I used to many, many years ago function as the editor and entire news department of a couple small weekly community newspapers, the area was also covered by two daily newspapers, looking back it was a good job. One lesson I took away from that job was that what was the hot news of the day on Wednesday had by the time we published Tuesday had worked it self out in most cases...

My wife this morning asked me “what if everyone just ignored Pastor Jones, wouldn't we have better served the community than all the attention he got” very fair and wise question”...

Now Pastor Jones has the right to burn his private property and if he'd done it in a fireplace in the church, he would be breaking no laws, and there would have been no story...

I admit as a blogger I was as guilty of this all those media types camped out on the Dove Center's front lawn... Something to consider.

From the Gainesville Sun

The still simmering Quran issue precipitated by a whackadoodle minister here in Gainesville has prompted many to question the continuing relevance of our once vaunted free press. The current journalistic genre has dropped most of their teachings from Journo 101, if indeed, the lot of them has ever been exposed to journalism education. Today, irrespective of news worthiness, much of journalism community is driven to be first, be captivating, and sell.

Several years back the federal government, in the guise of the FCC saw fit to remove the fairness doctrine from the broadcast media. With that deletion our television and radio companies gained the privilege of showing and saying pretty much what they wished in their daily news programming.

Given that the only restraint is that administered by one's own interests, it was inevitable that some organizations with news as their commercial product would stretch the definition of news to meet the content that ownership wished to convey. When news became a viable commercial product, big time commercial companies (typically not with publishing as their primary business) began to buy-up news organizations.

This new ownership, now the publisher, driven by a desire to make money, or for some, having a particular ideological point of view to evangelize, began to use the medium, not as a public service but rather as a commercial venture on the one hand or an ideology propaganda machine on the other. Some having concluded that propaganda sells, packaged ideological views into talking head hosts, actors on the stage, selected from the beautiful people but lacking a journalism history. Ineptitude, the lack of journalistic skills bred a large cadre of “news people” devoid of basic journalistic ethics. Point of view journalism became the norm and attracted viewers and listeners having the same perspective.

Program ratings soared. Sponsors were attracted and the cable news networks were off and running. These news people now compete for audiences much the way football teams contest on the gridiron. They see the purveyance of news as a game to be won or lost. They trash talk on the air, back and forth across companies. Each attempts to degrade and disparage the other, to win the ratings wars, to make money from their programming. You can trust that few are in the business of accurately and objectively informing you about the days newsworthy events.

The talking heads, the cable news channels are paid to entertain you, to keep you watching so that the soap company, the drug company, the gold retailer, or some other organization can pitch its respective wares to you. You should think of the cable news channels as competing 24/7 infomercials. Disappointingly, cable now dominates the news, others follow their lead.

Today, newspapers and magazines are forced to play on this same commercial field. Each must compete for the reader / viewers attention, the advertising dollar. Newspapers try color, style sections, entertainment sections, gossip etc. Magazines become glossy, more colorful, more risqué. They struggle to compete.

As if cable wasn't enough, along comes the Internet. The New York Times publisher was recently quoted saying that “We will stop publishing The New York Times sometime in the future". Apparently, it will go completely to electronic delivery. Should we care? Yes, we should.

The Times is acknowledging that to survive as a commercial enterprise, that it must shift to the methods of its competitors. First, will be to shift from a quality, printed newspaper to online digital reports. What happens when the company determines that it continues to falter, as surely it will, in the onslaught of the new media? Will it move away from hard news to the same methods, the same content as the leading providers of (as Steven Colbert might say) newsiness.

All the News That's Fit to Print. What happens when there is no print, when your content is judged by the attractiveness of the anchor people, the slickness of your broadcast set, the color choices of your Internet page? Truth will disappear. Newsiness will become the standard news. The slick operator will prevail. The result: People will go about their daily lives brainwashed, uninformed and ignorant of what is in fact the “news” of the day. In our current political undertow, with the decline of an objective and trustworthy press, can freedom endure?

Bud Byrd,

Alachua