A Word About the 24-Hour News Cycle

     As a long-time political junkie, I have, at times, rolled out of bed at five and started my day by flipping news channels.  CNN, MSNBC, FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS. Click, click, click.  Invariably, the national news lead stories were always the same with a slightly different spin.  If you've seen three in eight minutes, you've seen them all.

     For the past several weeks, I did a little experiment.  I tuned in to some of those cable news programs where a panel is assembled to discuss the political news of the day.  Honestly, I couldn't handle it. As readers can imagine from my blogger silence, the exercise rendered me speechless,

     For hours every evening, grown professional men and women barely control themselves, take sides like children in a divorce, and talk over one another to say... What, exactly?  More often than not, it seemed the "news" panel was reporting on itself.  I'm still not sure that I caught anything resembling reasoned journalistic commentary.

     Call me old school.  News is supposed to be informative.  We are supposed to receive the who, what where, when and how about local, national, and international events.  It is our responsibility to tease out the impact of these events on our lives and our communities. Having a bunch of panelists screeching simultaneously across the space of two desks is neither informative nor entertaining to this writer.  This kind of programming feels like very irresponsible journalism.

     Therefore, I am returning to the comparative solitude of reading my news.  If I wish to know what a candidate said in a speech I will use the power of the Internet to obtain a transcript.  I will read stories from a plethora of information sources with various interpretations of the same events and then decide for myself what impact (if any) a single event will have without the interruption of eight people screaming in the background.  I have returned to a state of political junkie bliss.

     I hope you all know how much I appreciate folks who read.  Thank you for taking the time to read me.

     Now, there is a big, fat, contentious presidential election at hand and it's high time that I got back to writing about the significance of local social and economic factors' impacts on who and how we select leaders.