Having watched Olbermann's NBC 5 year anniversary **spoiler alert... stop reading now if you haven't watched***, I can't help but think we're seeing a pilot for a next gen news show.
[UDATED: Now with videos!! Spoiler Alert, formatted, added pew pew sniper sniper analogy.]
To go on, in essence to quote my friend Dan Norton of flak mag, it's like the Daily Show but it's really news.
Lots of video up now, courtesy of DU:
delegate battle with chuck todd, sad sadr, saddest, bushed terrorgate, worst persons, featuring wal mart, lewis black. Kudos to DU's Ryokibin for putting them up!!
Among the key features I noticed (please post yours)
* no "obligatory 2 sides to every story" panel. This kind of giving two sides to every story has thoroughly infected / trashed contemporary journalism. It's as if you need to get 1 Rep / 1 Dem or 1 Obama / 1 Hillary surrogate on every panel. What matters more today, is not the person's affiliation, but their reputation. Chuck Todd has a reputation. Rachel Maddow has recently earned one. I don't care if someone is "loyal" (read Judas / Richardson) but what I care about is integrity.
*We need a real, meaningful relationship between participatory and broadcast media. This show suggests how you can take the top news stories from the Huffington ost, or other democratic media, and then deal with them in a more reflective, expert oriented media. A key to this, for me, is that you actually get a few experts, like Chuck Todd to comment on what's going on realizing that in many cases, the experts ought to come from the amateur ranks).
* A perspective in media. Anyone post- post-modernism knows that all media has a perspective. We know that the "objective" perspective including 2 sides has failed. Offering up a worst / best persons in the world, I think, puts back some sort of evaluative judgment. Mainstream media, those who are professionals ought to have judgment that we hold them to and expect them to exercise. We expect people in every other field to do this. The idea that reporters couldn't even report on the fact that they were on the plane with Hillary and didn't get shot at is troubling. Acting as if they are unbiased reporters has failed miserably, as it's been manipulated by folks like the Clintons, or the Roves. Which leads to...
* A critical function of the mainstream press. Think about it, the only world in which there is a "story" about something like the surge is in the mainstream media where whether deaths are up or down people say that it has succeeded. To me, this was a **key** moment in tonight's newscast; the Repubs were actually called out on this silly logical fallacy they were perpetuating. Top 5 best / worst lists do this.
* A use of humor. You can't go about this without a sense of humor and including Lewis Black and poking fun at everything -- which is a real sign of a post-modernist approach to news, and required.
Anyway, just some starter thoughts. There's more but in my mind, this was the first hour of real news I've seen in at least a decade -- since 60 minutes was in its prime.
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