Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock<\/small><\/p>\n
Friday, April 1, 2005.<\/strong> The paradox of broadcast journalism. It’s known for immediacy and visuals, especially compared to print. CNN and similar channels have brought 24\/7 continuousness to the medium as well. This emphasizes its demand for the NOW, as opposed to print’s process: Gather a lot then push it out in cycles of once or twice a day at the most.<\/p>\n The paradox, that now has existed for 15 years though perhaps not identified as such, is that broadcast journalism now favors long, slowly if not incrementally developing news.<\/p>\n Thirteen days for Schiavo to die. A month of declining papal health. The Scott Peterson hearings and trials. Michael Jackson’s. Princess Diana’s crash and funeral. All started by O.J. as well as the first Gulf War. (Sure there were other ratings winners, but these are the biggies.)<\/p>\n What will take fire is unpredictable. All-news TV tried and failed with Robert Blake. There are other examples, the young woman and the congressman hit for only a few weeks. Producers must lust after predictability. Hah hah.<\/p>\n Why? Folks like serials: soap operas even. On the other side, it gives all the various aspects of the 24-hour news cycle factories something to do: news and commentary, often features. The newscasts provide updates. The in-depth reports give a version of explanatory journalism. Larry King and the talk shows invite either participants or experts to chat (doesn’t often matter which). And the Sabbath gasbags can pontificate and point. Moneymoneymoney. -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Friday, April 1, 2005. The paradox of broadcast journalism. It’s known for immediacy and visuals, especially compared to print. CNN and similar channels have brought 24\/7 continuousness to the medium as well. This emphasizes its demand for the NOW, as opposed to print’s process: Gather a lot then push it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-spin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":98,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/11\/food-shelter-and-story\/","url_meta":{"origin":115,"position":0},"title":"Food, shelter and story?","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"November 24, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Thanksgiving, Thursday, November 24, 2005. Old School by Tobias Wolff provoked this riff. (I checked out the audio book from the library perhaps a year ago and returned it after hearing only most of the first disc, going by that's when its familiarity ended. Having\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":109,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/09\/shareholders-spill-your-bean-counters\/","url_meta":{"origin":115,"position":1},"title":"Shareholders, spill your bean counters","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 26, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Monday, Sept. 26, 2005: One of my guilty pleasures finally is starting to regurge on me. I have been enjoying accounts in journalism-industry media of the big, bad bean counters and how they're ruining my profession. It's so obvious, it's so true, it's so commented\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":48,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/01\/ex-executive-privilege\/","url_meta":{"origin":115,"position":2},"title":"Ex-executive privilege","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 17, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Monday, January 17, 2005: Days ago, George II brought in George the First and Bill Clinton to lead private fund-raising for the south Asian tsunami disaster of 12\/26\/04. This is life imitating art! \"Saturday Night Live\" has a periodic cartoon by one of its staffers--\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":147,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/05\/mothers-day-2005\/","url_meta":{"origin":115,"position":3},"title":"Mother’s Day 2005","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"May 8, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Sunday, May 8, 2005: An ode to Mother's Day. It's the first one since Mom passed last November. I've started reading a new, and perhaps the only so far, full biography of Ogden Nash. Here is a lede that won't work in my eventual newspaper\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life Lessons"","block_context":{"text":"Life Lessons","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/life-lessons\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":84,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2004\/07\/agora-sweater\/","url_meta":{"origin":115,"position":4},"title":"Agora sweater","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 19, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Looking good in an agora sweater Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock Monday, July 19, 2004: I raised a somewhat complex question in my previous essay. I've thought more, and I have a rough answer. The nature of a Web log such as Brick, however, is that it puts the newest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":303,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/04\/discussions-in-tents\/","url_meta":{"origin":115,"position":5},"title":"Discussions in Tents","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"April 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2007 Ben S. Pollock Can a fortnight's worth of writer topics fit together, and should they? Why, it depends on the size of your tent. Preferrers of small tents closely define their parameters. A writer must have New York-based publications to his credit. A journalist must be a full-time\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}