I spent most of my professional life as a journalist. At one point in history, that might have meant something important. Sports writers, like me, vote on inductees to various halls of fame because, in the days before YouTube and SportsCenter, they were often the only ones who had seen most every big league player perform and could compare them to one another.
That's not true anymore. I don't need a beat writer to explain who the better Heisman candidate is. I've seen Jordan Lynch play. I've seen Marcus Mariota and Johnny Manziel and Jameis Winston. I can formulate my own opinion. Same with politics. Same with crime and punishment. And war correspondents? It used to be you'd believe Edward R Murrow because he was the one being bombed nightly in the blitz, not you. But now you can watch war on TV. Our correspondents are the actual weapons themselves. Want an up-close look at the enemy compound? Strap a camera to a missile and away we go.
So it's no wonder fewer and fewer people are turning to newspapers for the news. That situation is spilling over into TV, as well. TV audiences, with the growth of Hulu, Netflix and other streaming video services, are dwindling. But the TV news isn't helping its own cause.
It's bad enough the local paper can't run a sports story without using the word 'romp' or run a series of briefs with a photo unrelated to any of them, now the TV news is getting into the 'what the hell does that have to do with anything' act.
TV is visual, so TV news casts tend to favor strongly visual stories. Oops, I mean 'stories.' Look, a brush fire. Wow, check out this flood ten states away from here. Man, look at the snow–at this ski area, of all places. It's not a story, it's just something to look at. The news isn't just stuff that's happening, there should be some sort of impact on your audience. Why does a bush fire in the Australian Outback matter to us? Sure, a disaster like Typhoon Haiyan is significant enough that there might be locals impacted or that we might all want to donate to help people far away, but 'holy smokes, it's snowing in the winter time' isn't news. Why not have a 'this just in, the sun rises this morning' segment?
Recently, our top-rated news station ran a three minute–I say again, a three minute– segment on the upcoming broadcast of The Voice. OK, I get that it's a directive from the network to promote prime time shows, but you spent 10 percent of your broadcast–with a "throw" to Hollywood for a live report, no less–on an upcoming broadcast of a random TV show!?! Coming up next, the weather, but first, how safe is America's power grid? Find out tonight on the hit series, Revolution. Speaking of weather, The Voice segment was longer than the weather. Yes, hundreds of thousands of people traveling for Thanksgiving. Why would the weather matter to them? What's really important is who's going to make it to top six and is Team Cee Lo still alive? Walter Cronkite's soul disintegrated a little just now.
It reminded me of a scene from The Simpsons. At a book festival, Lisa stands up to give an interpretation of the Joy Luck Club. Amy Tan's reply back to Lisa is the same one I so often get when watching the news on TV these days: "I can't believe how wrong you got it. Sit down. I'm embarrassed for both of us." Now, here's Chuck, with a look at sports.
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