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OK, that does it.
First I find out that I passed the half-century mark more than six years ago, a detail that seems to have slipped my mind between one deadline and another, along with my recipe for jalapeño-guacamole dip and the birth dates of my siblings and best friends.
But that was OK, because some things just aren’t all that necessary and memory, as we all know, is an increasingly selective function.
And I’ve already survived years of hearing that I’m a “dinosaur” in so many social contexts that I’ve started looking around to see if I’m sprouting a long tail with spikes at the end. But now I hear that it’s become something of a fact.
I’m talking about the opening this week of the “Newseum,” a museum in Washington, D.C., devoted to explaining journalism to the public in the same way that other museums explain things like art, aviation or the mating habits of exotic species that disappeared centuries ago.
All right. I get it. I’m now a member of an officially endangered species, right up there with the dodo (gone), the bald eagle (hanging on) and the Bengal tiger (still pockets of them around, but about as scarce as Sasquatch to most of us).
This is not a good thing, as far as I can tell, and the Newseum may not be the wisest response to journalism’s decline in the public zeitgeist. At first blush, I think I agree with critic Jack Shafer, who writes a column about the media for Slate.com, and has called the Newseum a “vanity operation,” according to one report.
For one thing, I’ve glanced through the exhibits on the Newseum’s website and found that the Newseum explains news gathering in much the same way that zoos explain Mother Nature. It’s all caged up and presented to us as a sparkling display, sealed behind glass and frozen in time for the most part.
But the fact is that it is removed from its habitat and, as such, ain’t what it is in everyday practice because it’s just a show, as in “not real.” Without actually visiting, it’s hard to say what the “interactive” components of the Newseum are like, but I tremble at the thought of the industry that has nurtured me for more than three decades condensed to a few hallways and graphic displays.
And of course all the big media companies are represented, including that spawn of the devil, Newscorp. Irony of ironies, Rupert Murdoch has the gall to present a gallery that purports to contain “the timeless story of news.” This from a greedy profiteer who has done as much as any other single person on the globe to gut the news business and turn it into nothing but “infotainment,” a bland menu of “reality” shows and titillating gossip.
This is right up Murdoch’s alley, of course, all glitter and hype and no substance, no commitment to the principles that have made journalism the cornerstone of free societies everywhere. It’s all about the big show, right-wing propaganda and making money, and to hell with the future.
Nowhere on the website, at least that I could find, is there any hint of the most promising new development in the news business over the past four decades, the rise of National Public Radio with its national and international network of correspondents and bureaus and its eclectic array of programming.
And I’m not sure what treatment is meted out to the small, intensively local news markets like the one here in the Roaring Fork Valley, which is the last bastion of newspapers as the main source of news about life on the ground. The small markets, where television and the Internet have yet to make a big dent in true local coverage, are where it’s at as far as journalism is concerned. Which is how it all started out, and that gives me some hope for the future.
But this Newseum stuff is all pretty damned unsettling.
Maybe this is just another confirmation of what America is becoming: a nation of observers who don’t DO anything anymore if we can WATCH it on a convenient television or computer screen.
And maybe I am just a stegosaurus waiting for the meteor to fall from the sky and scorch my world to make way for another epoch.
But I will NOT go quietly into that good night.
jcolson@aspentimes.com
First I find out that I passed the half-century mark more than six years ago, a detail that seems to have slipped my mind between one deadline and another, along with my recipe for jalapeño-guacamole dip and the birth dates of my siblings and best friends.
But that was OK, because some things just aren’t all that necessary and memory, as we all know, is an increasingly selective function.
And I’ve already survived years of hearing that I’m a “dinosaur” in so many social contexts that I’ve started looking around to see if I’m sprouting a long tail with spikes at the end. But now I hear that it’s become something of a fact.
I’m talking about the opening this week of the “Newseum,” a museum in Washington, D.C., devoted to explaining journalism to the public in the same way that other museums explain things like art, aviation or the mating habits of exotic species that disappeared centuries ago.
All right. I get it. I’m now a member of an officially endangered species, right up there with the dodo (gone), the bald eagle (hanging on) and the Bengal tiger (still pockets of them around, but about as scarce as Sasquatch to most of us).
This is not a good thing, as far as I can tell, and the Newseum may not be the wisest response to journalism’s decline in the public zeitgeist. At first blush, I think I agree with critic Jack Shafer, who writes a column about the media for Slate.com, and has called the Newseum a “vanity operation,” according to one report.
For one thing, I’ve glanced through the exhibits on the Newseum’s website and found that the Newseum explains news gathering in much the same way that zoos explain Mother Nature. It’s all caged up and presented to us as a sparkling display, sealed behind glass and frozen in time for the most part.
But the fact is that it is removed from its habitat and, as such, ain’t what it is in everyday practice because it’s just a show, as in “not real.” Without actually visiting, it’s hard to say what the “interactive” components of the Newseum are like, but I tremble at the thought of the industry that has nurtured me for more than three decades condensed to a few hallways and graphic displays.
And of course all the big media companies are represented, including that spawn of the devil, Newscorp. Irony of ironies, Rupert Murdoch has the gall to present a gallery that purports to contain “the timeless story of news.” This from a greedy profiteer who has done as much as any other single person on the globe to gut the news business and turn it into nothing but “infotainment,” a bland menu of “reality” shows and titillating gossip.
This is right up Murdoch’s alley, of course, all glitter and hype and no substance, no commitment to the principles that have made journalism the cornerstone of free societies everywhere. It’s all about the big show, right-wing propaganda and making money, and to hell with the future.
Nowhere on the website, at least that I could find, is there any hint of the most promising new development in the news business over the past four decades, the rise of National Public Radio with its national and international network of correspondents and bureaus and its eclectic array of programming.
And I’m not sure what treatment is meted out to the small, intensively local news markets like the one here in the Roaring Fork Valley, which is the last bastion of newspapers as the main source of news about life on the ground. The small markets, where television and the Internet have yet to make a big dent in true local coverage, are where it’s at as far as journalism is concerned. Which is how it all started out, and that gives me some hope for the future.
But this Newseum stuff is all pretty damned unsettling.
Maybe this is just another confirmation of what America is becoming: a nation of observers who don’t DO anything anymore if we can WATCH it on a convenient television or computer screen.
And maybe I am just a stegosaurus waiting for the meteor to fall from the sky and scorch my world to make way for another epoch.
But I will NOT go quietly into that good night.
jcolson@aspentimes.com
