What to do when the headhunter calls

Some big jobs are open in journalism. More will come. Revolving doors churn faster with the industry in economic upheaval.
A city editor once advised me I was “on the up escalator, because management had its eye on me.”
My wife and I got a big laugh out of that. Still do.
Ambition is normal, however. No one should apologize for wanting to be considered.
The turmoil in management is so rampant and widespread across media platforms, the next call a news executive gets may be from a search firm.
Leonard Downie, Jr. is retiring from The Washington Post after a fabled run as executive editor. He’s making way so a new publisher can have her own person to meld print and online coverage.
Everyone in and out of media has a favorite candidate to succeed the late Tim Russert as NBC’s Washington Bureau Chief and moderator of Meet the Press. Actually, that could take two appointments.
How wise of the network to ask Tom Brokaw, its dean of broadcasters, to preside on the Sunday morning show in the interim.
It’s tough to take a saint’s place on a permanent basis. And Russert certainly received media canonization so rapidly, the Vatican must wonder if it could speed its own process for beatification.
Note to the halo hungry: Try to follow a sinner or at least allow some time to lapse before your own succession to magnificence. And more advice...

• Make sure you have something to add to the civic conversation.
• Journalists are content providers, so don't go too techno crazy.
• It’s a cliché to want to make a difference; choose that attitude anyway.
• Forget about the kingdom and the power and the glory; just do the news.
• Keep family uppermost as Tim Russert did; we have enough misplaced priorities.
• Don't get snowed by the perks and the bucks.

Journalism is a public service and a Constitutional privilege with responsibility attached to protect The People with information.
If that job description doesn’t fit the offer, thank the headhunter for the call and go back to work.

Me Blog Pretty One Day

You know that dream where you're naked in public? That's blogging for the first time.

But I have something to say. I have a long career to base my view on. I reinvented myself from editor to professor. Besides, I'm tired of sitting by while a million-million people fly into the blogosphere.

Look out. Here I come, naked or not.

There's a lot of company out here, all playing off each other. My title on this intro-post plays off a book by humorist David Sedaris, he of the gabby sister. I'd link to them, but some of the technique is going to have to follow along later.

I'm more into content and making my opinion known for now. I wish to be humane about it and clever when possible. Wise would be good. And informed, open to new ideas but skeptical that everything that has gone before is bad, ready for the discard pile.

I'm a contrarian. For instance I believe media were put on this earth because The People need to communicate.

So the true focus of journalism should be on the consumer of news. I observe in these difficult times for media companies, however, an introverted attitude overly emphasizes the producers.

I'm for The People. Corporate journalism will sort itself out if it takes the same view.

I agree with an advice-post on ProBlogger that less is more in word length. I'll try. God knows. Don't want to bloviate. But o-o-o-o-o-h, I've got so much on my mind!

I'll give you passion. And consistency. And a willingness to back down when wrong.

Email me at onejournalist@gmail.com even if you agree with some things I say.

And by all means add your comments to my posts, add this site to your bloglist and add it onto your blog reader.

There. I feel better now for adding all this up. I'm even dreaming like a blogger with clothes on.

A comfort level with some frequency

I didn’t quit listening to radio. Radio quit me.
I steal that line from Ronald Reagan, who said it about Democrats. He was a guy on a mic before going into another kind of make believe as an actor and politician. He used to phony up sports broadcasts to make them sound live.
And that’s it with pop radio isn’t it? Hype, whistle, wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.
There was a time when radio played it natural. I liked it like that, as comfortable as a movie matinee. Then came TV, audience and ad competition, and marketing and the Top 40. Bummer.
I knew something was wrong years ago when Del Rio, Texas sold autographed pictures of Jesus on the air.
National Public Radio is winning me back. I guess it’s a demographic thing.
Sanity is reclaiming the airwaves. I may not be alone in my opinion, at least in my fan class.
The local university station plays NPR the first half of the day for the faculty and off-campus neighborhoods. The students don’t start listening until the second half when rock starts. Hard.
When the kids graduate, they may not take the frazzling frequency along.
College grads are not big fans of commercial radio, turns out. Edison Market Research shows non-college grads listen more. But listeners who have a diploma tend to count themselves in the NPR audience.
Part of the explanation may be the increase of workplace radio listening, which is significant among college graduates. Thirty percent of those choose the Internet for listening, compared with 12 percent among non college graduates.
Hey, I think we’re sick of obnoxious radio, which is impossible to work by. It helps that NPR is slightly boring to the young, so it is attractive to the rest of us, cultural instead of counter-cultural and not demanding of our full attention while we are otherwise occupied.
Radio needs to be more like the later Ronald Reagan. A milder delivery plays gentle on the mind. The message seems credible that way, or at least more than sham sports or religious relics with counterfeit signatures.

Journalism blows with the wind

If you want coverage of your own personal Act of God or Act of War, you’d better be in Act One. Afterward the press heads to the lobby for intermission and refreshments.

I get a stale whiff of disaster fatigue. We are a fickle media, you know.
The recurring story, the story that won’t go away, the been-there-done-that-story – each causes a decline in journalism’s interest.
Oh, we blame it on the news consumer. We “have an obligation” to recognize the public’s short attention span.
But in the rush to oblige, we satisfy our own itch to move on and our own inability to see a story through to the end.
The flooding in the Mississippi drainage basin is not the “Katrina of the Midwest,” they tell me. So it’s "unfair" to expect the level of coverage we witnessed wonderfully in New Orleans, Biloxi and beyond in the Gulf Coast.
Well, let me count the similarities: Natural disaster on a biblical scale...human mistakes of building in a flood plain…failure of levees…death and injury...thousands displaced…blighted lives…the need to question governmental response, perhaps because it's better this time.
And the differences, such as they are: Neighborhoods washed away down south but most structures on the plains can be repaired…an historic city vs. dispersed rural communities…a tantalizing tourist destination of the imagination as opposed to the “flyover” region of America…a sizable racial minority with poverty issues compared with rugged farm region folk who are supposed to know how to cope.
The two stories look pretty similar to me. Besides, I’m uncomfortable saying one class of disaster victim population is more worthy of coverage than another.
If you’re flooded out, does your race matter or does it matter if you are in Louisiana or Iowa? If you’re burned out, does it matter if you are in California or Florida? If you’re dying of heat, does it matter if you are in Phoenix or Chicago?
All victims crave validation of their misery. All consumers of news need to know about disruption in national life.
And the tornadoes we've been having! The repetition seems to lower media interest. News rooms even have a cynical line to cover their boredom: “Sounded just like a freight train,” they yuk.
Each new typhoon, tsunami or threat of plague in Asia brings less attention than the preceding one. Every war in Africa, the Middle East and near-Asia pops up for a little while and then quickly loses media attention.
If you want coverage of your own personal Act of God or Act of War, you’d better be in Act One. Afterward the press heads to the lobby for intermission and refreshments.
I tried in two different newsrooms to create a “Whatever happened to…” feature. It was a simple, systematic way to revisit events and situations so we could “drop the other shoe” and end the public’s suspense on some important matter we raised and then forgot. But reporters hated and fought the effort.
The natural state of a journalist is the next big story, not the last one. What a professional disaster!
Real professionalism means viewing every situation as fresh and demanding of our full attention, new all over again. Every victim has an personal story to tell, if we listen and pass it on.
Now the Bread Basket of America is losing the shock value comparison with N’awlins.
Yet the Midwest’s possible famine-producing impact on the global food chain may overshadow enormously Katrina's huge but regional impact on the Gulf.
The more recent storms blew in when a housing crisis, a credit crunch and a fuel crisis boiled up in a perfect economic storm for the nation, aggravated by seeming helplessness against such macro headwinds. Katrina hit when we had fewer obstacles to cope, if only the federal government had.
Media attention to disaster or any other “old” story is uneven at best. Oh, I’m going to hear about pictures taken, column inches published and coverage dutifully pursued. That’s it, of course – duty and not freshness.
The word “ennui” applies to much of the media – boredom to the point of annoyance at being stirred from disinterest.
Looks like disaster fatigue to me.