Perhaps it's age, but I find myself reaching for the remote after about 20 seconds of watching AC 360.
Over the past few years I became habituated to looking to CNN at 10PM to deliver at least a modicum of detail and objectivity to the key news stories of the day. Their former host, Aaron Brown, though gentle and folksy, at least gave the major stories a reasonable level of detail and respect. So out of brand allegiance to CNN I still tune in at 10PM for the headlines.
Now sadly I find a cartoonesque, thirty second sound bite approach that distills complex issues into simplistic graphs on the "magic" screen, or into a few slides "interpreted" by chief business correspondent Ali Velshi who seems long on catchy names and visual recognition (shaved head and pinstripes) and short on depth.
Increasingly I'm switching to the BBC World News in the hope that someone somewhere is giving the issues the depth they deserve.
Wither the News Hour?
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I too miss Aaron Brown. I found he recently signed on with PBS (once his contract expired with CNN) to do a series called "PBS Wide Angle." (Twitter ID @PBSWideAngle). CNN recently dumped Miles O'Brian, their space and aeronautics reporter. He's now doing a bunch of new reporting, most prominenetly for Spaceflight Now (http://www.spaceflightnow.com/). I also follow him on Twitter (@milesobrien ).
ReplyDeleteI think we are entering an age where we will customize our news service, picking the corrispondents we come to trust. With media "dummying down" their content and newspapers closing shop, we run the risk of a true source of journalism. Cherry picking those you want to follow id nice but where will the next crop come from. If the broadcast media and newspapers are cutting back on journaism and investigative reporting there will be no content for bloggers ro retweeters to send. Or at least nothing other than the party line from the corporate news agencies.
I hope the new media revenue models work out as we go forward so we can keep the flow of unbiased information moving to the public.
Bill Vannerson (@billvann)
newser.com is a perfect example of how news is being condensed for the ADD's, lazys, etc. But it's a pretty cool site and the photos add a lot of value to the snippets. Check it out: http://www.newser.com/ IMHOP nicely designed too!
ReplyDeleteThe other end of the spectrum is the Economist which is detailed to the hilt.