Creative Synthesis

I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about news lately. Youtube has an interesting feature. When you’re watching a video on youtube it shows you a short selection of related videos. The algorithm for doing this isn’t perfect - a lot of the time the videos that are related are just different clips of the same content. Still, you can do quite a bit of traveling, wikipedia style, by clicking to the next related video after video. It was in this fashion that I made the somewhat strange journey from videos about ‘The Real Hustle’ to videos about Ron Paul, and finally Cristopher Hitchens - a heavy intellectual and politically loaded author.

The Real Hustle -> Penn & Teller -> Ron Paul -> Sean Hannity -> Christopher Hitchens

When you watch the news do you watch it for an understanding of the subject or the journalist? Hopefully you do both. I’ve always been fascinated by different styles of journalism in video and television. The interview style of Sean Hannity, for example, compared to Lou Dobbs. Both of these men are arguably described as ‘conservative’ although Hannity could be better classed as a neo-conservative and Dobbs as a more traditional rockefeller republican. The difference in their interviewing style is quite striking based on my limited exposure - I’m not a regular viewer of either show.

Hannity talked a lot. Dobbs listened a lot. Hannity tried to speak over his guest (in both cases, Christopher Hitchens concerning his book god is not great) while Dobbs waited methodically until after Hitchens was finished talking each time. Hannity’s interview was much more dynamic and fast-paced. The interview Dobbs gave felt more traditional, calm, and intellectually rewarding. This style reminds me of Larry King Live (the highest rated CNN show - Dobbs show is ranked second). There seems to be an effort to engage in serious conversation with the subject. The journalist develops a seemingly real conversation, a rapport if you will. The questions, although more prepared than Hannity’s, are not necessarily that different. These kinds of journalists still ask ‘tough questions.’

A lot of people attack Hannity (and others from his network) for their so-called conservative view points. This has never been my problem with their shows (they can say what they like, although I’m not sure if they should call it what they like). My problem has always been the style of journalism they practice. I do acknowledge that it is more engaging, dynamic, and one might even say, exciting to watch. I used to enjoy news shows like this much more. Shows like Larry King seemed old fashioned - stilted - unengaging. I would flick right past them, disappointed if they were the only thing on. Now I make people stop when they pass King’s show, much to their frustration. I like his slow, researched, practiced approach. I like that his news show is long with lots of talking and discussion. I like hearing a real conversation, and I like how the commentary only precedes the question - it doesn’t happen during the response.

What happened here? Does there come a point when one just sort of ‘grows up’ in terms of news intellectualism? Shows like Hannity’s are very frustrating for me to watch at this point - there just isn’t enough real content to the interviews. I’ve come to a point when I can’t handle the kind of questions and reactions that don’t seem well considered or planned. I wonder if at some point something had changed that made me actually look to the news as an information source, not just as an entertainment source.

This is not necessarily something that happens to everyone. Plenty of people seem like they could go their whole lives on this fast food news (or maybe its just cyclical, and they go through a mature news period only to finally revert back at some later stage). On the other hand, perhaps its just some sort of enlightenment one can come to. There are clearly stages (although I’m ready for shows like King’s, CSPAN is still a little to dry for me). There’s also a relationship with print media (moving from USA Today and People to the Economist and the Times). What I’d like to understand better is how one does, in fact, grow up in terms of news. This isn’t necessarily about switching political opinions, but just switching the level of information and the method of delivery that works for us.

I’ve started to think that it is the method with which I encounter my news which has changed the kind of news I want to get. This change in my news habits started to happen around the time I got hooked on news readers, wikipedia, and tivo-ing the history channel. The fast food news shows are more dynamic, but so was the youtube train I followed. Watching Larry King talk about the same subject all day might be unengaging, but if I jump from King to King it adds a dynamic level of engagement (and self-direction) where I am more susceptible to detailed news nuggets. I never really thought the kind of intertextuality that makes wikipedia browsing so engaging could be applied to video, but youtube can affectively achieve it. It is certainly as engaging (if not more so) than the fast-food prolefeed. Does adding some intelligence to the way you visit the news allow you to seek out more intellectually engaging news sources?

Free Idea: There are a few youtube tv browsers (tubecast.tv is a nice one). In the office we don’t have a real tv. We use quasi internet tv. This comes in the form of joost or things like tubecast - the idea being that you can’t get as zombied with a ‘fake tv’ playing. I’d like to see some better channel surfing, similar what led me to these thoughts. Given some starting point, follow the related content to create a path of related, but distinct, programming. A simple button click to tell the thing when it has gotten too divergent to be interesting and it could back track and follow a different related channel. The goal is to create more of a news tree that leads you to something synthetically interesting based on what you were initially watching.