I miss Uncle Walter
State of the Royce: Spent most of last week in a state of exaustion, mostly trying to keep up with the kids while moonshadowed fought a nasty case of bronchitis with a side of upper respritory infection. She's doing a bit better and I napped for three hours on Saturday, but she's still sick.
State of the Rest: I get most of my news from two sources these days, the Washington Post and NPR's Morning Edition/All Things Considered (with a side of BBC's online news for international stuff). Back when I was a kid though, I got it from watching the CBS News with my parents in the evening, and 60 Minutes on Sundays. Which meant for five nights a week we spent a half hour with Walter Cronkite, the man for which the word "Avuncular" was invented. I'm part of the generation that has the phrase "And that's the way it is" burned into my brain, spoken in a calm, deep voice by a guy who looked like my grandfather (assuming Pop-Pop had hair and a mustache and education beyond grade school). Back when "The News" was the Big Three stations, your local 6pm newcast from one of maybe three VHF stations, and of course of one of your two or three local papers. It wasn't like nowadays, where there are enough sources of news that you can find what you need to conform to your prejudices and ignore whatever contradicts your worldview.
Perhaps it's better. We certainly aren't having our POV dictated to us. But are we ever going to see anything like Dan Rather sneaking into Soviet Afganistan to give us a picture of life there? Is there any news agency with the guts to try something like that? Not just provide the evening "It bleeds, it leads" headlines?
State of the Rest: I get most of my news from two sources these days, the Washington Post and NPR's Morning Edition/All Things Considered (with a side of BBC's online news for international stuff). Back when I was a kid though, I got it from watching the CBS News with my parents in the evening, and 60 Minutes on Sundays. Which meant for five nights a week we spent a half hour with Walter Cronkite, the man for which the word "Avuncular" was invented. I'm part of the generation that has the phrase "And that's the way it is" burned into my brain, spoken in a calm, deep voice by a guy who looked like my grandfather (assuming Pop-Pop had hair and a mustache and education beyond grade school). Back when "The News" was the Big Three stations, your local 6pm newcast from one of maybe three VHF stations, and of course of one of your two or three local papers. It wasn't like nowadays, where there are enough sources of news that you can find what you need to conform to your prejudices and ignore whatever contradicts your worldview.
Perhaps it's better. We certainly aren't having our POV dictated to us. But are we ever going to see anything like Dan Rather sneaking into Soviet Afganistan to give us a picture of life there? Is there any news agency with the guts to try something like that? Not just provide the evening "It bleeds, it leads" headlines?