Below the Fold

The Web Won't Give You Cancer

Everyone has a story, a friend, a relative – everyone knows someone who has had or is fighting cancer.

Three friends from high school had it, one of whom works in the office next to mine. Another colleague just learned her mom has it. My dad died from it and I dodged it though I still feel the effects almost every day.

I don’t know why any of these people got cancer, why some can smoke and live to be 100 while others eat their vegetables and die young. But I’m pretty sure the Web won’t give you cancer.

The Web can do a lot of things, great things – it brings people together, makes work easier and global.  And, not to be overlooked, it can reconnect you with people from high school who once tried to stuff you in a locker but now want to be your friend and update you on every lame detail of their lives.

As most of us now know, the Web (in this case, the overwrought and misleading term “social media”) can sell t-shirts, thanks to P&G’s experiment where it asked some of the best online communicators to flood the zone with Tweets, videos, photos, smoke signals and whatever else they could muster to sell as many Tide shirts as possible in two hours (all proceeds went to charity.) Think of it as a Jerry Lewis Telethon that was on every channel, albeit without the human-interest stories and bad formal wear.

The Web made “Chocolate Rain” an instant classic, the "Star Wars Kid" everyone’s embarrassing little brother. The Web gave us Dr. Horrible and Obama Girl. Thankfully, the Web gave us Obama, too.

Sure, the Web also gave us online predators, cyber bullies and outlets for speech some of us wish wasn’t free. It has compromised our identities and lost us lots and lots of money.

But the Web won’t give you cancer. I’m pretty sure of that.

In fact, Rick Murray, my boss and all-around digital guy, is riding his bike to conquer cancer and using the Web to raise awareness as well as funds. People on Facebook donated their status to organizations like Susan G. Komen For the Cure. Several years ago, a newspaper reporter used the natural cadence of new media reporting to give hope to thousands of other cancer victims like her.
 
Love the Web, bash the Web. Embrace social media or dismiss it. Sing, sell t-shirts or run for President of the United States.
 
Do whatever you want – but whatever you do, understand one thing.
 
The Web won’t give you cancer.
 
But the Web can damn well stop it.

Everyone has a story, a friend, a relative – everyone knows someone who has had or is fighting cancer.

Three friends from high school had it, one of whom works in the office next to mine. Another colleague just learned her mom has it. My dad died from it and I dodged it though I still feel the effects almost every day.

I don’t know why any of these people got cancer, why some can smoke and live to be 100 while others eat their vegetables and die young. But I’m pretty sure the Web won’t give you cancer.

The Web can do a lot of things, great things – it brings people together, makes work easier and global.  And, not to be overlooked, it can reconnect you with people from high school who once tried to stuff you in a locker but now want to be your friend and update you on every lame detail of their lives.

As most of us now know, the Web (in this case, the overwrought and misleading term “social media”) can sell t-shirts, thanks to P&G’s experiment where it asked some of the best online communicators to flood the zone with Tweets, videos, photos, smoke signals and whatever else they could muster to sell as many Tide shirts as possible in two hours (all proceeds went to charity.) Think of it as a Jerry Lewis Telethon that was on every channel, albeit without the human-interest stories and bad formal wear.

The Web made “Chocolate Rain” an instant classic, the "Star Wars Kid" everyone’s embarrassing little brother. The Web gave us Dr. Horrible and Obama Girl. Thankfully, the Web gave us Obama, too.

Sure, the Web also gave us online predators, cyber bullies and outlets for speech some of us wish wasn’t free. It has compromised our identities and lost us lots and lots of money.

But the Web won’t give you cancer. I’m pretty sure of that.

In fact, Rick Murray, my boss and all-around digital guy, is riding his bike to conquer cancer and using the Web to raise awareness as well as funds. People on Facebook donated their status to organizations like Susan G. Komen For the Cure. Several years ago, a newspaper reporter used the natural cadence of new media reporting to give hope to thousands of other cancer victims like her.
 
Love the Web, bash the Web. Embrace social media or dismiss it. Sing, sell t-shirts or run for President of the United States.
 
Do whatever you want – but whatever you do, understand one thing.
 
The Web won’t give you cancer.
 
But the Web can damn well stop it.

The Last Newspaper

Daniel headed for the darkest corner of his local Starbucks, the Last Newspaper clutched snug against his chest.

He opened it slowly, carefully, as if he were cradling an ancient parchment. The crinkling sound it made drew a few stares, and then a few more as those around him realized that they were sitting just a few feet from history.

Daniel pretended not to notice. He wasn’t much for attention or conversation. But even he couldn’t deny the significance of this stubborn relic that had struggled against the future and lost.

So he didn’t cringe when several customers put down their Kindles and slid over to his table. After all, he had heard the questions over and over for months as he executed his daily routine of “offline” media consumption. He knew that this day would come, when the Last Newspaper rolled off the press and he alone would be left to feel the ink seep into the creases of his fingertips, turn the oversized pages and engage in a forgotten literary ritual.

The questions often took the form of puzzled amusement:

• "Isn't the news old by the time you read it?”
• "How do you search?"
• "What do you mean you had to pay for it?"
• "Why would you want a bunch of content you don’t care about?
• "I’ve got all the news that’s fit to click right here."
• "What is ‘ink’”?

Daniel took it all in stride. He nodded politely, laughed lightly, and answered what he could with all the patience and quiet pride of a museum curator.

He reminded his rapt audience that what they now refer to as “content” used to be called “stories,” delivered by trained individuals known as “storytellers” and “journalists.” These people didn’t work for companies like Google or Amazon as they do now, culling “content” from armies of information aggregators and feeding it into computers which analyze and pull out the relevant information by keyword. Before news was fully automated, Daniel said, individuals wrote entire stories themselves. They researched and crafted linear narratives – unheard of today, he admitted, but at the time people found value in following a certain flow.

Of course, people had more time back then, too. The move from stories to content was slow as well, and its tipping point went largely unnoticed. Before anyone knew what was happening, stories became shorter, sliced, repurposed and packaged as do-it-yourself news. Where once we read stories, we now consumed content.

Maybe this is why it happened, Daniel thought, as the crowd went back to the soft glow of their Kindles and mobile media devices. Maybe the descent from stories to content was the fait accompli of the printed page. 

Stories are personal and transformational. Stories have definition and character. Stories are history personified.

But content is cold, distant. Content is a commodity – a finite consumable of fleeting value. Content is artificial intelligence.

When storytelling is reduced to content, ideas die.

And with that, Daniel stood, folded the Last Newspaper back under his arm and walked away, leaving the future behind for the last time.

Into the Fire and Back Again

"Nothing breaks the spirit of a Californian like a fire – it starts quietly and then grows, moves and acts as if with conscience, teasing you with a schoolyard bully’s joy." – Gary Goldhammer, Below the Fold, 2007

 

As regular readers of this far too occasional blog know (my day job is also often a night and weekend job, not a good recipe for frequent posting), I like to wax on about Southern California culture and Los Angeles in particular. Whenever possible I try to link these posts with something about new media and journalism – this blog’s topic – but usually these parochial musings fall outside my self-constructed confines.

This is one of those times.

So if you are looking for my take on the Christian Science Monitor going entirely online, or Barack Obama posting the weekly Democratic “radio” address as a YouTube video, or why I’m increasingly pissed off that the term “social media” is so overwrought and misused that it has lost all meaning and is now, at least for some, becoming a substitute for authentic conversation and engagement (as asinine as that sounds) – well, you’re going to have to wait a bit longer.

Nothing breaks the spirit of a Californian like a fire. I wrote this a little more than a year ago, after fires in Malibu, in San Diego, and near my Orange County house destroyed thousand of homes and lives. I knew people who were affected, which made the fire real – more so than the smoke and ash in my backyard or the dryness at the back of my throat.

The past few days have seen more fire in the tinderbox we call Southern California, this time in Santa Barbara County and once more in Orange County. And again I know people affected, including a close friend who had to evacuate her Anaheim Hills neighborhood, not all that far from my Tustin area home.

Again the sky took on that ubiquitous red-orange glow. Smoke filled the lungs and fire consumed not just our property but our minds. We cursed the wind and prayed for the firefighters and our neighbors.

Fire holds a special place in my psyche. About 18 years ago when I was a reporter, I covered another Santa Barbara fire. I remember my car filling with smoke as I searched blazing hills for the fire command center, then taking cover under a desk as an AP stringer and I shared the only working phone so we could call in our stories (no Internet, e-mail or cell phones – yes, I’m that old.)

I remember a fellow reporter getting out of his car, forgoing his job and objectivity to climb onto a stranger’s roof to help him hose it down. I remember the homeowner who gave me a tour of the smoldering embers that used to be his living room. And I remember standing next to a group of firefighters working to knock down a flare up, wondering whether the heat would burn my notebook before it burned us.

If I didn’t have a job to do I’m sure I would have been scared to death, but fortunately there was no time. Fear comes later.

I feel that fear far more now than I ever did on the fire line. I felt it watching the 24-hour local news coverage of neighborhoods and towns I’ve known my whole life go up in flame. I feel it for my friends who, like me back in Santa Barbara, are too focused and busy to be afraid for themselves.

Maybe if I lived somewhere else I’d feel the same way about floods, hurricanes or tornadoes. I know many other places experience the same things during similar situations; the admirable response of man and machine is a human trait, not a California one.

Yet I can’t help but feel there is something about Southern California and Los Angeles that make them different. I find both to be complicated places, more so than anywhere else I’ve lived or visited in the United States or abroad.

This region, with its diversity and unconscious yearning for a collective soul, is capable of uncommon poetry and passion. It speaks to us in times of tragedy and triumph – and then quickly retreats into its freeways, Bluetooth headsets and industries of make believe.

Nothing breaks the spirit of a Californian like a fire. And nothing except a fire can make this disparate people whole.

Rising Above L.A.’s Virtual World

You are never more alone than when you are in Los Angeles. It’s no wonder the word “dude” was invented here, since it saves the user from having to call a person by name.

The initials “L.A.” should stand for “Living Alone.” Even paparazzi-engulfed celebrities lack any real attention – when the cameras turn dark, they go back to being just more tired faces in a region unable, or unwilling, to coalesce.

I once called Los Angeles a “city of fragments” and its people fragmented. This is most evident on the freeways, where speed, talk radio and curved glass separate us from the outside world. We rarely leave the protective womb of our cars until we are safely at our destinations, and even then we are hesitant to venture forth without a Bluetooth headset or iPod to keep us within the friendly confines of our own virtual realities.

Metrolink train commuters are not much different – without glass and speed to help them keep their distance, they tune out with electronics, newspapers and dull stares. They are an accidental community of familiar strangers.

This symbiosis was shattered when Metrolink 111 slammed into a Union Pacific freight train, killing 25 people and injuring scores of others. And from the rubble names emerged, and conversations, and connections. A tragedy that never should have been gave birth to bonds of friendship – all this in a City where “reality” is something that we think only happens on TV.

BEFORE THE ACCIDENT, the commuters on 111 – as well as most Southern Californians -- were as close as friends on an online social network. In other words, not close at all. Social networks, in fact, seems like there were made for L.A., allowing people to connect without commitment, and be whatever they want their loosely joined universe to believe they are.

This is a bit of exaggeration, of course – online social networks also enable strong ties and reunite friends and family. And like anything, you get out of them what you put into them. Nevertheless, so much of what passes for “social networking” today is more of an illusion of community than an actual one.

That’s why Los Angeles is like an online social network – it is a virtual place. L.A.’s potential to create emotional bonds is rarely realized.

Yet for a blink in time, these elusive emotional bonds rose from the wreckage of a wayward commuter train – and in doing so, if only for a moment, transformed a city and region.

Yes, I once called Los Angeles a city of fragments. But I also believe that, while the pieces don’t always fit, they do, occasionally, come together.

Living the Absent Life

Every week at least one or two people start following me on Twitter. This in itself is not a problem – my feed is public and I have nothing to hide from friend, foe or even Yankee fan.

What I find interesting is that I haven’t posted anything on Twitter since I signed up for the service when it was still in beta. One look at my page will make that painfully obvious, so either people 1) are hoping against hope that I’ll say something important someday, or 2) could care less about what I have to say and just want to be connected in case I commit suicide, and as a last-minute plea for attention I broadcast my 140-character cry for help.

Nothing against Twitter – I think it’s a great service and have recommended it to clients where it made sense. But as those of you who follow this blog know, I have enough trouble maintaining Below the Fold, much less another channel. And besides, if I can’t think of anything important to say for over a month here, I certainly wouldn’t be able to keep pace with a Twitter channel, 140 characters per post or not.

Twitter reminds me of the early days of blogging, when posts about bathroom breaks, travel delays and the cute thing the cat just did dominated the nascent blogosphere. I distinctly remember a post from Dan Gillmor, then and still one of my idols, where he made sure to let everyone know he would be offline for two hours and not to worry, he would be back and posting again as soon as possible.

Suffice to say we’ve all gotten more patient. Some early stars like Jason Calacanis have even stopped blogging altogether. Yet information has not slowed, outlets have not diminished and the thirst for being first often quenches being right.

WE LIVE IN A TIME OF PLENTY – plenty good and plenty bad. You could say the same thing about almost any decade at any time in modern history. The difference today, I believe, is not so much in what we have, but in what is missing.

There is the “Digital Life’ that many of us live – certainly those of us who read blogs, update their Facebook profiles, send texts or record podcasts. And then there is the Absent Life, the place where we fail to connect with each other like so many unused Twitter feeds.

The Absent Life is talking to people online without engaging in a real conversation. It’s about knowing without understanding. The Absent Life is what goes on around us while we are busy being busy.

It’s the guy on his Blackberry at dinner with his wife. It’s the person sending e-mail at Midnight when 8 AM would suffice. It’s the excuse that you can’t afford to disconnect from the Internet, when in fact you are just disconnecting from the real world. And it’s the dichotomy of wanting to stay on top of the latest news and trends while also trying to stay on top of everything else demanding your immediate attention.

Our lives are digital. Our work is digital. And our friends are digital. Everything we want is at our fingertips. We think we have it all, because in many ways we do.

Really, we are fortunate. People are making real connections online, engaging and supporting each other. Media is forging new ground and taking storytelling to levels never before possible in the world of mere atoms.

The Digital Life is worth living. What we need is a better way to balance our digital world so we don’t become absent in the real one.

A case in point: a few months ago, a colleague placed a picture of a little girl in my office. The girl was much younger than my daughter but about the same age as his. I thanked him for the photo and commented how cute his daughter looked.

Just one problem – the picture was of my own daughter, taken years earlier in my own backyard when I was apparently standing nearby. My little girl, my yard, my life – and not a clue or wisp of memory of my daughter ever looking that way.

The Digital Life is where I try to be. But the Absent Life is me.

Tim Russert: Citizen Journalist

“Feels like the country’s biggest game is about to be played without the referee.” – Elizabeth Wilner, posted on the “Missing Russert” Facebook group.

 

AS MODERN JOURNALISM LAY near death, with its entertainment-driven news, pomp and punditry, Tim Russert was its life support. Now, with Russert gone, we can only wonder how long journalism can go on.

Russert’s ability to hold an entire profession together was never fully noticed or appreciated. But as reporters, broadcasters, colleagues and competitors flooded the airwaves in the hours after Russert’s death from a heart attack, the void left by Buffalo’s favorite son was painfully obvious.

There was Keith Olbermann, the antithesis of objective journalism, talking to his partner in polemics Chris Matthews about Russert’s objectivity and dedication to his craft.

There was Wolf Blitzer and Larry King from CNN, saying all the right things but looking lost, as if without Russert the nation would have to turn its lonely eyes to them for its political coverage – the thought of which scared them to death.

Certainly Russert can never be replaced, but there’s no one left in television news that is even in the same league. It was as if Paul McCartney had died, and the only people left to deliver the eulogies were Miley Cyrus and Right Said Fred.

Olbermann’s tribute was beautiful and heartfelt to be sure, but the real proof of Russert’s impact will come when Olbermann tapes his next edition of “Countdown.” Will he, as Russert did, learn everything he can about his guests’ positions and then take the other side? Will he use his obvious intellect to inform us or just keep us pissed off?

And will Matthews, on his next “Hardball,” let his guests finish a complete sentence? Will he, as Russert did, force politicians to go beyond their well-practiced sound bites?

Will anyone – can anyone – remember Russert through their actions and not their words? Or with Russert’s passing has the plug been pulled on journalism, on objectivity and discourse forever.

I want to say yes to the latter. I want to just give up on a profession that, save for a few serious journalists, gave up on itself a long time ago.

But that wouldn’t befit Tim. This was a Bills fan after all – he was a man who always believed in the next play, the next game, the next season.

Russert was the true definition of a citizen journalist. His questions were ours, and he never forgot for whom he worked. His authenticity, unlike that of so many of his contemporaries, was unimpeachable.

Journalism changed and Russert survived. The question now is whether journalism will survive without the likes of Tim Russert.

We Are the Firemen

In May 1993 – the exact date and time escape me – my inner world, the one where thoughts are born, developed and processed, lost its ability to be silent. I since have lived with constant noise, the result of a tumor that, in an ironic nod to God’s comic grace, left me deaf in one ear yet covered in a perpetual blanket of ringing static.

Sometimes it’s not too bad, other times it’s so loud it sounds like there’s a KISS concert in my cranium. But it is always there, never fully abated, never completely quiet. It will never be quiet, and it has been so long I have forgotten what quiet is, what silence sounds like, what kinds of thoughts stillness brings. How much smarter, how less painful the headaches and seizures, how more aware of my environment would I be if only I could hear more – and then, like most people, dial down the volume and hear nothing but thinking.

Rather than go insane, I did the next best thing – I went into marketing. Turns out my decision was less pathos than it was prescience, as I watch my former trade of journalism in some cases melt away, in others morph into a new kind of socially-driven journalism enabled (if not always ennobled) by modern technology.

THE DESCENT OF PRINT alone is not a problem for a our society. But the descent of thought is. And this death of reasonable thinking and discourse has given rise to a ringing in all our ears, a cacophony of “social media” for its own sake rather than the sake of the consumer.

Don’t get me wrong (though I guarantee someone will) – I love technology and Web 2.0. I believe in the power of conversation and the promise of connecting people to each other with authentic communications. But in this new silicon rush we far too often discount what’s gone before, throwing judgment into the intellectual pyre like so many worn newspapers.

In other words, in our well-meant effort to broaden and share our knowledge, are we also destroying the very knowledge and reasoned discussion we so boldly claim to seek?

Because we can connect with people like ourselves, we do. And then we act as if other opinions don't exist -- or if they do, then don't matter. We do this within our social networks, the pseudo social media intelligentsia do it at conferences and on their blogs, and the news media does it by giving us news tuned to whatever ideological frequency we desire.

We jump to conclusions and applaud hyperbole until the slightest chance of digesting an idea is gone. That idea is destroyed forever, lost in the echo chamber of self-important consultants and rash Twitter feeds.

Never before in human history has so much information been available so readily to so many. Yet although we are creating and writing more, we are saying less.

IN FAHRENHEIT 451, RAY BRADBURY’S seminal novel about censorship and intellectual intolerance, a “fireman” was someone who burned books. Well, we don’t burn books per se, but we burn discourse. We don't destroy newspapers, but our actions are killing them off just the same. We are the firemen.

So this is my warning and my plea: don’t get caught up in the social media panacea. Instead, experiment and decide what works for you and your company. Focus on the customer first and the technology second. It’s okay to take small steps, to do what’s best for your business, to embrace new tools at your own pace even if it goes against the “purists” who argue that there’s only one way move forward.

And above all, take time to think, to plan, to discuss and learn. Embrace the unknown and reject those who insist they know it all. Find some silence and make decisions without being surrounded by so much noise.

I would give anything for just a few seconds of mental peace and quiet. Don’t squander yours.

Ten Tweets I'd Like to See

Hillary08: Stuck in Indiana, please send money

God: Creating the world in seven days was a piece of cake, but writing something meaningful in 140 character fragments is a real pain in the a...

SocialMediaGuy1: if you’re not using Twitter then you are obsolete

ADD: Twitter is the coolest what yeah Pounce is the greatest what totally you going to finish those fries

Dr. Phil: As if I wasn’t overexposed already

SocialMediaGuy2: Twitter is obsolete

Dubya: Which one of the Internets is this?

G24khamr: If someone who publishes a blog is a “blogger,” how come people who use Twitter aren’t called “Twits”?

PhilGomes: I hear that guy from Bladerunner is in another movie this summer called “Indiana Jones”

SocialMediaGuy3: Does anyone remember the URL for my blog?

                           

Hillary08: Stuck in Indiana, please send money

God: Creating the world in seven days was a piece of cake, but writing something meaningful in 140 character fragments is a real pain in the a...

SocialMediaGuy1: if you’re not using Twitter then you are obsolete

ADD: Twitter is the coolest what yeah Pounce is the greatest what totally you going to finish those fries

Dr. Phil: As if I wasn’t overexposed already

SocialMediaGuy2: Twitter is obsolete

Dubya: Which one of the Internets is this?

G24khamr: If someone who publishes a blog is a “blogger,” how come people who use Twitter aren’t called “Twits”?

PhilGomes: I hear that guy from Bladerunner is in another movie this summer called “Indiana Jones”

SocialMediaGuy3: Does anyone remember the URL for my blog?

                           

Living an "In-Between" Digital Life

(Cross-posted from the Authenticities blog.)

MY SUNDAY LOS ANGELES TIMES arrived with a sticker on the front page advertising home foreclosure auctions – a struggling industry trying to reach people via a dying medium. As ironies go, this was a keeper.

Later than morning, a man I guessed to be in his late ‘50s sat with a newspaper and a black coffee. Not 10 feet away at the same coffee house, two young women huddled around an iPhone, reading news and discussing various web sites as they sipped their lattes.

That the news business is changing is nothing new. Yet as I get older I find myself lost between two worlds – clinging to the physical while embracing the digital. And I wonder if I’m the last generation to feel this way.

Those older than me will never fully understand or accept the Digital Present. My sister is only seven years my senior and she still thinks the Internet is a place where friends and family send each other lame jokes and urban legends via e-mail. The generation just a few years younger than me barely reads newspapers and never watches network news – and those even younger, like my nine-year-old daughter, will never subscribe to a newspaper or understand news as anything other than a commodity. Or worse, as anything other than the “Star Tracks” section of People Magazine.

I’m not saying we need to turn back the clock (and for those of you shaking your heads right now, a “clock” was a device that displayed the time with “hands” that could be turned forward or backward. But I digress…). The news business may be downsizing, but in many ways news is bigger than ever, more accessible and, thanks to citizen journalists, more honest than ever before. The best journalists will adapt because good stories are medium and trend agnostic; new voices will surface because the barriers to entry are all but gone.

This is all great, all wonderful, and I wouldn’t change the future for the sake of the past. Nevertheless, there’s one thing I wish we could hand down to the next generations, could make them understand, could make them experience.

Ink matters.

Ink doesn’t just activate the senses – it permeates. Ink gives words weight beyond meaning. Ink has a place, even in a world of bits.

Ink is authentic. It has been around for centuries and has brought us the most amazing stories imaginable and unimaginable.

Ink makes us laugh – and in the case of my Sunday L.A. Times with the home foreclosure sticker ad, ink makes us cry.

Ink is in-between. And so am I.

                           

(Cross-posted from the Authenticities blog.)

MY SUNDAY LOS ANGELES TIMES arrived with a sticker on the front page advertising home foreclosure auctions – a struggling industry trying to reach people via a dying medium. As ironies go, this was a keeper.

Later than morning, a man I guessed to be in his late ‘50s sat with a newspaper and a black coffee. Not 10 feet away at the same coffee house, two young women huddled around an iPhone, reading news and discussing various web sites as they sipped their lattes.

That the news business is changing is nothing new. Yet as I get older I find myself lost between two worlds – clinging to the physical while embracing the digital. And I wonder if I’m the last generation to feel this way.

Those older than me will never fully understand or accept the Digital Present. My sister is only seven years my senior and she still thinks the Internet is a place where friends and family send each other lame jokes and urban legends via e-mail. The generation just a few years younger than me barely reads newspapers and never watches network news – and those even younger, like my nine-year-old daughter, will never subscribe to a newspaper or understand news as anything other than a commodity. Or worse, as anything other than the “Star Tracks” section of People Magazine.

I’m not saying we need to turn back the clock (and for those of you shaking your heads right now, a “clock” was a device that displayed the time with “hands” that could be turned forward or backward. But I digress…). The news business may be downsizing, but in many ways news is bigger than ever, more accessible and, thanks to citizen journalists, more honest than ever before. The best journalists will adapt because good stories are medium and trend agnostic; new voices will surface because the barriers to entry are all but gone.

This is all great, all wonderful, and I wouldn’t change the future for the sake of the past. Nevertheless, there’s one thing I wish we could hand down to the next generations, could make them understand, could make them experience.

Ink matters.

Ink doesn’t just activate the senses – it permeates. Ink gives words weight beyond meaning. Ink has a place, even in a world of bits.

Ink is authentic. It has been around for centuries and has brought us the most amazing stories imaginable and unimaginable.

Ink makes us laugh – and in the case of my Sunday L.A. Times with the home foreclosure sticker ad, ink makes us cry.

Ink is in-between. And so am I.

                           

In CNN’s Hands, YouTube Loses its Voice

As a former newspaper reporter, I never had much respect for television news. More style than substance, more sound bite than serious, TV journalism was media junk food. I preferred a good steak and still do.

There were exceptions – Walter Cronkite, Jim Lehrer and, going way back, Ed Murrow (though he served up his share of sugary snacks as well.) And in the early ‘90s, there was a decade-old network called CNN that, with its blog-like first person coverage of the Gulf War, showed that television and journalism could indeed coexist and add reason to public discourse.

But that was, as they say, then – and this, unfortunately for our country and its conscience, is now.

I accepted CNN’s financial need to compete with Fox and MSNBC by taking a side – not conservative like Fox or liberal like MSNBC, but a kind of neo populism characterized by anchor-driven “mad as hell” histrionics. I looked away when the “maddest” of the bunch, Lou Dobbs, made illegal immigration his clarion call.

Then last week, CNN went too far. The network, which hosted the Republican “YouTube Debate,” went from ranting about the election to attempting to rig it.

CNN is no longer a news organization; it is a political action committee. It has gone off the deep end not in search of ratings, but rather in an obsequious bow to Dobbs, his quest for book sales and a possible third-party Presidential bid.

Consider this: the first one-third of the debate centered on immigration, Dobbs one-trick pony, despite national polls showing that only six percent of Americans believe immigration is an important issue in the 2008 election. What are the top issues? Iraq, the economy, healthcare and energy costs. What other topics did CNN producers cull from the 5,000 YouTube submissions? They chose gun control, the Confederate flag and whether the Bible is the true word of God.

I don’t mind the YouTube format – in fact I love its raw sense of immediacy. But don’t for one minute think that the format makes the debate any more real; CNN took care of that, manipulating the event to serve its own puerile purposes.

CNN not only crossed the line, it went into uncharted waters. It used the electoral process, hardly free of abuse itself, to serve its hunger for relevance and ratings. CNN has gone from being an inspiration to journalism to being its enemy – a voice beyond mere bias now bent on Machiavellian power.

Hyperbole? Perhaps. CNN is, after all, just a network – just a business. As I said before, I never had much respect for television news, so maybe I should go eat my steak and shut up. Just sit back, relax and listen -- the news is on.