sense and nonsense about the media

sense (Jeff Jarvis):

Fair warning that I’m having too much fun reading London’s newspapers again. Funny how I find so much more worth the link and ink.

nonsense (Arianna Huffington):

CBS’ update of the [Anna Nicole] Smith story was given [a] minute and fifty-eight seconds of precious air time — two seconds more than last time — while its coverage of Iraq lasted two minutes and ten seconds. … All in all, not a bad report. But given the comparative importance of the stories, doesn’t the Bomb vs Bombshells balance (2:10 to 1:58) still seem seriously out of whack?

The 22-minute nightly network TV “news” broadcasts are now largely irrelevant. They have lost their influence. No, I don’t have figures to back it up. (TVNewser provides daily numbers for those of you who like that sort of thing and Journalim.org offers a treasure trove of data.)

Jeff Jarvis is interested in fixing the news. (Entertaining the audience is a good idea, as he knows.) Arianna is interested in pandering to her base. (If you’ve only got 22 minutes out of 24 hours, you cannot even pretend to be giving The News. You can pretend that your reports make a difference. Sometimes they do. If enough other outlets pick it up.)
Here’s a thought Arianna should consider:

[Jack] Shafer’s answer… is refreshingly blunt. “Journalists are not in the democracy racket,” he wrote to Lovelady. “They’re not in the game of empowering the populace. They are not social engineers. They need not think out the first, second, and third possible repercussion of most stories they write.”