Who stole my holiday?!?

Anyone can be an editor or producer when news breaks.
The trick is to communicate brilliantly when there is no news. As on holidays.
NBC's Today Show broadcast a brief but pretty good report Friday before the long weekend about the impending Independence Day amid a depressing economy.
Matt Lauer, a good interviewer any day, had a really eye-opening conversation with the equally good Maria Bartiromo, the CNBC economic head-turner.
Now, if only we'll see and hear lots of follow-up in depth.
More likely the Marine band and news stale-from-the-can will parade across screen and newspaper page.
Put enough features in City Desk  hold files and the TV video bank, and everyone can have a nice holiday.
Judge by Matt and Maria's interview: Many Americans without work, without a mortgage payment, without good retirement prospects and with BP oil lapping at their security or with health and other bills weighing on their minds are going to have a not-so-nice Fourth of July.
So why wouldn't journalists work longer, harder to report the national misery index doesn't take a holiday.
If terrorists or tornadoes attack, every newsperson will rush in from picnic and park to cover the disaster.
Why don't media work during the slow-motion catastrophe of this holiday in the dumps?
What's with the cancellation of all those municipal fireworks shows?
How come we're actually glad the markets are closed so they can't plummet farther?
Where's the hopefulness without hype out of state and national capitals and city halls?
So many questions. So little time.
Journalism should never take a holiday.
  

Excuse me! I seem to have misplaced my guillotine.

Remember the media panic when this communication revolution began?
The bloggers are coming! The bloggers are coming!
Well, it turned out to be less of a quick-hit rebellion and more of an extended Reign of Terror for conventional publishers.
Eat any cake lately, Marie?
Now the first wave of attack is fading.
Nielsen and others report a significant decline in blog traffic, according to The Economist.
Twitter and Facebook are up substantially, however. So don't harbor any wistful dreams of a return to legacy media.
Thank you BTW for coming to my own blog for this information and commentary. Better than bakery goods, I say, Your Highness!
Look here, the rebels' underlying cause remains the same: People and especially the youth demographic prefer to publish information and exchange comments at little if any expense, at a time of their own choosing and in a manner of their personal convenience such as with a cell phone.
Maybe the iPad will grandly unify the multimedia experience. More likely, we're going to experiment quite a bit more for quite a while longer.
The Economist points out the geopolitical significance of the Internet in real civil unrest such as Iran's.
There's more to going online than sex texting.
So we're not going back. The com-revolt is real. It's here to stay.
And the biggest evidence is the evolution to new forms and their globalization of ideas about freedom.
That's exactly what happens in a revolution

The streetcar that carried the general away

We journalists are Blanche DuBois, forever depending on the kindness of strangers.

People figure no public official will ever follow Gen. Stanley McChrystal's model of allowing a reporter into his candid inner circle. The general ended up fired for his barracks room candor.

Yet I believe journalistic history will repeat itself. Often. Like Blanche's signature line from A Streetcar Named Desire.

Kindness is another way of expressing openness or even naivete.

We haven't seen the end of opening up, even or especially by star-encrusted bravado.

And the public will be the better for it -- as always.

The career mistake of Gen. McChrystal turned into his ultimate service to the nation: Government and public both refocused on the war in Afghanistan, which we are losing or at least not winning.

Miss DuBois will return. We share her perpetual dependency on strangers.

The literary metaphor of Tennessee Williams's character in his 1947 play strikes my mind like a controlled nuclear event.

Blanche's nemesis was another Stanley -- the brutish Kowalski, antithesis of her dowdy, loopy world view and romanticism that drew out the beast in Stanley.

Excuse me, Gen. McChrystal, have you read the play?

The Rolling Stone writer Michael Hastings, who did the live-in interview with McChrystal, might not remind anyone of a DuBois or of the southern playwright who wrote Streetcar.

Yet the reporter and the general acted out the archetypes of clash between brutishness and soft persistence that spin off beneficial journalism like a newly discovered molecule from an atom smasher named Desire.

Oh, yes. Journalism will replicate the explosion, because that's what journalism does.

Not too fond a farewell for Helen and Larry

Am I the only one in America who thinks it's perfectly okay for Larry King to sit at home instead of sitting on his set at CNN?

I have nothing against the gentleman.

But I have nothing especially for him either.

He's not a journalist. He's a habit.

And let's don't confuse the status of endurance with national icon. Larry King is no Cronkite or even a Brokaw.

He simply spent a long time in TV. He talked with a lot of people. Isn't that nice?

Nancy Reagan called him on the air to say she'd miss him. Sweet. They threw on-air kisses to each other.

At least he's going out on his own terms, although with declining popularity.

That's better for him than Helen Thomas's hasty retirement amid catcalls for something she said.

It's hard to imagine Larry King saying anything that could offend in that degree. But I almost wish he would go out in rage rather than smoochiness with any former First Lady.

Oh, I'm not saying a journalist is not a journalist unless he or she is a contrarian. That didn't work for Ms. Thomas, the fixture at the White House.

But I am saying journalism and journalists ought to reinvent themselves several times before we let them get away from us.

Fifty years in a Executive Branch briefing chair with your name on it and 50,000 broadcast interviews are exercises in longevity, not in themselves evidence of journalistic contribution.

Goodbye, Helen! Goodbye, Larry!

It was nice to know you.

Yet not so nice we can't let you slip away so the innovators can take your places.