OAKTOWN, CALI - Ya'll may have noticed, if you've been reading the G21 for a while, that whenever we do what we consider a "serious news" story, it comes to you in a series. Ever wonder why that is? I'm gonnah lay it out for you, from what I have culled from being around here a few years.
Reading over the various e-mails and pronouncements of our Esteemed Editor, I have figured out that he has a real obsession with the fact that most organizations have worst attention-spans than web surfers when it comes to the subject of what's news. He's bandied about many a time phrases like "Mouthpiece Media," "press release journalism," stuff like that. And despite what seems like a lottah freedom most of us writers enjoy here, he's got this list of rules, which he's shared with us over time.
- No articles for the G21 should be over 14k, with 10K being what he likes to see. He says that's because web readers won't have the patience for more.
- No "news" articles will be run without at least one interview from a person with years of "intimate knowledge of the circumstances." He likes to refer to these folks as "people on the ground." (With that in mind, we are locked into at least two articles, right?)
- If we are covering an event, we need to be prepared to do a follow-up and make an analysis based on the follow-up
Whammo! You gottah be as obsessive as our Editor, in other words, and commit yourself to a lot of research and legwork to get ANY news article published in the G21. Now you see why so many of us write opinion pieces?
You don't see a lot of that kind of reporting on the Internet, or in USA Today, Homes. And you know why? Well, 'cause most of what we get being called "news" --- from TV, radio, and newspapers --- these days is just Headline News(no offence to CNN.)
Think about it.
Most of all, we gets the Flavor of the Week.
Last week it was Bill and Monica, the week before that it was the Capitol shooting, this week its the bombing in Africa. It's worse than watching a damned pinp-pong tournament!
And it keeps us from focusing on any one subject for too long.
Then there's what Mr. Nathan Black of G21 has called LOUD REPETITION. You know what I'm talking about, all them so-called news shows that ain't much more than a series of talking heads "speculating," giving "expert opinion," and well GOSSIPIN' among themselves. "Well, George, you used to work in the White House. In your view, what must the President's advisers be telling him to do right now?"
If day-after-day of this crap don't numb you out and wear you down to the point that you just throw up your hands and don't give a shit, what will?
If you're prone to the X-Files syndrome, you might start to believe that this was being done on purpose so more and more people would opt out of caring about our politics and our society. Again, as Mr. Black said, you might be right.
What set me to thinking about this was seeing the father of one of them two kids, Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden, who got sentenced today in Jonesboro, Arkansas. This guy, Scott Johnson, was with his lawyer, Tom Furth, and he held this press conference saying that we had not basically gotten the full story on that March 24th tragedy. What he was arguing was that the full story goes back weeks, even years; that some folks in the town knew the shooting would take place before it did and could have prevented it; that if reporters had done there job after the shooting stuff that would now come out would have already been part of the public record.
That set me to thinking about our Editor's obsession with getting the story straight, and getting all of it. That made me think about how often it doesn't happen. That made me have a lot more respect for all of our picayune little rules.
BarnesandNoble.com Home Page
G21 DAY ONE: TODAY: ROD delivers preliminary results of our Monicagate Poll.
FAX NIKITA: More of the Strange, but True.
POWERSBOOKS: To enhance your summer reading regimen(hurry!) BOB POWERS reviews new thrillers by RIDLEY PEARSON AND MICHAEL D.McCLELLAN, and recommends a Thoreauean meditation by JOHN HANSON MITCHELL.
K.O.'s CALLS: KRIS "KO" OLSON talks more Baseball.
TABLOID HART: THOMAS HART on the resignation letter that rocked Colorado: JONBENET DETECTIVE CRIES FOUL.
G21 ASIA: ROD AMIS provides a follow-up to his series on the Cambodia election: Mirage on the Mekong.
IRISH EYES: Guest Contributor DAN VANDEMORTEL returns to Rate Congress on Human Rights for Northern Island.
POWERSSOUND: BOB POWERS on Jazz cornetist RUBY BRAFF, singer FREDDY COLE, and the WOODY HERMAN BAND.
BarnesandNoble SEARCH: Every writer here still reads offline. We support Barnes and Noble and hope you will, too. This is the place to find the best and brightest!
