danzbar/journalism

Eric Alterman examines trends in media: the history and oncoming death of the traditional newspaper, and the rise of what you and I are using right now.

XYZ happened (today/yesterday/recently) and (shocked/rocked/confirmed) what (experts/locals/professionals) had long (suspected/feared/assumed) to be the (scientific fact/inevitable conclusion/unfortunate side effect) of (crime in Your Town/too much or not enough sex/prescription drug use). This has led many experts to conclude (exactly what they wanted to conclude). But it has led some other experts to believe (exactly the opposite, what they wanted to believe). There is no agreement yet, but xy.z% believe that some of the time (too much sex is still not enough/crime is linked to the number of parks in your area/Prozac makes you murderous). Expert A said, "This new evidence destroys any and all doubt that there could ever be that someone in their right mind would disagree with me." But expert B said, "I believe exactly what I believed before, only I'd modified it very slightly to accommodate this new event." Meanwhile, because the experts I called know more than I do and I don't want to appear biased, I'm not going to side with either of them or criticize them on any of the questionable points they've made. If I can get one of them to answer the other's objections, I will - but I'm not going anywhere near the tough stuff. I did notice some hopefully common ground, and my two cents is that (too much is only not enough for some people/this new event certainly does confirm that we do not yet know everything/parks are still nice places during the daytime). We'll just have to wait until (all the facts are in/everybody's good and dead/experts who aren't me agree) for someone to write a real article about this. Perhaps it could be a piece in which someone bothered to do more than call a couple of experts. Or it could contain humor or artistry, actually develop a new idea, or take an unusual position in order to explore unfamiliar territory.

Maybe it's just me, but the above formula kills a ton of print journalism for me. And TV news is a pathetic competition for ratings. And I don't listen to the radio anymore. So that really leaves very little in the mainstream media.