Hey, Cynthia–
I don’t know about you, but not only would I rather watch The Simpsons than any network news show with the possible exceptions of Nightline and Meet the Press, but I also think Homer, Bart, Lisa, et al., offer far more incisive political commentary than, say, David Gergen or Laura Ingraham.
Right after getting back from lunch today, I did something I do five or six times a day: check out Poynter’s MediaNews.org, the site Jim Romenesko started last year under the name MediaGossip.com. I will admit to being perhaps the most shameless writer Jim has to deal with, peppering him with e-mails in the hopes of persuading him to feature my stuff. I’m telling you this only to show you how craven even the thinnest whiff of national exposure has made me. Please don’t tell anyone else!
An unintended side effect of MediaNews.org–not to mention the Drudge Report, the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the Freedom Forum, the Media Channel, etc., etc.–is that media critics like us are expected to know so much more than we did five years ago. Then, it would have been impossible for us to keep up with all of the media news contained in just one of Romenesko’s daily updates. Now, we must spend a significant part of each day reading–not just the media-only sites but also Salon, Slate, Feed, the Op-Ed pages of our favorite out-of-town papers, and more obscure Web sites as well. Yes, I’m damn happy I can read Howie Kurtz’s Washington Post column first thing Monday morning, rather than waiting until the out-of-town papers show up on Tuesday. But is it good that I’m spending more time reading than I am calling sources or writing? Probably not.
Here’s an important bit of media news that came in via a distinctly non-New Media route: the mail, accompanied by a press release. According to an article that will appear in the new Mother Jones, candidates for federal and state offices will spend $600 million on political ads this year, up by a factor of six–adjusted for inflation–since 1972. And yet political coverage on television, and especially the networks, continues to shrink, as more and more politics are shifted to cable. The article is by free-time advocate Paul Taylor, who underwent a conversion experience after asking then-presidential candidate Gary Hart in 1987 whether he was getting any on the side.
I have a few problems with Taylor’s reasoning. For one thing, he concedes that cable outlets and the Internet are brimming with presidential coverage but says it doesn’t matter because one-fourth of households don’t get cable and one-half aren’t online. True, but that’s a temporary situation. More problematic is Taylor’s assertion that the networks, as a public service, should be pumping out politics to a trapped audience rather than letting viewers seek it out themselves. Let’s face it, you can lead a couch potato to an Inside Politics, but you can’t make him think.
Still, Taylor’s basic point–wildly profitable local TV stations and national networks wallow in campaign advertising money while doing nothing for the public good–is important and needs to be made.
Sorry to be so serious, but it’s been snowing in Boston off and on today, Cynthia. Snowing. The Red Sox were rained out of five games in four days last week. It’s enough to make me wish that Boston Mayor Tom Menino would dress up in drag and join Donna Hanover in The Vagina Monologues. Take that, Rudy!
Until tomorrow,
Dan
