The Digital Dilemma

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/docarchive/

I will be using this in my CS292 course in the spring. Get these why you can. Two excellent, short podcasts from the BBC that address issues of technology utilized in new ways. The Fresh Air documentaries from WHYY are also outstanding. The discussion about Don Hewitt and Alex Jones’ Perspective on what is happening in journalism versus where it started is fascinating – and frightening.

I copied the descriptions from the BBC web site and the Fresh Air web site.  I subscribe to both on iTunes.  I strongly encourage those interested in preserving a civil, comprehensive, and thought provoking societal dialog about technology and journalism – and potential impacts – to delve into these topics.

Citizen journalism – democracy or chaos?

Wed, 2 Sep 09

Duration: 24 mins

Michael Buerk analyses the potential – and the dangers – of citizen journalism. In part one, he talks to bloggers and critics from Sri Lanka, Iran, Burma, and Iraq.

Citizen Journalism – Part Two

Wed, 9 Sep 09

Duration: 23 mins

In the second episode Michael Buerk visits Cairo and experience for himself how bloggers – arguably among the most hounded anywhere in the world – are taking on the Egyptian government.

Also, these Fresh Air broadcasts from WHYY in Boston also complement the topic and bring immense depth to it.

Fresh Air: On Losing the News

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111985662

August 18, 2009

Newspapers are in trouble, and many Web sites, blogs and cable news shows have opinionated hosts at the helm. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Alex Jones talks about his book, Losing the News, and the crisis facing impartial reporting.

"For over a century," Jones writes, "Americans have had as a birthright a remarkably good — though far from perfect — core of reported news that is as essential to our freedom as the Constitution itself. But the times we live in trigger an unsettling cascade of questions about journalism and news."

He says that the outcome of the ongoing news and information revolution will be critical in shaping the nation in years to come.

Jones is the director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. He co-authored The Patriarch: The Rise and Fall of the Bingham Dynasty and The Trust:The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times.

August 21, 2009

Don Hewitt, who died Aug. 19 at age 86, joined CBS TV News in 1948, when few people even owned TVs. For the next 50-plus years, Hewitt went on to cover the biggest stories in television, first as the producer of Douglas Edwards With the News, then with CBS Evening News and finally as the creator, in 1968, of the newsmagazine 60 Minutes.

Hewitt visited Fresh Air in 2001 to discuss the highlights of his career, including his work on the televised Nixon-Kennedy debate and the 1992 60 Minutes interview with Bill and Hillary Clinton.

August 21, 2009

Don Hewitt, who died on Wed. at age 86, didn’t invent the TV newsmagazine, but he sure invented the most successful and durable one. He created 60 Minutes in 1968 — 41 years ago — and, like the signature stopwatch that has opened every hour since the beginning, it’s still ticking. In fact, this Sunday’s 60 Minutes will be devoted entirely to Hewitt. And the problem won’t be filling the hour, but narrowing it down to one.

On camera, there are two figures in TV news who rise above all others: Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. Murrow invented and set the standards for television news at CBS, and Cronkite exemplified them in the 1960s and beyond. Off camera, Hewitt worked with them both. Not only worked with them, but predated them — and outlasted them. His career, like his impact on television, is unparalleled.

Start with 60 Minutes, his most enduring legacy. The show has ranked in TV’s Top 10 in several different decades, and has ranked a handful of times as television’s most popular show. No other newsmagazine has achieved a Number One ranking for the season even once. And the show’s popularity, while definitely skewing older in audience appeal, isn’t exactly in the past. Last week’s installment, featuring the first post-prison TV interview with Michael Vick, was the second most popular program of the week.

That’s an amazing track record for a show that premiered in 1968. But Hewitt, who created 60 Minutes, has a track record that is even more amazing. It took 10 years for 60 Minutes to finish in TV’s Top 10 — and by the time it did that, in 1978, Hewitt already had been at CBS News for 30 years. And he’d stay there for another 25 years, until he retired from 60 Minutes in 2003.

Hewitt is like the Forrest Gump, or the Zelig, of TV news. Whenever something important happened, no matter what year, Hewitt was likely to be there. When CBS began presenting a nightly newscast in 1948, with Douglas Edwards as the newsman, Hewitt was an associate director, and soon became the program’s director. And in 1951, when Murrow made a wary but brilliant transition from radio to television, in 1951’s landmark CBS newsmagazine See It Now, Hewitt was by his side. Literally. The live program was set in the control room at Studio 41, and Hewitt was directing while on camera — as Murrow explained at the start of the very first show.

And at that point, Hewitt was just getting started. In 1952, he directed TV coverage of the national political conventions. In 1956, when the luxury liner the Andrea Dorea sank at sea, and CBS dispatched a helicopter to film the only TV footage of it sinking, Hewitt was manning the camera. In 1960, Hewitt was the director for the unprecedented, and politically crucial, televised presidential campaign debates between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. In 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated, Hewitt directed the massive, nonstop days of coverage for CBS — the coverage that made Cronkite an instant TV icon. And so on, up to and including presenting Bill and Hillary Clinton’s campaign-saving 1992 appearance on 60 Minutes. Arguably, Hewitt had a hand in electing JFK in 1960 and Clinton 32 years later — and Hewitt wasn’t through yet.

But it’s not just the durability, or the impact, that impresses me — though both of those do impress me. More that anything else, what’s most incredible about Hewitt’s accomplishments is the quality. Almost everything he directed, everything he touched, was impressive, and presented with a clear respect for the audience. When Cronkite died earlier this summer, most analysts expressed regret that we’ll never see his likes again in TV news. Sad to say, but the same thing is true of Hewitt.

David Bianculli writes for TVWorthWatching.com, and teaches television and film at Rowan University.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112099063 – pt. 1

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112101454 – pt deux