Dead Convergence
Convergence journalism is supposed to be the greatest thing ever. Melding the finely honed fields of broadcast television with the depth and prestige of ink and paper, the world wide web would welcome in a wondrous age of news and information.
Prepared like Mongolian BBQ, you pick the ingredients, the spices to your palate and have the chef stir fry it up into a convincingly commercial made meal of headlines, audio and video salad. A few croutons of Web interactivity diced in and you’ve filled the minds of 18-30 year olds everywhere.
Because, you know, we’re just that easy to satisfy.
The problem is more than developing the medium of delivery. News is going to have to change its voice. Its readers are no longer the 50′s school boys, huddled in front of the radio listening to the one station that comes in. Walter Cronkite is no longer our father of truth, guiding us through the dark and vicious world to something of human hope and mettle.
We don’t believe you, news. We just don’t buy it anymore. It’ s not your plagiarism, though we aren’t shocked. It’s not your slips in investigations, though those are foolish. It’s not your mindless pandering to the right or left, though we really can tell you don’t have a damn clue either.
We aren’t counting on you to do the math, just get the right damn numbers. We are tinkerers, gadget lovers and individualists. Those who appear asleep cant’ hardly be blamed with your low and uncommanding voice gently rumbling in the background. Those who are awake are idle because they are unchallenged. Your news demands no intellect from us.
While you are busy writing to the last large generations of rural based families, the rest of us are waiting for our voice to show up in your papers.
Sure, we like video and music, but shoveling that all on a Web page and asking us to pay for it isn’t going to fly. You see, you sold to the corporate world a long time ago. You sell ads. You buy it, doling out your voice dollars at a time. It’s obvious to this generation. You aren’t objective because it’s the right thing or wrong thing to do, it has to do with the money.
So you need the money to run. We can buy that. Provide fresh and intelligent material in a new format that doesn’t expect to solve the mystery. Stir public debate with rousing fresh and enraging details. Invoke our humanity by giving any person on the street a voice in any article. I want to hear my neighbors, even if they piss me off. I want to hear humans without a billfold involved, because it’s those voices that speak more like a child’s, free from concern of retribution by party members and ad revenues. They see the issues like farmers see the earth, which is, as their own.
Why is it National Public Radio always talks to the average Iraqi in the street? Why are the testimonies of family members after a tornado strike far more compelling then watching a governor stare down from on high the pedestal of the helicopter which carefully separates humanity from cost allowing for the estimation of total damage.
The total damage, the total failure and the total success is in the eyes of humans who are living that life, not legislating it. It’s in the palms of the workers who forge it, not the corporate board who owns it. It’s in the eyes of the dead, whom we know we should see, though it hurts our eyes to bare it, not the voice of the military that claims victory. The cries of freedom are most sincere in the throats of those who’ve almost lost it, not the voice of the commander which cracks over the radio, or the public who yells from couches at flashing televisions.
You laugh at us for John Stewart, but we appreciate someone calling it out, regularly and well. Life is humorous to us, because we were raised to appreciate all our generations prior have done for us. Most of the rebels seemed to agree as they aged.
The top two pieces of advice I continually hear when I listen to the elders…
Don’t take it too seriously, and wear condoms.
That’s how we want our news. Lighten up, but don’t get stupid.
You can converge or do whatever you want. You can beam it to cell phones and PDA’s and any where else you wish, but the reason we got selective on our news probably had more to do with just picking out what intrigued us instead of told us.
In-vigor public debate and tell the stories of heroes who are genuine and salt, we’ll read it off toilet paper strung from the windows of your tallest office building.
For Pete’s sake, if you have an obvious opinion… state it. I once heard a conservative turn the negative word manipulation into the relatively positive sounding terms of explanation and education. With that kind of slant, I’d rather just have your honest opinion.
So, converge, or don’t. Your focusing on the wrong issue paper. TV, stop narrating, investigate just a little. There are too many people who need to be called out for bullshit, and we know it.
And don’t get me wrong. There are so many wonderful and talented journalists out there. The talent is ever present. The rules and guidelines of the medium, of the content, ought to consider a rebuild. Someone, please, try something new. Even if it is the scourge failure of all efforts, we’ll thank you for the hours of laughter we’ll have making fun of it. That’s what we do.