"I'm Not Sure Where I Heard It?

Flirtatious: Second Page Headline promising a killer story in section D.

Real Mood: Chastened

Prediction: Someday newspapers will be read aloud on their own websites!

"Did you hear about?"

A long time ago I used to use that expression to defend radio as the best source for getting news. I didn't necessarily mean it. It's just that radio was paying my salary at the time, so I formed the argument. And in those days most stations at least had news departments. Yes, they were "Ripping and Reading" wirecopy. That's the catch phrase for reading stories into a microphone from the wire services. A high percentage of those stories are just re-writes from the newspaper stories written the day before. Still, in those days, radio reporters once in a while left the station to find news of their own.

Let's step back and see if there is a point to be made here (In today's broad definition of journalism that doesn't appear to be a critical issue, but let's do it anyway). 

As news consumers we've always had choice. But in times past that choice seemed pretty clearly defined.

In elementary school we got our news by word of mouth playing kick or tetherball. In Junior High we got it from National Geographic (Don't scratch your head on that one. Ask a male who was in Junior High in the 50's.) I was SELLING newspapers all through Junior High, but I'm pretty sure I never read one. In High School it was the sports page of the local newspaper, and Sports Illustrated.

When I was in College, and debating competitively, I swore by the Christian Science Monitor. I was impassioned by impartiallity, and never once read the back page (for the uninitiated, the religion page). When I was in business I frequented the weekly business and news magazines and held to the generally accepted pomposity that U.S. News and World Report was the most objective (it was also the most boring.) The truth, as I see it, is that we were pretty much letting the news broadly define us all in  time, space and interest.  

 

Well I don't think it's going to work that way for a while. The best place to get your news these days is wherever and whatever shakes your coconut tree. Putting a relative value on the best place to get news is fruitless. There are just too many choices to keep track of, too many modes of getting it, too many inter-modal marriages to define it, not enough ways to track it back to it's source, not enough people getting all their news from a single source to form a power group. I'd hate to have to go out now and raise funds for a Political Action Committee. 

I got inspired to write this entry from one of my former students, Noelle Leavitt. Noelle may be the Thomasina Jefferson of our time. She has done everything journalistically, save that which hasn't been invented yet. She accosted me on campus recently to chastise me for not getting the word out on her new job. FANFARE PLEASE. DAH, DAH, DAH, DAH. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, NOELLE is in charge of the "Podcast" for the Denver Post.  Certainly you've heard of the Podcast? The Podcast is where Noelle, in her basement, records a re-write of a summary of the daily news. That news is excerpted from the Denver Post website, (that's where you access it) which in many cases is something re-written from the paper. In other circumstances the stories come from Adam Schrager, a reporter who works for a local TV station (KUSA). KUSA has a relationship with the newspaper where Adam writes for the Post's website, and some Post reporters voice their stories on TV.  Bottom line?  When you hear Noelle, Renaissance journalist extraordinaire, don't try to figure out where she got her material. She doesn't know. Her boss doesn't know. God may not know. But Noelle is a Darned good Podcaster. And, here comes the bonus. You get to hear Noelle "read the hits" with original music underneath.  Marshall Mc Luhan  (the medium is the message) is laughing hard enough to initiate a tsunami.

I just re-read all this and it almost sounds like a negative reaction. Not so! I love this. I know it will all sort itself out some day, and I hope to be on the planet when it happens. But in the meantime this is exciting. It's like throwing a barrell of quarters on the street during the New Orleans' Mardi Gras parade. Whose going to get what? What's it going to look like? What's it going to sound like? Will they ever sober up?

I'm almost sure it's going to look and sound like Noelle Leavitt (who is really very good at everything she does) and most of us are going to like it.

I was horrified recently to pick up a copy of the Christian Science Monitor and see it using HEADLINES. I hope nobody shows that to the editors of the "BACK PAGE."

Go To DenverPost.Com and look for PodCast. (I think it probably works better on high speed. Yes! I'm still on Dial Up. But I don't read U.S.News and World Report anymore?