Posted by
Vonnie on Monday, June 16, 2008 1:51:24 PM
On C-Span, a panel of Mark from Newsweek, Katherine from Townhall, Jim from Politico, Michael (not sure about name) from Clinton campaign, Kevin from Romney campaign, and hosted by Mary from NPR discussed old school and new school news.
Mark explained institutional news should continue reporting the serious news and the websites should do the Obama girl type news because there is a market for this. This hung in the air for a while. I interpreted this statement as we, the institutional news, are the arbiter of the news and you guys play all you want. He further said, which seems the underlining issue, is how can they pay reporters while most on the websites are doing this for free. He said payment would guarantee more thorough investigations.
I was beginning to believe Mary was only going to allow talk about what she considers the serious news by the institutions. Out of courtesy she asked questions of the rest of the panel.
Michael and Kevin talked about how to use and take advantage of both. Katherine and Jim said that we definitely want to be entertained. Further Katherine said, even nightly news does 20 minutes of entertainment and five minutes of opinion. And, reporters may filter out what she might want more details about. This is what is so good about blogging. They can go into as much detail as the author knows about it. She said she may want to read this detail and discuss it with her friends. TV has only the 30-second to 3-minute sound byte.
I thought they did excellent. Wish I was a journalist so I could have taken better notes. Even the host Mary backed down by saying it is widely believed that NPR is subsidized by the government. The government provides only a small percentage of their funding. Kind of touchy don't you think. I always wondered if they had any guilt about taking our money and spilling out the left-wing mantra.
The question and answer part had two interesting discussions.
A political teacher complain that only two websites are an aggregate of the news. They are 'The Drudge Report' and 'Real Clear Politics' and he says they are skewed right. Katherine answered this exactlly. Before these two websites, the aggregate of the news was ABC and CBS that is skewed left. They corrected that 'Real Clear Politics' is neo-con, while Drudge is mostly interested in breaking stories. This triggered talks about how these breaking stories make many to release a story before it is fully vetted. Valid point, but doesn't competition make us sharper. And, sharper means nothing if it falls apart or does not get the job done.
Another questioner said he was a speechwriter for Reagan. They knew that the press conferences had media biased left. They tried to get around that by building 30-second sound bites, which were less likely to be manipulated. And, this sound bite could peak the population interest.
Later, I realized I have met this phenomenon three times before.
First, secretary banks took much space of office buildings. No executive could type. In high school, I did not want to take typing course because I thought that meant I was locked into becoming a secretary. Eventually, most every one types their own words. Today, the secretaries are called assistances and have a greater function.
Second, another personal phenomenon was information processing. When I first started programming, I thought I might program myself out of a job. After all, programs did make certain jobs obsolete. Eventually, the communities using our services began to use spreadsheets. Many products were developed that were user friendly. Some were clumsy, if you wanted to do more than what it was designed to do. While, others worked well. Yet, programming languages began to grow with more complexity and richer functionality. Both work, just use the tool for the job.
Third, this morning I was my watching CNBC talking panel with Michael McCallister, president of Huma. He said that Health Care is more complex than everyone realizes. In fact, it does not work as well when we try to make it better. This reminded me of when I worked in the early 70s for an insurance company, which was awarded the processing of medicare for the state. So much talk was made that costs would go down because the centralize processing of the information. Never heard later that their claims were true. What I did know the costs kept expanding to develop programs for more complexity. On FoxNews, a visitor kept saying that universal health care will save us money on administration costs. I sent them an email about my experience and told them that most doctors have computers, computer services, and generic programs to track their accounting and billing.
To me, the answer is allow it all and deny none from discussion. Do not allow people to force the solution into a box. Like, Obama and congress say about oil -- "We can not drill ourselves out of the oil problem." What doesn't work will adapt. What does work will attract more people to join and this is good.
My thought is learn from history and keep your opinions open.
One more thought. On Fox News financial discussion, the panel says why should we do this when it did not work in the 80s. The Obama supporter, a visitor to the panel said "well, I was only nine years old then". This is what scares me. They did not experience it or observe it, therefore it never existed.
Even if it did not work in the past, it may work today. Just explain how it would work today. Do not just wrap it in our time for change.
Old school and new school will blend into something better. In similar events, history has proven this.