Dumbing Down, or Reaching Out?

-
Telling a story on a whiteboard may not sound like great TV. But CBS News may be onto something. (Committee of Concerned Journalists)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Unbearable Lightness of Lost

-
Image
The first sign that I had lost my edge came without warning: I Tivo'd Lost on Tuesday, when I was unable to watch the show in real-time for the first time ever, and then was in no real hurry to see it. I'm now the weary gambler who won't fold because he secretly wants to lose, and betting on an indifferent hand hastens that perverted joy. A lot of people died this week on Lost -- only white people survived, a friend observes , and the suicide bomber was an Arab, she also noted. Well, Sayid is Iranian and thus Persian, but at this point, on this show, which purports to be all about the details, this slight twist on an cheap cliché seems like an inconsequential inside joke. Even death provides no finality in this bloated final season. Jacob says he can't bring people back to life and the seemingly untrustworthy Man in Black promises he can. But of course, nobody is ever really dead on Lost , because people can time travel and reunite in the past and also alter t...
Read more

Run, OJ — Run!

-
Image
Apparently the presidential election is over and the Iraq War has ended. Rejoice one and all! OJ is a criminal defendant on cable TV news again! But a funny thing happened on the way to the docket: All that pre-hearing blather about a battle royale between an over-zealous prosecutor and the famously cocky unconvicted criminal failed to materialize. Despite kidnapping and armed robbery charges that could potentially land Simpson in jail for life, the D.A and Simpson's attorneys got together and made nice and have nothing but sweet praise for each other. So OJ got bail. Bail that I could make. Bail that I would lend him — but only if he promised to skip out on it. OJ's gotta take it on the lam again. And this time he has to mean it. OK — OJ has to turn over his passport, so leaving the county would be a little problematic and that Mexican equivalent of Miami Beach might be a bit out of reach (note to self: check out CNN B Roll footage for video of holes in the fence). Bu...
Read more

What's Wrong With The Magazine Business (Or, Biting The Hand That Feeds Me)

-
Image
True confession: I don't really read magazines. Haven't for ages. Well, that isn't entirely true. I do read, or rather look, at magazines when they are hand-me-downs, or when there is a copy available for free at the office (that office being Condé Nast). But it has been ages since I subscribed to a periodical, and ages more since I bought one on the newsstand; my last clear memory of doing so was four years ago, well before even the possibility of working for wired.com was real, when I bought my daughter a copy of Wired . Something on the cover grabbed her. I was horrified that the single-copy price was nearly the same as a 12-copy subscription. I mentally hemmed-and-hawed (being out of work, and all) but I didn't want to stifle her interest, so we took a copy home. More recently I intercepted (*thanks, @MarketingVeep :) a list of magazine dreams my wife had intended to mail to Santa. And working through that list I realized that the traditional magazine fulfillment ...
Read more