Asheville News

The state of television news

Jason Sandford December 2, 2007

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

I found this while surving Lenslinger’s blog, one of my favorite reads. Lenslinger picked up on this post, which has an interview with Mike James, the “surly editor” who started up the online tv industry web site News Blues.

Here’s what James says:

TV news has lost its way. Forget the excuses. No one cares that your bosses are asking you to fill more time with fewer resources. The business is contaminated. The content is fetid and foul, shallow and pointless. Get a job selling time share. Drive a bus in Reno. Do anything but continue foisting polluted, noxious news feces on the superficial American public…Television news (if you believe it is a form of journalism) has the ability…the responsibility…to capture and preserve the moments, the events, that pass through our daily lives. Instead, it has fallen back on trivial weepies and frothy feel-goods, on medical “studies” and video news releases, or political spin and opinionated shoutfests, hypothesis, rumor, and supposition. TV news is no longer in charge of itself. It deserves to be shot at sunrise.

This is what he says about newspapers:

Decades of arrogance have put newspapers at death’s doorstep. Newspapers have blamed television for their pending demise….the internet for their pending demise. Arrogance will eventually pull the trigger…arrogance and the inability to accept change.
Television news is sliding down the same futile slope.

Ouchie.

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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2 Comments

A to the P December 4, 2007

Blame the papers and the TV news. It’s partly there fault.

But don’t act like they’re the guilty parties inflicting sub par news on us poor victims.

The fact is we are becoming a lazy, every more vapid and fankly dumb society.

People want happy stories, murders, and flashy graphics. I’ve worked in TV for years, and its so sad it kills me. You do stories on city planning, local politics, or community involvement, and your rating drop 20%.

You do a newscast with a mysertious murder followed by a feel good puppy adoption story so the viewer can go to bed all warm and fuzzy, your rating go up 20%.

The news has had to give up on educating the people, becuase the people don’t watch when they do. (or read, in the case of newspapers.)

And don’t give me any "Well they have a journalistic duty to …blah blah blah." They have to pay the bills first. You don’t get money when no one watches.

The Newspapers are dying, TV is next, and soon all we’ll have left is the instant gratification of online news sources with their terrible writing and sketchy research…and it makes me sick when self righteous pricks like the article’s authour prance around judging people from a dream world.

Reply
Bill December 4, 2007

Amen

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