Newsrooms are a great place to work for inquisitive and talkative types like me. Whether large cities or small towns, a newsroom can be quiet with writers thinking and typing, or the newsroom can bustle with wide screen TV during major crises like a mass shooting or 9/11 or the final outcome of a trial such as the OJ verdict or Supreme Court ruling in Bush v Gore. But mostly the spacious newsroom is without cubicles, and that is the way reporters like it so they/we can talk to each other. And no subject was too offensive as we relished open and free conversation: gossip, social trends, politics, medical advancements, music, TV, movies, history, religion, philosophy, family life and yes sex (the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal provided a couple years of laughs and disdain). We thrived in a work community allowing the sharing of thoughts and ideas. What we were really doing subconsciously through discussion and banter was sorting out how we would write or frame our assigned articles whether or not related to the topic of discussion. In the end, a news article turned out clean and objective despite the jokes or pathos.
By day’s end, if we didn’t have to cover a night meeting, event or interview, we’d go home to our personal lives. That was how I made a living and spent the 1990s through the turn of the century. I was such a news junkie that I faithfully watched and listened to TV news every morning and evening, read national and state publications, and watched weekly news programs like Frontline and the Sunday morning staples while never missing 60 Minutes. I did this not only to know what’s going on in the world but to figure out if there was an angle I could investigate for a story at the local level. Every once in a while there was.
Enter cable news, the internet, online talk radio, social media, and the advent of the 24-hour news cycle. We each have our favorites (Fox News; CNN; MSNBC; Headline News; and the TV networks CBS, NBC, ABC and PBS). Maybe some of us watch one in the morning and another at night. But the non-journalist lay person may feel inundated with news, news, news spread out on cable TV. Perhaps by now they’ve discovered it’s the same old news regurgitated every 30 minutes … unless some element changes, gripping our attention once more like an old vaudeville trick to keep you in your seat.
Now more than ever the public is well aware of the slow news day. We newsies never wanted everyone to know about that situation: how sometimes we had to pull out a story, make a mountain out of a mole hill, when there wasn’t much story there. We had deadlines and a copy quota. Some newspapers instigated daily stories like two or four or six per reporter. Gadzooks. I never worked for a paper like that.
Unlike a community newspaper or local radio/TV broadcast, the internet has provided myriad options for news both local and world. And who’s been winning the audience is the ‘citizen reporter’ and blogger. Readers like interesting writing. They like a bit of fiction weaved into their nonfiction. Keeps the brain roasting, like a soap opera. This may have something to do with Fox News winning the lion’s share of viewers when it comes to political coverage, far ahead of the other TV networks, cable shows and major papers. Turns out, folks like the Fox premise of mixing news and views.
Journalism is supposed to be truth and nothing but. No slanting the story, no exaggerating the facts, no putting words in the mouth of the quoted, and no political or social spin. There are opinion writers and editorial staff who tend to that aspect of journalism’s mission and occasional duty to fully inform the public by exploring issues that can be controversial and of course political.
The blogger and citizen reporter are freestyle, even innovative. Journalists were known to be objective and honest and in that regard maybe staid and stale, old and boring. Maybe the public never believed reporters told the truth based on at least three reliable sources and balanced writing and quotes to ensure all sides were equally presented. Reporters could joke and laugh about serious situations in the confines of the newsroom, but when we wrote for publication, it was clean of leaning one way or another politically, socially or culturally. We understood the difference between news, feature, column and editorial. Today not only is the line blurred, many news consumers want it that way. The public wants to be entertained while being informed, the gist more than the research, facts embellished by humorous quips more than concern with accuracy. Funny how the newsroom journalists with their sharp humor were overly cautious when writing and editing news articles, unless the subject matter required the writing to be ‘on.’ Those were fun stories but few and far between the usual serious news.
Wake up and smell the coffee
From morning TV news shows like Fox & Friends, Morning Joe and Headline News to mid-morning, late-morning, noon, early-afternoon, mid-afternoon, evening to mid- and late-evening follow ups, news shows with plenty of opinions are a cultural constant—a soundscape to our nation’s collective political knowledge and understanding. Names of TV journalists are well known: Chris, Erin, Anderson, Wolf, Jake, Neil, Shepard, Bret, Martha, Ali, Dana, Shannon, Brian, Tucker, Jorge, Lawrence, Rachel, Cuomo, The Five, Don, Hannity, Laura, etc. The 24-hour news cycle seems to have been created by news people who wanted star status. More than anything else, they wanted their own show, like Oprah. Televised journalists are camera-ready, relatively attractive, articulate and in the know, I’ll grant them that. But the result of ‘everyone having their own show’ has left millions of viewers emotionally exhausted, real feelings over just hearing the news. To fill a 24/7 ideal, news is repeated, pounded, hounded to death … every day, week and month.
All this news from the mass media, especially the internet and social media like Twitter and Facebook, has created maybe a better informed society. Yet the price is high anxiety. People for the most part have all they can do just to make ends meet, working to feed, clothe and shelter their families. What started out as a presumed necessity in presenting live coverage of war has turned into a news nightmare filled with horrific mass shootings, human tragedies from the worst weather on record, and alarmist predictions on impending climate doom and off-the-rails politics. Heaven help us!
The mass media is not going off the air or leaving cyberspace. So it’s up to individuals to come to terms with sleeplessness and feeling overwhelmed, anxious and depressed by the constant sounds and images of ever-changing world events and real-time evolution of clashing cultures. Here’s what to do: Turn off the news. Watch something else. Get some sleep. Raise some kids. Go news-less for a few hours, for most of the day like our parents and grandparents did in the days when we had no choice. As someone who thrives on news and venturing into the 24-hour cycle, I can take it pretty much. But society can’t.