Americans who try to describe either America or Americans generally learn that Alexis de Tocqueville did a better job at it in 1835. It sometimes seems that his classic book Democracy in America tells all there is to know about the American psyche and society.
Today, I get the same feeling reading Herbert Gans‘ classic book Deciding What’s News. Some things never change. Gans describes the competition between different parts of a media operation thus:
“Competition is endemic to the profession. Colleagues compete with each other to make story lists, and with other news organizations in the same firm. Evening news programs try to prevent morning programs from using a film they would like to use first. In 1975, the executive producer of the NBC Nightly News had to compete with himself in deciding whether to use a feature for the weekday program or hold it over for the weekend shows, which are always in need of features, since the sources for important news rarely work on weekends. Newsweek journalists try to beat colleagues at The Washington Post to the punch, and Time’s journalists occasionally compete with other Time, Inc. publications.”
That was in 1979. What else is new?
