I was in an airport hotel room early this week, early in the morning, stumbling about looking for the toothbrush, the toilet, the time, when I clicked on the TV, hoping some news would jar me to wakefulness. And there, on CNN, was the sunnily sultry face of Soledad O'Brien, begging me to stay tuned for an upcoming story about a dog, or a diet, or a dieting dog. I told you it was early.
And I started thinking about the real heroes of cable and network news: the guys and gals who've come in by the droves recently from the world of local TV news, where, you might say, the rubbers meet the road. These people have done yeoman--and yeowoman--work in bringing human interest to the once-staid face of network and cable news, and where human interest comes, ratings surely follow, although you can't tell that from the recent network news ratings. But surely that's just a five- or ten-year anomaly?
The noble work, however, is not yet finished. There are days or nights when a body count in Iraq--who knew that was still going on?--or a fight over some Social Security nonsense--interferes with the average adult's healthy news diet. There are people responsible for these mishaps, and their names should be known.
In the spirit of blogdom, where the success of a project is measured by how many scalps are nailed to the computer screen, I propose a Hall of Shame, in which we induct all the news executives at the networks who haven't been tempered in the forge of local TV news. The sooner we can scare these few stubborn old-school types out of the newsroom, the sooner I can look forward to a day full of news the way we're told we like it. Names submitted to this site will be held in the strictest lack of confidence.