Program scripts from week of July 16, 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.
Learning the Ropes
Once upon a time in the news biz you started at the bottom. If you were new kid, the junior most member you got the police blotter calls. Calling every police department in every dinky little burg in your paper’s coverage area and seeing who got arrested for what. It’s boring, it’s tedious and you never get your name on the story. That was always the holy grail of a reporter - the byline.
In this new age of news gathering the reporting staff is getting smaller and smaller. Which means that there are fewer “cub reporters” to do the dirty work. Newspapers are trying to find the best way to cut expenses without cutting too many corners. And it doesn’t always work.
Recently there has been a bit of a hoo haw over the work of a company called Journatic. The furor is over the fact that the company outsources some of their reporting (meaning that an employee in the Far East may be gathering information about Jamestown NY) and then providing the stories with fake bylines to make it look more local.
Now newspapers have always relied on outside news reporting services like The Associated Press, United Press International or Reuters. But these were all for news OUTSIDE the local area. The hometown paper was supposed to be the expert on its community, the definitive voice of information. Journatic was originally intended to help small papers stay competitive. The dismay has grown when it became obvious that major papers in cities like Houston, Chicago and San Francisco are using the service.
So what’s the real problem here? There are ethical questions to be answered about using fake bylines. At the bottom line there is nothing more important to a news outlet than it reputation. Especially at a time when there is more and more stress on the industry it must do everything it can to maintain its credibility. There is an importance to having reporters who part of the community they cover. If only because if they get it wrong they will hear about at the corner bar or over lunch out and about.
I understand the need to keep costs down. I also know that there was a benefit to making all those tedious calls in the old days. You got to know the community you were reporting on.
Wearing Technology
A couple times every year it seems like I come across an idea that just boggles my mind. We’re talking shaking your head in disbelief kind of amazement. Some times it’s a bad idea, sometimes its bad production and sometimes it’s just bad.
Let me ask you a question. Have you ever been walking in public, could be at the mall, or on the sidewalk, and had someone bump into your or nearly bump into you because they were so absorbed in their smartphone? Seems like it’s happening to me with increasing regularity. People are so wrapped up in their own stuff that they just kind of lose track of the rest of us. The world kind of fades away for them and suddenly they walk right into you.
Well I’m certain that the folks behind this next great idea will claim that they will help eliminate that problem. I’m afraid they’re wrong. The new idea that has me scratching my head is called “wearable technology”. We’re not talking Walkmen or iPods here. One of the first examples will be eyeglasses that will be able to project the World Wide Web onto the lens before your eyes. If the possibility of even more distracted driving and walking doesn’t worry you then think about how much more data could be collected about where you go and what you do. Integrated GPS is one of the items considered essential in most of these early designs. Never being able to escape advertisers or the all seeing eye of data collection strikes me as several steps too far along the technology highway.
But that’s not the only idea headed our way in the form of wearable technology. There are already patents secured on technology for clothing displays as well. In other words whatever qualifies as obnoxious t-shirt art in your book would now have the ability to link to the web, update and maybe even offer sound to go with the video. Imagine corporate logos that don’t just sit there but try to interact with consumers (otherwise known as your friends, family and co-workers) all from the comfort of your clothing. That same technology is being looked at to be used on walls of buildings and carpets. In such a world there would be no where to get away. Look up, look down, look at each other.
If you remember the hyper advertising model of the movie Blade Runner you begin to get the idea. And it’s an idea that I can live without.
R.I.P. Richard Zanuck
I figure that there are three kinds of movie folk - people who watch movies, then movie fans and finally movie geeks. I fall somewhere between those second and third groups. You probably need to have at least one foot in the movie geek world to register the death last week of Richard Zanuck.
Zanuck grew in Hollywood. Like grew up on the back lots at 20th Century Fox. His father was the last of the great movie moguls, Daryl Zanuck. Zanuck the elder was the classic stereotype of the studio boss. He was short, smoked cigars, chased after starlets and ran his studio as his personal kingdom. Along the way he made some pretty great movies. He also made some enemies. For a while his son was one of them.
Richard Zanuck was everything his father wasn’t. Quiet, intellectual and someone who respected the actors, directors and writers with whom he worked. When his father returned to 20th Century Fox in 1962 after several years in Paris as an independent producer Richard was made the head of Production at the studio. He was 28 years old. He would rise to head the studio just a few years later but they were hard times for 20th Century Fox. Hits like “Hello Dolly”, “M*A*S*H” and “Patton” were offset by too many flops. In an internal power struggle Daryl Zanuck sacrificed his son in a failed attempt to maintain control.
In the end that may have been the best thing for the younger Zanuck. With his friend David Brown they formed their own production company. They took a chance on a little known director named Spielberg and a story about a big shark. “Jaws” earned the duo their first Oscar nomination. They would also earn one for 1982’s “The Verdict” and finally win for 1989’s “Driving Miss Daisy”. Zanuck would be connected to other hit films including “Cocoon” plus a very successful partnership with Tim Burton that included “Big Fish”, “Sweeney Todd”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “Alice in Wonderland” and “Dark Shadows”.
In the end Richard Zanuck is one of the last of Hollywood heyday generation. He was born into the movies (his mother Virginia Zanuck was an actress who worked with Buster Keaton), he was raised around the movies and the movies were his entire life. You may not have known his name but you certainly knew his work. And that would probably have been enough for him.
Richard D. Zanuck was 77 years. The exact same age as his father when he died.
Call that the View From the Phlipside.
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