The government’s view is that the best time to announce bad news, news that it doesn’t want the public to dwell on is late on a Friday, when it will wind up in the Saturday papers, which if you were readers, then the week day editions. A holiday weekend is even better.
One thing young people have to always keep in mind when deciding what they want to do with their lives is, is it fun? Is it something that I’m interested in? Is it something I enjoy?
The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game. It’s part of our culture, like turkey at Thanksgiving and lights at Christmas, and like those holidays – beyond their meaning – a factor in our economy.
But with 9/11, we found that people tended to come back to the networks and the people who had been our core viewers in the past came back and they have stayed with us.
We now assume that when people turn on the evening news, they basically already know what the news is. They’ve heard it on the radio. They’ve seen it on the Internet. They’ve seen it on one of the cable companies. So that makes our job a bit different.
A police reporter walks into the worst moment in someone’s life on every single story that he covers. It’s not like being a sports reporter. That’s a great job and all that and takes certain skills.
Parents don’t like it, administrators don’t like it, and kids don’t like it, but politicians and bureaucrats in Washington love it–which should be the first indication to you that it is a troubled program.
And as a result, I guess I’m just kind of a rubberneck. I’m kind of a – someone who likes to see things and likes to see these events and talk to the people who make them happen. But I don’t think journalists are as important as the people they cover.
