The Media Blackout Day 2
Posted: March 7, 2009 Filed under: Media 5 Comments »I would be lying if I said this was easy. It most certainly is not. I am an unrepentant information junkie. I am the equivalent of the guy walking along the beach with the metal detector, listening intently and picking up everything from gold coins to tarnished metal buttons. Even as I have already learned a lot about my media habits just in the past couple of days, the reality of it is that I am quite content with the life of media consumption that I lead. I must thank my wife, who has been very helpful in reducing the amount of television she watches in order to minimize the background noise that inhabit.
The most interesting turn my daily routine has taken is that the newspaper has become my salvation. In the absence of the electronic media, a newspaper is all that stands between me and complete cluelessness. I have been a subscriber to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram since my wife and I bought our house almost three years ago. Subscribing at the apartment complex proved to be more complicated than it needed to be. My wife is not a newspaper person; few people that I know personally are. The people I know who DO subscribe to the newspaper MAY read 5-10% of it. What I have always discovered is that the people who DO read the paper tend to be older. When I was small, my mother got the paper on three days: Sunday (Sales papers), Wednesday (food sales papers), and the day after Steelers games. When she married my step-father, a prodigious newspaper reader even if he only believed half of what he read, I learned HOW to read the newspaper. Even though I was only 7, my step-father showed me how layout indicated what the newspaper man thought was important. He also showed me how TV news differed from the newspaper; how even though the news was faster on TV, people who read the newspaper always knew more.
How the real truth was told in the newspaper, because the real truth took much longer to get out. (even if he didn’t believe half of what was being written)
“People who read the newspaper always know more”, is a refrain I carried with me for a long time. That refrain has updated itself in how I inform myself online. I find myself looking online at newspaper sites to gain information about events rather than looking at one of the national cable newschannel websites or at the local TV news affiliate websites.
What I have learned most about this experience as it applies to me is that I have strayed away from the wisdom my step-father imparted to me. While it is not outside the realm of possibility for the newspaper industry to vanish before I return to my normal media consumption, I am making my mind up to continue my newspaper reading habits, because even though I don’t see the news, I don’t feel like I am missing out on anything.
Media Blackout: Day One
Posted: March 6, 2009 Filed under: Inkognegro, Media, Mrs. Ink, news, Television Leave a comment »The first thing I observed was silence.
Deafening silence.
I have never been deluded into not acknowledging that I have a fear of silence. I have always been of the belief that background noise settles my mind and focuses it, first on whatever I am listening to and then onto whatever else I deem important enough to think about. I grew up in a home that had something on at all times. My mother had either a TV or a radio on wherever she was. After thinking about it, I realize that this was something I took from her.
I didn’t struggle with disconnecting from Television very much at all. Of all the things that I was giving up, I found television to be the one item that I was LEAST bothered about. My most enjoyable experience of the day was replacing Random TV Viewing with a morning perusal of my local Newspaper, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (a McClatchy owned Newspaper, a fact I will pontificate on at a later date). Granted, there are several Documentaries that I have been meaning to watch along with my daily diet of talking head blather, but I know very well what a timesuck television can be. I will add that the primary reason that I am starting this project so much earlier than my classmates (it is due to be turned in on Tuesday, March 24, 2009) is because I knew that I didn’t want to deal with my lack of television overlapping with any meaningful part of March Madness, the name used to denote collegiate athletic conference championships and the NCAA Basketball tournament. While I will miss a few of the minor conference championship games, I will end my Media Blackout just in time for the Big East Conference Championship, which is where my favorite team growing up, the University of Pittsburgh Panthers, will play for back-to-back conference championships. Everything else that I find myself watching can be delayed or just plain old forgotten about. I didn’t even bother to adjust my DVR to see if there was anything I needed to record while I was away.
Unplugging from the Internet will be far more difficult (I say as I blog using a technical loophole as we speak)
I was slightly late to the phenomenon of the Internet, Joining AOL on Christmas Eve, 1997. It wasn’t until 1999 that I began to use the Internet for something other than chatting with other people and exchanging emails. As broadband connectivity became available, I found the internet becoming a more and more functional part of my life. Now, There are very few parts of my life that aren’t impacted by the internet, chief among them, my online banking and billpaying.
While I have long since soured on the radio, as someone who finds himself driving an average of 1500 to 2000 miles a month, it is an invaluable source of background noise. Whether it is the entertainment masquerading as information that is Talk radio, or the information masquerading as entertainment that is public radio, or the useful idiocy of sports-talk radio, It can always feed my never ending yearn for background noise in the event My ipod and my FM modulator are not playing nicely in the car. Easily the hardest part of this experiment will be avoiding the instinctive reach for the radio dial the instant the engine roars (or in the case of MY little four cylinder, putt-putts) its approval of the Starter. Driving in silence is going to be the most painful part of this experience, by far.
I never thought I would miss Tim Russert. Now I do.
Posted: December 4, 2008 Filed under: David Gregory, George Stephanopolous, Mary J. Blige, Matt Lauer, Media, Meet The Press, NBC, Sunday Talk Shows, Tim Russert 3 Comments »Meet the Press is dead to me.
While I never worshipped at the shrine of the world’s most famous Buffalo Bills fan or drank the chunky everyman Koolaid that was served by NBMSNBC when Mr. Russert passed away suddenly, I worried about the future of my Sunday morning talking head show of choice.
I always considered Tim Russert by far the least of all the evils provided by Sunday Morning Blabfests.
This week with George Snuffalupagus is hampered by the Banality of George Snuffalupagus and the general assholishness of George Will.
Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer has Wolf Blitzer on it, and that simply will not do. Plus it comes off as regular ole CNN. I need more gravitas than that.
Fox News Sunday is…well, its Fox News for folk who are too old and stubborn for Cable.
And CBS is determined to Hide Face the Nation from me by starting it on the Half-Hour.
So After St. Timothy of Buffalo passed away, they DeMothballed Tom Brokaw to fill in and offer the necessary gravitas through the campaign.
As a devoted viewer of MTP, this is unacceptable to me.
What allows MTP to work is its gravitas. David Gregory has the gravitas of a T-Pain Hook.
It’s been my opinion that the Smartest and Sharpest and most evenhanded person at NBC should do MTP. It was Russert until he passed. Brokaw worked in a pinch, I knew that unless NBC went and stole someone (*COUGHGwen Ifill*COUGH) There was going to be some drama with the pick.
David Gregory needs to be getting his groove on with Mary J. on the Holidays and leave the big chair to a weightier personality.
But NBC has spoken. And my remote will respond.
Face the Nation, here I come.
*goes to Reprogram DVR*
They almost pulled it off. Obama-Biden it is.
Posted: August 23, 2008 Filed under: Biden, Campaign 2008, Media, Obama, Politics 5 Comments »You just cannot keep secrets anymore. But damn if Team Obama didn’t try. They whispered about it…connected the dots…but they refused to break it.
Their restraint speaks to the airtight nature of the Obama campaign.
Once the Secret Service was dispatched to the Biden family, it was impossible to hide.
But it didn’t break until after the 11:00 news cycle, so for all intents and purposes, People will wake up to this news, they didn’t go to bed with it.
On a Saturday, a 9am text can EASILY be the wake up call to regular folk.
So on a certain level, The roll out was a success.
Personally, I LIKE Joe Biden. I had the opportunity to interact with him a few times while I was on the Hill and I found him more than amiable.
Part of me wanted it to be someone else only because THEY initially said it would be him.
End of the day, if Obama says it’s Biden. I am okay with it.
