THEY DON'T MAKE NEWS LIKE THEY USED TO

With all due respect to Rod Serling: Imagine, if you will, a Sunday morning. The weather has cooled down. It’s a little overcast and near 73 degrees. There is a slight breeze. It's a truly lovely morning to sit on the patio having a cup of decaf and reading the Sunday paper. This was once a scenario shared by thousands, even millions around the country on Sunday mornings, albeit with real coffee in most cases. I remember how enjoyable this was and how many fewer distractions we had with the good old fashioned newspaper. I read an article online recently, that speaks with dread of the demise of one of the most useful bits of media we have had.....the newspaper. With the advent of the internet, circulation of newspapers has dropped off considerably. The fall began in the 50’s when television began to deliver everything we needed to know and increased another 18 percent between 1990 and 2004. Between 2004 and today? Who can count that high? The job of a good newspaper was to hold governments and businesses accountable for their actions and set the news agenda for the rest of the media. At least that was the general idea. Since more and more people have shied away from print and are getting their information from blogs, “citizen” journalists and on-line periodicals, newspapers were forced to print less news and more of what they feel we want to read. Entertainment, sports and celebrity dirt. The dumbing down of the print media is in full swing. Over the next few decades, half of the worlds general newspapers will shut down. TV was a great source of news for a while. There was a sense of credibility that came from real journalists. Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Huntley & Brinkley – people who gave us a sense that they were reading the papers for us and helping us understand. They rarely editorialized. They gave us the facts, not opinion, so that we could disseminate things for ourselves and make up our own minds how we felt. Television news has become quite difficult to watch with all of the distractions. Do I watch the anchor or read the crawl underneath or that other flashing thing on the screen. The internet isn’t a lot better when it comes to that concentration factor with popups and advertising. There isn’t anything worse than trying to read the latest news about the incompetence of the Congress or follow the events in the middle east than when that tasteless toe fungus ad keeps sending the little ogre across my screen. TV news has almost become a parody of itself, now that we have all-news channels that have to attempt to fill 24 hours with about 5 minutes of what is actually news. They are nothing but opinion that attempts to sway public attitude to their way of thinking in order to drive viewership so they can charge more for advertising. They hire anchors who look great, but are incapable of stringing together more than 5 words into an intelligible sentence. Facts? What are they? MSNBC skews all the way to the left, CNN isn't a lot better and Fox, or as I often refer to it, Feaux, News seems more like a satirical skit than an objective news outlet, making up most of what they report by stretching facts to near the breaking point. They then have bimbo's relating those stories to us while making a valiant attempt at credibility. But, hey, at that point – who's listening? Most of what we get online comes from blogs and other sources, which are, in their nature, no more than the opinions of people we don't know. Those opinions fall flat when, after we've read it, the first question is: “Who?” We just have to sorta “take their word for it!” Facts fell by the wayside somewhere along the way, only to get lost in all the folderol, goo gah and nonsense. I recently decided to bring back tradition and picked up a Sunday paper to enjoy on my patio with that cup of decaf. I spent about 40 minutes sifting through myriad ads that made my newspaper weigh in at about 20 pounds heavier than it’s daily “fighting weight” just to try and find some relevant news and feeling bad because soon it may be gone and I’ll be forced to make my mind multi-task it’s way through CNN, FOX, MSNBC and a billion or so blog sites just to find out what’s what in the world. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go wash all that wonderful newsprint off my hands - with my tears!