Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Hold That Obit
By Rachel Smolkin
American Journalism Review
Published: June/July edition
Excerpt:
... Nightly news is hot again, if hotness can be measured by the number of
inches devoted to the anchor race in the nation's newspapers and
magazines. Suddenly, the evening newscasts have what their morning
print counterparts can only dream of: buzz and opportunity. ...
... Analyst Andrew Tyndall calls
television in its present incarnation a "dying form" in a world of
rapid transformation. "So even if you made the perfect television news,
it would still disappear, because television is disappearing," he says.
"What we call television is going to be so totally different. It isn't
going to be a thing that's broadcast through a network of affiliates
through a television's rabbit-ear antennas."
Yet television news, and particularly the nightly news, continues to
inform and comfort the nation in times of crisis -- a presidential
election tossed to the Supreme Court, an unfathomable terrorism strike,
a devastating hurricane. And therein, perhaps, lies its salvation and
staying power. "You do need the anchor. You need the anchor's
experience; you need the anchor's gravitas...and you need television,"
Tyndall says. "It turns out that when they knocked down the World Trade
Center, you actually want to hear about that on television; you don't
want to hear about it online."
Al Tompkins, the Poynter Institute's broadcast and online group leader,
takes much the same view: that despite the need for technological
innovation, the nightly news possesses a special quality that may not
transfer easily to other forms. "In the future, networks are going to
have to think about wireless delivery in ways they haven't in the
past," Tompkins says. "People are on the go. They're just not available
to be in front of the TV the way they were." Increasingly, viewers
expect to access the news they want, when they want it. "The evening
newscast has that going against it. The consumer is being acclimated
to the idea that it's all about them." ...
... The role the nightly news anchors fill in historic moments is important -- and their ability to succeed is a question that cannot fully be
answered until those turning points arrive. "The news executives have
so much pressure on them to try to do something that will not only draw
audience and revenue today, but have shelf life for years to come,"
Tompkins says. "You're banking the whole network's reputation,
basically, on this individual. And it is a huge decision. And, truly,
you never really know how it's going to pay off until you end up with a
catastrophic story when there is no script." ...
More of this article...
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