So CBS, show us what you've got!!

So, Katie’s going to CBS. Yes, I know that that news is no longer news, but it’s about the news, so it’s always news to us. What am I talking about? Well, let me tell you.

Deep within the recesses of CBS NEWS headquarters, producers, news directors and people in suits who aren’t quite sure what they get paid to do are sitting around big conference tables trying to figure out how to change the CBS Evening News to fit Katie Couric when she arrives in September, or are they contemplating the reverse? Let’s hope not, somebody’s paying a lot of money for Katie to be Katie, because apparently, that’s what people like.

But they certainly are contemplating changes for the newscast. Leslie Moonves has said for months that the Evening News is in for big changes, but just how many tricks can this anchor-based-news dog learn? Let’s see…

Option 1: Same show, different face
Obviously, the easiest choice to make is no choice at all. But staying with a format that’s hemorrhaging viewers is not going to win you friends at the next shareholders meeting.


Option 2: Go Deep!
The stories of an increasingly complex world are difficult, if not impossible, to encapsulate in a three-minute TV segment, so why not explore a topic in depth a la ABC’s Nightline? Maybe because the ABC sales department keeps trying to convince the ABC brass to replace Nightline with something that will get more people to watch TV.

Option 3: An Anchor with more to do
Ok, So you want your anchor to get out from behind the news desk and cover some stories. Hmmm, ever heard of Bob Woodruff? Who wants to put an expensive member of the team in harm’s way. It’s dangerous enough for Katie to walk around in those heels she wears.

Option 4: Peek at someone else’s homework
ABC isn’t the only kid in class trying to figure out how to catch the viewers’ eye. Just scan the channels, with your Nielson ratings book in hand, and see what works for everybody else. I’m guessing there’s a lot of this going on.

Option 5: Face the facts, something’s gotta give
OK, obvious, but difficult choice. Just take a look out from behind your focus group and notice that America just isn’t in the mood to come home from a hard day in the rat race and learn about everything that’s gone wrong in the world today. You’re going to have to really take a look at what people need to know and package it in a way that gives the audience that teaspoon of sugar that makes the medicine go down. No I’m not talking stripper-newscasters, I’m saying that we need to step back from tradition and create a new tradition. After all, the idea of the news anchor wasn’t born with the radio, it came about when some one said, “The old way just isn’t working anymore—what else can we think of?”

Journalism is evolving, but reporters are kept in the stone age.

A reporter interviews an unidentified man outside
theWhite House, 08/14/1945
(Photo by Abbie Rowe, from The National Archive)

So, you’ve landed a job at that paper, newscast, or online magazine and you’re finally getting paid to weave together strands of facts into stories with meaning and purpose – or maybe you’re just writing obits. At any rate, you’ve got a paying job in news, and that’s what counts.

But, is this what you thought of that day when your high school English teacher, tapped you on the shoulder and asked, “Have you thought about going into journalism?”

You work long, unpredictable shifts seeking elusive threads of a story, only to have your editor tell you, “thanks, but no thanks.” Your spouse, parents, kids, and friends seem to fade into the background of your life, as your circle of human contact shrinks in upon you. Increasingly it seems you only have time to meet with story sources and maybe grab a meal or a drink with the other indentured journalists who share your cubicled universe.

Meanwhile, people with no formal training in reporting --i.e. not spending 15 percent of their income paying back student loans they signed-off on to attend high-priced journalism schools-- are raking in big bucks by flipping their , tell-all blogs into books. Marquee columnists and television personalities turn their star power into multi-million-dollar contracts, while thousands of drone journalists like you wonder how to save for your kids’ college fund, or squirrel away some cash for retirement -- it’s practically impossible to comfortably do both.

Is all the news that's fit to print to be gathered by an army of underpaid wordsmiths who consistently convey birthday wishes via cell phone, hear about their kids' soccer victories second-hand and are constantly in danger of confusing their wedding anniversary with the storming of Tiananmen Square? “Well, honey, they were both in June, weren’t they?”

It's a miracle we don't hear daily of journalists who, ala Jason Blair, fabricate stories, rather than invest the time in gathering the facts. After all, the really good news writers don't have to lie on their stories to make money; they just go into public relations, where the truth is determined by the client with the largest checkbook.

The soothsayers of journalism expect our craft to be undone by the unrelenting pressures of advancing technology, or ignored into oblivion by a shrinking audience. I look for its demise, if indeed there is one, to come from within.

While corporate America continues to rise to the continuing challenge of creating a workplace amenable to the members of generations X and Y --with their laser-like focus on quality of life and large paychecks, the world of journalism expects its journalists, especially young people, to be grateful for the chance to work a lot for a very little.

The true question facing journalism, and the shrinking number of media companies who control its future, isn't whether or not to blog or podcast, to print or post, but whether or not they can continue to rely upon the efforts of an overworked, underpaid, increasingly reluctant workforce.

Can Katie Couric Save the News?

So, the queen of perky news is moving into the captain's chair at CBS. Is Ed Murrow spinning in his grave, or doing a happy dance because his eye network finally has someone with the potential to draw viewers? Frankly, I don't think he would care one way, or the other.

One person can't save broadcast journalism, no matter how good her chances to raise ratings points in the short term. Don't get me wrong, this lady is good, or was good at one time. I remember the Katie who stood up to the pompous arrogance of co-host Bryant Gumbel and could charm, disarm, then eviscerate interviewees who mistook her easy smile and embarrassed laugh as a lack of killer instinct. What fun it was to watch the confusion in their eyes as they fumbled to answer the tough question asked at the just the right moment. But, at this moment, tough questions are being asked journalism, broadcast, or otherwise. And those questions are greater than whether or not one person can make the transition from A.M. to P.M. First and foremost among these is, why anyone should watch at 6 P.M. what they first learned about via a news headline beamed to their cell phone at 10 that morning?

Couric can't save broadcast journalism, or even CBS news, by herself. If the folks at West 57th are doing their happy dance because they are saved, then they are approaching the state of journalism like a Bourbon Street reveler before the levees collapsed.

Katie & Co. need to bring to their audience an innovative approach to presenting what is important in our lives within a context that is engaging and interesting. They need to reinvent the way we watch information on television. They need to make the news of the day still feel "new" by the time we get home to watch it on T.V.

It's obvious that a lot of American television viewers like Katie Couric, but do they like her enough to change their viewing habits? I don't think so, not enough to matter anyway. The only thing that will have a chance of saving Murrow's network is a news department given the time and money to follow Couric's lead and succeed by being more than people expect.

This Blog for Hire

Wanted: nice fat paycheck to underwrite cleverly written blog whose aim is to elucidate or obfuscate the facts, as determined by person or persons cutting the above mentioned checks.

It seems that posts like that one may not be too far off in the future. As we grow ever closer to the madness of the mid-term congressional contests -- or, heaven help us, the 2008 race for the White House -- a new set of campaign finance guidelines have been released from the folks at the Federal Elections Commission.

In a move that can either be interpreted as seriously out of touch, or shrewdly aware of new trends in campaign finance, the FEC’s new guidelines take very much of a “hands-off” approach regarding Internet-based campaigning. While the new set of regulations work to curtail traditional campaign media moving into the web arena, like advertising for instance, the guidelines regarding elements unique to the Internet, namely blogs, are most intriguing -- because they don't exist. This decision by the FEC to back away from the Internet's fluid opinion sharing forum is hailed by most bloggers as a victory for free speech. I’m thinking it’s more like a victory for those who believe that a marketplace of ideas is a place where you're free to pay other people to say write things about you in the hope that some might actually stick.

At a time in the media universe when the journalists seem to be hiring out thier columns to the highest bidder, and the pentagon has no problem with funding a news factory that always produces positive stories for Iraqi consumption, the Federal Election Commission is apparently convinced that every politically focused blog in cyberspace is somehow immune to the dollars that flow freely from campaigns, lobbyists, or political action committees each election season. According to an NPR report last week, although campaigns must list their internet related expenditures, bloggers are not required to mention that may be funded, whole or in part, by campaigns. Apparantly, the government thinks it's very important we know how much saturated fat is in our food, but not who pays for pajama journalists to push the agenda of one candidate over another.

Some interesting quotes from some of the key players in the game of election finance:

• "My key goal in this rule-making has been to make sure that the commission establish clear rules to exempt individuals who engage in online politics from campaign finance laws." FEC Chairman Michael Toner, a Republican.
• “The internet really is a special case in politics. We have yet to begin to tap its potential and this agency should not get in its way.” FEC Commissioner Ellen Wientraub, a Democrat.
• “It levels the difference field between the rich and poor, gives everybody a voice and allows all citizens an opportunity to influence the process,” Attorney Adam Bonin, representing three high-profile bloggers.

Just for fun I did a quick perusal of public relation doctrine regarding the internet and found an interesting item from Trylon Communications, a PR firm. An article I found proclaims that “pitching blogs”, or blogs specifically engineered to influence readers, are seen as a great way to reach a targeted audience and “drive buzz about their clients.”

“Now the question is how to land your clients in the right blog at the right time in order to reap the benefits of their highly receptive audience,” the site wonders.

Apparently, the answer to that question has been answered by the FEC: just pay somebody to write the "right blog at the right time."

Mr. Bonin, the blogger lawyer, is absolutely right, thanks to the FEC's new guidelines, all citizens do have an “opportunity to influence the process,” and a lot of campaign dollars have just been freed to influence the citizens.

The Huffington Post: Blogger forum or PR opportunity?

Have you ever loaned something to someone, only to have them return it in pieces, shattered beyond all recognition? Well, if blogs are like power tools or your favorite books, Arianna Huffington just broke the blade on your new circular saw and cracked the binding on your first edition copy of "The Catcher in the Rye." And just like the most inconsiderate of neighbors, Ms. Huffington really doesn't see how she's done anything wrong.

The damaged article in question is the latest bright shiny toy in the journalist's toolbox: the blog. Sure blogs are becoming as ubiquitous and annoyingly uninteresting as "American Idol" fans, but they're still a powerful way to express a new idea or add a unique perspective to a familiar situation. That is, until Arianna spoiled it for the rest of us with a little act called false representation.

Where the rest of us are satisfied to surf the blogosphere solo, little Ari likes to invite (recruit, coerce) her friends and acquaintances to join her. And if they chose not to take her up on her offer to use their celebrity to boost her buzz factor, no worries. She’ll just repackage their thoughts, data mined from old interviews and give them a post they didn’t really write . How’s that for power of the electronic press? If she’s going to continue to hone her talent of repackaging old thoughts as new, I think she may be missing her true calling as a Washington speech writer, on either side of the aisle.

Well, we can’t be certain how many attendees of Ms. Huffington’s little computer-based soiree are of her own making, but the bits really hit the fan when she decided that a certain Academy Award-winning actor would be great to have on the guest list – whether he wanted to be there or not. So when George Clooney politely declined Arianna’s invite by self-deprecatingly saying something along the lines of , “I don’t think I even know how to blog,” the irrepressible Ms. H responded with, “No problem, I’ll show you how!”

Huffington’s version of Blog 101 was to type together a little Frankenstein blog entry from the bits and pieces of dusty old interviews and post the writings as coming from the well-manicured fingers of Mr. Clooney. Of course, you can’t be the smartest cute guy in Hollywood without being able to find stuff out -- and George did. Arianna should know better than to fabricate a blog entry attributed to the proud son of a journalist.

She says it’s no biggie. The fact that he really didn’t express those thoughts – in that way and in that order, using those words – doesn’t matter. He said something like that sometime, so let’s just cut out the middle man and cut straight to the sound byte or blog entry, as the case may be.

Well despite any further Hollywood hoopla, the bottomline for the rest of is that as far as any shred of credibility remaining in the blogosphere is concerned, I’m afraid the party’s over.

Us vs. Them

Let's face it. Somehow, we've come to exist in a world that's taken sides. The red states versus the blue; the Toyota Prius drivers versus those who lumber along in their Hummer H3s; people who order the Jumbo Jack with onion rings versus those who delight in the meatless mirage of a Boca Burger. We've allowed ourselves to be framed in a universe of dodge ball teams; choose your side and step to the line.

Overall, this need to cheer for our own and damn the rest can all be seen as simply a case of harmless fun; after all, it's a deep-seated tribal instinct to gather into identifiable groups. But one separation that troubles me is one found within the context of newsgathering: that of the high profile, mega-rich celebrity journalist versus the journeyman journalist, street reporter, squeezing a living out of words.

It’s no state secret that newsrooms across the country are shrinking as media corporations strain to drain every drop of profit from the business of informing the public. However, millions can still be found in the corporate treasure trove to lure marquee names to their organizations in an effort to strengthen their brand and grab a larger slice of a shrinking pie. You can call it a simple extension of the marketplace. A world where the value of ideas is determined by the ability to draw listeners, viewers, readers, in a word, consumers. But what does this do to the process of newsgathering? Can a person still hold on to some level of journalistic integrity while cashing huge paychecks for being little more than one of the most popular kids in school?

The paragon of journalistic integrity known at the Today Show recently thrust newsreader Ann Curry into the center ring of their media circus by the wholesale exploitation of her decision to cut her hair. Apparently, Curry and a family member decided to donate their hair to Locks of Love, a charity that uses donated hair to create wigs for children who have lost their own. What began as Curry’s private act of charity quickly became a full court press of promotion and emotion as the Today Show machine cranked into full schmaltz-mode. The resulting segment looked like little more than a sorority hazing ritual.

So how is a journalist to react to this? If you’re simply a TV personality, you ride the wave and do the stand-up, but isn’t a journalist above this sort of thing? Yes, the argument can be made that public awareness of a great cause will no doubt grow as a result of Curry’s public humiliation – I mean, would you want Katie taking a pair of scissors to your hair on morning television? But a package produced with grace and respect would have accomplished the same result and still preserved some level of dignity for Curry, her audience and journalists at large. Anne Curry’s comments regarding the situation reveal her awareness of its absurdity, but I’m not sure that lets her, or more important, her producers off the hook.

Basketball bad-boy Charles Barkley once famously opined that he was not a role model. I believe the highest paid members of our news community certainly are. In a business where mentoring, apprenticeship and a strong “pay your dues” mentality still pervade, what do up and coming journalists learn when the best compensated in their chosen vocation seem to do the least amount of work? If only to insure the future of their profession, the least that the ultra-rich journalists among us can do is to refuse to be made fools of.

It’s just another example where the humiliation of “them” hurts us as well.

Trading ranting for rhyming

I was primed and ready. Whatever writing skills I possess were trained and focused on one target: the celebrity journalist. I’ve been watching rich people tell me for years what’s happening in my world as if they see things the same why I do -- or is it as if I should see things the same way they do? At any rate, I’d had enough and was ready to take them down by squeezing the literary trigger on this little .22 caliber blog of mine. Then it happened. I found religion, or, more accurately, I found poetry.

While researching my original topic online (did you realize, some people really don’t like Katie Couric?), I remembered an interview with our nation’s Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser, which I had heard a few days ago on NPR’s "All Things Considered." His words describing how the grime of monetary value can smudge a pure craft seemed to fit perfectly into my rant, uh, piece.

In the interview, Kooser speaks frankly about the improbability of anyone earning a living solely as a poet. “Most literary magazines don’t pay anything,” he tells NPR correspondent Melissa Block. “They [just] send you two [published] copies, one for you and one for your mother.”

But it was the words that followed that spoke to my argument against the moneyed elite of journalism. “If poetry were worth a lot of money, it would spoil it,” Kooser continued. “It would become driven by that…and as it is, since it’s worth nothing, it can be purer I think.” That’s us: journalism, pure in intent and purpose, sullied in execution by a drive for profit and fame.

The big kicker is, as I accessed the archived interview in its entirety to pull the quote, I found other parallels between the craft of writing poetry and the business of delivering the news. It really got me thinking about the craft of communicating with people, whether in poetry or journalism. We mold words into concept and feeling. Here’s a quick review of Kooser’s insights regarding his craft and some of what I see as their journalistic applications. Have a read.


Dueling Wordcrafts
The poet’s quote:
“I have graduate students who will show me a poem, and they’ll point to someplace in the middle and say, ‘Well, don’t you think I ought to put a metaphor here?’ Like you can buy one at Circuit City and plug it in there somewhere.”

The journalist's lesson:
Don’t reach for the easy gimmick in a story, package, piece or podcast just to follow the latest journalistic trend. Use the right tool for the right job.


The poet’s quote:
“Poetry is communication. It is something that we use to communicate with one another and we have to think about that… [t]here are writers in this country who don’t subscribe to that at all, who say, “I’m going to write however I want to write and the audience be damned.”

The journalist’s lesson:
I haven’t seen a network anchor use, “Go to Hell” as a sign-off yet, but we’re all looking at comfy seats in the proverbial hand basket if journalism continues to allow itself to be used as a propaganda mouthpiece rather than a source for facts.


The poet’s (killer) quote, taken from his writings as read by Melissa Block:
“Lots of people approach unfamiliar poems with a hollow feeling in their gut. We’ve become accustomed to being confronted by poems that confuse, baffle, embarrass and intimidate us, and for a lot of people reading poetry is a dreadful experience – that is, an experience full of dread.”

The journalist’s lesson:
“The conventions and expectations built around what we have come to understand as Journalism leave impressions in the public consciousness that must be overcome and can only be overcome by speaking the gospel of well-crafted, respectfully presented, fact-based storytelling.


Again, take a listen to the piece and drop me a line. Am I way off base here? And don’t worry; I’ll get back to that rant against rich TV divas later. If you really do think, as I, that some folks are selling popularity as journalism, enjoy this link, and tune back next time. So, how much do YOU think it cost Katie to dry-clean her Dolce & Gabbana coat?