On Charlie Rose on PBS, Channel 13 for those of you living in New York city, Tom Wolfe, author of “The Bonfire of the Vanities” and founder of the “New Journalism”‘s definition, claims that broadcast journalism always follows print’s. News channels never really break with a fresh story that has not been previously taken from a newspaper, or checked and confirmed by the wire, a trusted seal of credibility and source of ongoing new material for everybody in this business.
Wow. Is it live or am I watching a re-run of the show from 20 years ago?
The host and Mr. Wolfe go on on the issue for about 10 or 15 minutes, bringing up different examples of such theory. True, actually. I do agree with that. Nevertheless, is it really true that today’s news come primarily from newspapers? They go on and on talking about print journalism versus broadcast’s, but isn’it a little bit too 80’s just like Tom Wolfe’s books? Don’t they forget about something here? Didn’t Time magazine in 2006 announced to the world that “Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world” on the cover of the magazine, making “You” Person of the Year?(http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html) Given their age, background and audience, I’m not surprised about this kind of conversation (or maybe a simple slip of memory, or selective memory?), but speaking of good journalism and of two very good journalists, I believe they should better check their source: Can newspapers today, with declining advertising rate and readers actually moving onto Internet for their news, be really considered as the prime source of news? How about bloggers, Youtube, podcasting? “You” and digital media have been revolutionizing the language and journalism itself, forcing print and broadcast to constantly chase them. Even Mr. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times declared in an interview to Haaretz, the Isareli newspaper, that he’s thinking about shutting down the print of the newspaper to actually go only online in 5 years. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/822775.html
Well, maybe tomorrow, you blogger will write about it after seeing Tom Wolfe’s interview on You Tube.
Horizon 