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Tuesday, February 4 1997; with an update April 4

The mass media, take two

As I get more and more ensconced in my mid-'50's I also get more convinced that reporting the news is a young man's and woman's job, and that's at the heart of much that's wrong with the news as reported.

It takes a young person's energy to care enough to do the work of reporting most mundane news, but it takes a middle-aged person's maturity to know what's important, why, and how to present and interpret it. Journalism's way of dealing with this is to make the middle-aged the editors, and this is probably the best it can do, but the enthusiasm of youthful energy generally wins out over the sensitivity and depth of knowledge of maturity. That enthusiasm makes it to the front pages, woeful inadequacies of understanding painfully evident, and often the mature editors' responses are no more than a cluck of the tongue and a wag of the head. [After 39 people committed suicide for their cultic faith in San Diego County, a San Jose Mercury headline speculated—duh—that they were "deeply committed."] We should be doing better, but we too often aren't. So many shortcomings; so little time.

And all this fails to consider even the fact that many of my generation act and think more like kids than grandparents; if there's vacuity in the editorial craniums there's bound to be paucity in the newspapers and TV programs.

When my dad was my age and I was still a gossoon, he couldn't get enough news--thank goodness they didn't have CNN then! You'd have thought he owned stock or something. I resented having to defer to "the news" all the time as a child, but nevertheless gravitated toward the industry in my educational interests and youth.

But now that I'm the age at which I best remember my dad, I find myself resolving not to read a daily newspaper, and only to watch a few minutes of broadcast headline news daily, refusing to be sucked into anyone else's agenda for me as a news consumer beyond the "fold" of the first commercial break and the breaking news that precedes that.

I do tune in a couple of discussion shows on CNBC most evenings (see preceding entry). Even when some topic on Dateline, 20/20, or its ilk sounds interesting, I generally try to avoid watching. Being Orthodox helps; we must never forget to guard the passions, and news is a business bent on engaging the passions.

Thursday, January 23 1997
Toward greater democracy in the mass media

One of the recurring themes of this column should be media theory. My book, The Reformation of Journalism, one of only a handful of journalism theory books ever published in English, and the seven courses I was able to give at Stanford University for credit under sponsorship of the Kuyper Institute, dealt primarily with combatting the monolithic establishment biases in American mass communications media. (So far as I've been able to ascertain, I was the first person ever to give a course entitled "Minorities in the Media"; courses with such names are now commonplace, I understand, in journalism school majors. I mention this here because if there is anyone who'd like to challenge the claim, I hope to hear from them.)

The American media constantly promote the theme that there is a dominant American cultural ideal that we all should subscribe to, and that admitting other ideals is somehow destructive of our national identity. We see it every day. In most of the media, Right to Life or rights for the unborn in America are nonentities. Evangelical Christians and members of many other belief systems (evangelicals are by far the largest) are disparaged almost every time they are mentioned, and they are not mentioned nearly as often as their numbers would warrant, were the press operating on democratic principles. Many segments of the population are invisible in the mass media, and it is usually values groups now, rather than ethnic groups, that are omitted (though Serbs are an example of one group most major media seem to be using as whipping boys at present; they are demonized, always presented in a negative light, presumably because telling their side of the situation in former Yugoslavia would make the stories too complicated for simple Americans to understand).

It's my contention that pluralism (not multiculturalism, which is a buzzword of those who want to create a monoculture out of what should be the truly many-cultured "salad bowl") should become the values platform of the pressroom. But approximately 25 years after my book appeared, virtually no mass medium is predicated on a pluralistic approach (the most "mass" medium I can think of that does have at least some conception of pluralism is the cable channel, CNBC, which is run by Rush Limbaugh's "boss" (perhaps it's "former boss," now; I haven't tried to keep up), conservative Roger Ailles, and which yet gives an hour every night to the totally liberal opining of comedy-actor-turned-pundit Charles Grodin.)

This online newspaper is an experiment in being uniquely pluralistic. In our business coverage, for example, we are commited to letting the companies of Silicon Valley speak for themselves, and the same will hold in all our other reporting. And of course counter-reporting and correction from responsible alternative voices will always be encouraged. And when we start receiving opinions from readers, we will at least alternate between making that input appear first when "Viewpoints" is selected on the navigation bar. So write! It won't make you rich, but it could make you famous.

Wednesday, January 22 1997
Nightline...if you need to pump up your prayers

So much for keeping New Year's resolutions (see below). So much for the Doogie Diary. But you have to have something to say before you can say it; Andy Rooney to the contrary notwithstanding.

Here's something, maybe; what Herb Caen would call a "sodden thought."

The popularity of Ted Koppel's Nightline is evidence that there are a lot more praying Americans than the media would have you believe. I mean, why else would anyone tune in one more half hour of the bad news before turning in, except to load up on items for bedtime prayers?

Okay. Maybe the silence was better.

I'm a Letterman/Leno man myself. One of the advantages of living in the San Francisco SMA (standard metropolitan area, for you non media mavens) is that we get to watch 35 minutes of Letterman, thanks to Channel 5's "early prime," then can turn to Channel 4 to catch all of Leno. That way you can even avoid watching the news at 11 p.m.!

The first half is the best part of both shows anyway. And Leno's a little bit better than Letterman, though the latter's Top Ten Lists are a hard habit to break. If Leno's guest lineup fails to dazzle, you can turn to Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect at midnight.

So there. If that doesn't generate some feedback, nobody's reading!

Saturday, January 11 1997; First entry
We write to prove that we are not alone

This column is a forum enabling the editor to vent his spleen. Well, that's a joke noir; having "spleen," much less venting it, is out of limits for Orthodox Christians (subduing the passions being a major objective of the Orthodox way of life). Now that I'm Orthodox I can no longer call myself "the old curmudgeon" as I used to when I was Protestant!

Rather, this is a journal for sharing thoughts, ideas, humor, and inspirations from day to day. I hope most entries will be brief and that I'll generally be faithful in entering something here every day, even if it's just a Doogie Howser ("Hauser?" "Houser?"–someone correct me–I've already lost confidence in the spelling of Doogie's surname) -type summation of a lesson learned. But I've tried keeping Doogie diaries in the past and they've never worked for me. My summations have a way of turning into essays. And that usually leads to abandoning the journaling project when I can no longer keep up with it.

Initially, some rambling thoughts about Silicon Valley Today

This may seem like a one-man daily newspaper thus far, but it isn't meant to. We're depending on the whole community to make it work for the community. Send us your email press releases, or at least the URL's of your press release archives! So far, it's virtually all business news, because that news is readily available, but we're just as interested in what the local police departments, animal shelters, Scout troops, Little Leagues and hockey franchises, service groups and other organizations are doing. But your one-man staff who isn't making a dime at this can't go out and get it, it has to come in. Let us be your clearing house. Tell us your news (via email or web pages only, please) and tell your friends about Silicon Valley Today.

And tell me what you think of it. This project will grow indefinitely. As of yet, there is no automatic head counter to check on how many visitors we're getting (few at this point, I assume). So how about hitting the reply option below and letting us know you've seen us, and what you think. Ideas are definitely invited. And if you feel it your calling to make your fortune as SVT's advertising staff, let's talk!

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