Program scripts from week of June 11, 2012
My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
RIP Ray Bradbury
Let me join the hundreds if not thousands of voices offering a eulogy to Ray Bradbury who passed away last week. Bradbury was, in my opinion, a truly great writer who is under appreciated. Given his best selling status and great fame that might seem unlikely. I would argue that he deserves to be included with Mark Twain and Walt Whitman as the greatest of the truly American authors. By that I mean writers who speak with an essentially American voice and whose vision is an essentially American vision. Those three represent that as well as any one I think.
It would be easy to dismiss Bradbury because he was a science fiction writer. Once upon a time that was quite common. The reality is that Bradbury isn’t that easy to pigeon hole. If memory serves Stephen King, in his book Danse Macabre, argues that Bradbury should be categorized as a horror writer. When I read that I was outraged but as the years have gone by and I’ve read more Bradbury I think both King and I were wrong. Ray Bradbury was a great writer. Period. He wrote brilliantly in the horror, science fiction, fantasy and mainstream genres. He will always be best known for Farenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and Dandelion Wine. But I have soft spots for a variety of other pieces including the novel A Graveyard for Lunatics and many, many short stories.
I was not always such a huge Bradbury fan. In fact it took me three tries to read The Martian Chronicles. The book is short at 222 pages but I kept getting to page 32 and hitting a wall. I don’t know if it was the format (Martian Chronicles is not a classic novel but rather a collection of short stories that are vaguely linked together by the theme) or if those opening chapters just didn’t grab me. Finally on the third try I turned to page 33 and it was all over. I devoured the rest of the book. I’ve never looked back.
For me what sets Bradbury apart is the beauty of his writing. I am far from the first to note that his prose is almost poetic in its beauty. His ability to spin the fabric of different times and places and make the both beautiful and comfortable is probably his greatest gift as a writer.
The only other tribute I can think to offer is to go back and start reading as much Bradbury as I can lay my hands on.
Ray Bradbury was 91 years old
Apologies Well Done
A couple years ago I think we discussed here the fine art of the apology. Most especially we discussed how a great many public figures never seem to figure out the great benefits of a well done, properly timed mea culpa.
So I was interested when two stories came across my desk that show folks who have it all down pat.
First we have the case of Boston mayor Tom Menino who just last week wanted to drop in a good word about the Boston Celtics during their playoff run. So he spoke of “KJ” and “Hondo”. Sadly he meant to say KG (Kevin Garnett) and Rondo (point guard Rajon Rondo). He was at least in the ball park with Hondo since that’s the nickname of all time Celtic great John Havlicek. This isn’t the first time he’s muffed a local sports name and the mayor handled it perfectly. A quick apology tweet where he got the names right and called it another Menino-ism. Short, sweet and with a sense of humor. Perfect.
The other case is slightly more serious. Actor Jason Alexander was on The Late Show with Craig Ferguson when he called cricket a “gay sport”. Now that’s just a dumb term to use but he had made the same joke in Australia a month before and it had gone over big. Back in the USA however he got a lot of grief from fans. Alexander’s first reaction (and the first reaction from gay friends he consulted) was that these folks needed to get a sense of humor. As he continued to think about it all he realized that he didn’t like some of the underlying concepts beneath the use of gay in that manner.
In the end Alexander ended up doing a complete 180 on the subject. He very carefully laid out the history behind the remark, his process of analyzing the reaction and his journey to his final decision. The apology was thoughtful, carefully reasoned and clearly sincere. He didn’t try to lay off blame on anyone else and took full responsibility for his own words. I’m not sure any apology will ever do a better job than this one. It was exactly what he needed to do.
I’ll admit to not being a huge Jason Alexander fan before this. As an actor he’s OK but has never really grabbed me. However I will admit to becoming a huge fan of Jason Alexander the human being.
Nothing quite like an apology well done.
New Media Revolution
I suppose in the end this was where we were going to end up. In fact the more I think about it the more I’m surprised it didn’t occur to me before. We’ve talked about the changes coming to old line media and the challenges they face adapting to a new digital media world. I keep saying that it’s going to take some innovative out of the box thinking but in reality I’ve been just as guilty as most of the rest of the world. Still stuck thinking inside the box.
So special kudos go out to the folks at Louisville Kentucky TV station WDRB. They were faced with all the same challenges as everyone else. They were particularly concerned about competing with the local newspaper the Courier-Journal. One of the interesting things about web based media is that it levels the playing field between the traditional media. Radio has voice only, print has written words and still pictures, TV gets to have the moving pictures. In the old model the differences were clear and unassailable. But in the digital world you can be who and what you want to be. The Fox affiliate grasped that and saw an opportunity. WDRB wanted to be more competitive in the sports arena. The Courier-Journal was their targeted competition. So the station went out and hired away both of the paper’s top sports columnists. Those two will now anchor the sports presence online for the station both in written and video formats.
To be honest I was thunderstruck when I read the piece. It’s so obviously the correct choice if you want to be competitive in the future. The media needs to stop thinking about themselves as Radio, Television and Print. It needs to start thinking about itself as The Media. That means going beyond the traditional boundaries. The mind behind the concept at WDRB is Director of News Barry Fulmer who says he just saw it as a natural outgrowth of their vision for the business over the next 5 years. And I think he is absolutely correct.
The problem has been that newspapers keep on thinking about how to bring the newspaper to the Internet. Radio and TV have done the same thing. The real question is how to bring the quality of news coverage to a whole new media? It’s going to change the skill set that will be required for reporters because it means they will need to be in all three areas - written, oral and visual.
Which is probably bad news for those of us with faces made for radio.
Call that the View From the Phlipside.
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