2009

“The difference between a pundit and a reporter can be summarized in four words: ‘Pick up the phone!’ … If you never get up off your butt, make some phone calls and do some reporting, you stop thinking like a journalist. Before you know it, you’re just another damned useless intellectual.” - R.S.McCain

Posted by: Old Grouch in Clipfile at 17:36:08 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Thinking outside the bubble

James Lileks offers an amusing (and wise) look at the plight of newspapers:

I’ve had more fun at the job in the last two years than ever before, and I’ve also seen more enthusiasm, initiative and out of the box thinking.  For instance: what if we sell the box?  No one’s been in the box for years.

All this, plus The Faces of The Price is Right.  RTWT.

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As three days became three years...

Via:  Laurence

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Bobbie has a new blog

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 15:03:35 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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New miracle cure?

(Spotted at Tam’s.)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 14:32:49 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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