Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, has an OpEd in today’s Washington Post on “The End of ‘Network News.'” May it Rest in Peace.
Athough meant as something of an elegy, given the timing — on the heels of the CBS fiasco over the National Guard documents — the piece is almost humorous, reflecting as it does what could be termed the Mainstream Media’s lament that Mainstream Media is too good, too thoughtful, too carefully vetted and edited for the cable/talk-show addicted masses. (Rosenstiel was a journalist for over twenty years, a former media critic for the Los Angeles Times and chief congressional correspondent for Newsweek. The PEJ is affiliated with the Pew Chartitable Trusts, the Nieman Foundation, the Columbia School of Journalism, etc., etc.)
Here’s a taste:
Network news was built around the carefully written and edited story, produced by correspondents and vetted in advance to match words and pictures. On the network evening newscasts, 84 percent of the time is taken up by such packages, according to content analysis by the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s annual State of the News Media study.
Cable news is a live and extemporaneous medium built around talk. Only 11 percent of the time is devoted to edited stories. Eighty percent is given over to in-studio interviews, studio banter, “anchor reads” and live reporter stand-ups, in which correspondents talk off the top of their heads or from hasty notes.
What is lost in the cable obsession with “live” is the chance to double-check, to rewrite, to edit — and often to even report. What is lost with the passing of network TV, in other words, is the journalism of verification. It is gradually yielding place to a journalism of assertion.
That’s Tom Rosenstiel’s and the Mainstream Media’s story and, like “I, Dan” Rather (reference is to this post below), I’m sure they’re standing by it.
UPDATE
Power Line has a different but compatible whack at Rosenstiel’s OpEd.
