It's started already. Journalism as usual, that is.
A mere two weeks after a midterm election, most mainstream journalists are not exploring the issues that must be tackled by the new Congress or tied up by the old Congress, but are handicapping the next election cycle. This is given added hype because it will be a presidential election.
While waiting for my car to be serviced this morning, I watched an hour of CNN "news." Much of it was devoted to former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's reality TV show "Sarah Palin's Alaska" and upcoming book. Would these endeavors make her more or less palatable as a candidate was the breathless question, followed by ratings and polls on Palin's popularity among various groups.
The recent world economic summit of G-20 nations, widely paraded as an example of U.S. President Barack Obama's "weakness" in being unable to convince participants that the American way is the best way forward, is another occasion for the mainstream media to pick winners and losers.
It's an easy game after all. Charlie Sheen was arrested yet again. A heinous murder trial in central Connecticut drags on. Sports teams provide endless fodder for speculation. Unemployment numbers go up or down. It's all the same. Why try to explain the hard stuff? And what news organization has money to pay reporters to actually investigate stuff anymore with no assurance of a blockbuster story going in?
That's not to say that responsible critiques and in-depth journalism do not exist anymore. They do, but their existence is more and more web-based and less and less accessible to folks turning on their television sets for a daily dose of the evening (or morning or noontime) news or opening a local daily newspaper (if they still happen to have one).
Since it seems unlikely that television news will get "religion" or daily newspapers become the economic powerhouses they once were, how do we get real journalism "out there" to where people live? How do we make the important explanations and commentary accessible? How do we jump off the merry-go-round of winners and losers and poll numbers?
Got any ideas...?