Relevant Revelations

This past week, I had lunch with my friend John, thanks to some dead presidents.  No, not dead presidents as in money but dead presidents as in time—Presidents’ Day.

As I was bundling up to leave the restaurant and face the frigid winter temperatures that have descended upon us, I spied a reporter from WIS, Columbia’s NBC affiliate, at a nearby table.  Out in the parking lot, I asked John if he had seen her, and he informed me he didn’t even know who I was talking about because he hardly ever watches the local television news; in fact, he couldn’t even pinpoint his last memory of tuning in to the local news.

Skyline.  Columbia, South Carolina.  Photographed by Stephen Milligan (May 30, 
2010). 

This revelation may not amaze anyone, considering how America’s news-consumption habits are rapidly changing, but this is a response I would expect from, as Tina Fey so eloquently put it on the “Weekend Update” segment of Saturday Night Live’s fortieth anniversary special just the night before, “whatever you call the little dummies who are live-tweeting this right now instead of watching it.”

Now, John is no dummy, and at just a couple of years older than me, he is in his mid-thirties…well, okay—mid-forties (I suppose I must try to maintain a few shreds of credibility here as a journalism teacher), so he doesn’t fit Fey’s description.  To top it all off, John is a lawyer who works closely with county governments in South Carolina. 

So shouldn’t a lawyer associated with county governments keep abreast of local news?

I quizzed John about where he gets his news, and, of course, he responded that he gets it online because it’s available instantly.  He went on to say how he sees local news increasingly cluttered with meaningless fluff pieces presented by anchors who aren’t really engaging to him.  John’s scorn over the word anchor was even evident.

I later scanned my copy of The Elements of Journalism to see if John had received a ghostwriting credit!  It was as if Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel were right there with us.

In Chapter 8, “Engagement and Relevance,” the authors discuss the effects infotainment has had on the news industry and its wisdom (or lack thereof) as a business strategy.  They cite the research that says viewers are becoming apathetic in their choice of local news stations, if they even watch at all—and what a dramatic decline that figure has experienced.

So where does John get his news?  His top choice is—another shocking disclosure—Google News (and I almost passed out when he used the word aggregator—many commoners outside of journalism probably would have thought he’d mispronounced the word alligator), followed by local news alerts sent to his phone from news outlets in Columbia and Greenville, about two hours away.

As Bill and Tom and John departed the chilly parking lot, I thought back on the most fascinating revelation of the day—during a discussion over lunch of the snow predicted for Columbia this past week (which never materialized) and memories of past snowfalls, John revealed he had been a school bus driver when he was in high school.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around that news alert.