Newscoma

I’ve been watching the videos streaming on-line at Bill Moyers new digs. It’s some really good stuff. As I enjoy Moyers, (used to watch him when I was a kid) it was a tasty treat with some very good food for thought. I watched two of the videos. One was with Jon Stewart and the other one focused on the Gonzalez/prosecutors firings with Josh Marshall.

John watched the Stewart interview as well and has some commentary on it over at his house.

As I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off last week when Stewart interviewed John McCain and I couldn’t see it until this weekend, to hear the background of where The Daily Show host’s mindset was was incredibly interesting. And Stewart said some things I really liked.

And it occurred to me that 24/7 newschannels have taken back some of the essence of good investigative reporting when stories about Brittney Spears shaving her head or the identity of Anna Nicole Smith’s child’s father (Prince von Anhalt appeared on every news show around. Huh.) are breaking news. Yeah, it’s breaking celebrity news, I guess, but where are the stories in the top news stories at the top of the hour on what’s going on in Iraq or how your money as a tax payer is being spent as we head into the pork barrel talk of the congressional cycle.

And, Edward R. Murrow went through this too. I guess everything is cyclical. And he died six months before I was born.

I grew up idolizing investigative reporters like I saw in movies like “All the President’s Men” although I think I would have dug being Carl Kolchak and “Night Stalker” a bit more and if you read my blog you get that reference.

Fast-food news for the masses with about the same brain nutrition of an extra value meal at McDonald’s.

Let me explain, when I worked as a news director at a radio station, an old newspaper guy told me one day when we were covering a heated consolidation story that would have effectively closed down four high schools in this area (ultimately two were closed), he said in one of those verbal gigs that news people do to each other “Yeah, you’ll get the scoop and the news out there, and then I’ll explain to them the details.”

Basically he was telling me he’d get it right. Not to say I wasn’t getting it right but I had a minute to explain something that tore this county apart. And he had newspaper real-estate to explain the “essence” of what was going on that was impacting the lives of our county’s citizens.

I love the newspaper. I actually enjoyed the days of just being “scoop” reporter where these days we are transitioning into understanding the ever-changing aspects of new media. It may not make a difference in six months, but in six years, things will evolve.

So watching Bill Moyers reminded me of the combination of both good old fashioned news media, where conversations were had (granted between like-minded people) and the shrill fests in filling the air that occur nightly on Dobbs, Hannity and Colmes, Bill O’Reilly and Olbermann. (I like Olbermann, don’t get me wrong, but it’s still programmed creamed filling an hour of a 24 hour news cycle.) But Moyers has combined it with the newstools of the digital media age.

And let’s also remember, Moyers is 72 years-old.

And I must say it’s just interesting to watch this phase of history in news media.