Things that suck: TV News

I've known for years that mass media news sucked. I think the first time I saw it in words was nearly ten years ago in Scott Adams' book "The Dilbert Future", where Scott describes friends who actively avoid exposure to newspapers and TV news shows.

Since then it's become clear that most people I know ignore TV and print news media, and get their news from blogs and websites like Slashdot. This week I caught up with an old friend in town visiting his parents, and he described how his parents were "news junkies", watching every minute of TV news they could, and panicking that some rare disaster that befell a complete stranger was going to happen to them.

I think this is the death of newspapers and the 30 minute TV news shows. And it's a silent death — none of my friends are complaining to TV networks, or writing letters to the editor about declining editorial standards; they are just turning away. Media outlets are left to struggle with more and more desperate strategies to keep their "eyeball count" up, but this is changing the mix of their audience, skewing towards the easily impressed. It's a short term strategy that might hold a few viewers but shuts out even more.

Anyway my motivation for this post is this article by John Hockenberry, once a Dateline reporter. It's the clearest statement I've seen describing what has gone wrong in news reporting. The conversation at the bottom of page 4 made my skin crawl.

Elsewhere, things that suck this much are often replaced with something that doesn't suck (think MP3 players before iPods, and online maps before Google Maps). Can anyone suggest what's gonna replace TV and print news media?