Well, the social media, cross-channel marketing flunkies have gotten their idle hands and minds on what I think is the best, if not only, regular news program on television, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. The program comes on at 7 in Portland, and on Friday evening I tuned in, as I often do. I’m no journalism expert, so I’m not sure if my admiration for Jim Lehrer is based on the fact that he and his group are really good, or if it’s more about the fact that the others are truly awful. Either way, the program has somehow managed to resist the cheap tricks we’ve all come to expect. The boy in the balloon over Colorado was barely mentioned, for example, and even when it was the focus was on how quickly the media had fallen for a complete and utter publicity stunt. And on the day Michael Jackson died, Jim Lehrer dedicated less than a minute to the story, and that minute came exactly where it belonged – at the end of the newscast. On The New Hour with Jim Lehrer, there were no tears over Michael Jackson, there were no flowers.
I suppose the highest compliment I can pay Jim Lehrer is this: I would not want to be interviewed by him. He doesn’t fluff around with people or giggle or ask after the wife and the children (at least not on camera). He has a way of gazing at the people he’s interviewing that would easily render me useless. I think it’s the way a father looks at one of his sons after listening to a particularly trumped up account of how the car was dented in the middle of the night. In fact, Jim Lehrer’s face is kind of scary: there is something about the structure of his mouth that makes me think he’s smiling when in fact he is not, when in fact the process of him shifting into a smile is so awkwardly noticeable that for a split second it seems something has gone terribly wrong. I like the way Jim Lehrer speaks. When he sets up the top story, he says “Judy Woodruff has our lead story report,” even though ‘lead story’ or ‘report’ would suffice. He says the word ‘killed’ like he means it, and when someone important is coming on – and someone important is always coming on – he introduces the segment by saying what the subject will be, and then adding, always, “among other things.”
On Friday, I watched Jim Lehrer introduce the changes being made to his program and wondered, as I often do, what he might have to say about it at the breakfast table. The jist of the changes, as best I can tell, go something like this: the name of the program is being changed from The News Hour with Jim Lehrer to The PBS News Hour. At the same time, the Web site is being enhanced and brought into closer alignment with the broadcast. There will be graphics, and there will be videos. Along with, of course, Facebook, and Twitter and blogs.
Pardon my language, but after hearing that bunch of non information, all I could wonder was, who gives a shit? As usual, I thought, the marketing people have managed to turn their lame attempt at relevance into a news story – literally, in this case. I shudder to think at the amount of time and money that was wasted on this schlock in order to advance a few egos that have likely already been hopelessly inflated. It’s yet another example of the sheer power that’s been amassed by the C students. But Jim Lehrer – and this is one of the many reasons I love the man even though we’ve never met – managed to reserve the last word for himself. I cannot recreate how this transpired exactly, but he somehow ended the show with this. Does The News Hour have a list of rules? Why yes, Jim Lehrer said, as a matter of fact we do, and even though the Web site and name are changing, the rules remain. And then he read them, not from a teleprompter but from paper. The rules themselves, with one exception, were pretty standard: respect your sources, don’t resort to anonymous sources unless absolutely, undeniably necessary, do not allow a story to become about someone’s personal life unless it is demonstrably critical to the story itself. “And finally, we are not in the entertainment business,” he said, placing his emphasis on the word ‘not’ in the manner usually reserved for the word ‘killed.’
I suppose the highest compliment I can pay Jim Lehrer is this: I would not want to be interviewed by him. He doesn’t fluff around with people or giggle or ask after the wife and the children (at least not on camera). He has a way of gazing at the people he’s interviewing that would easily render me useless. I think it’s the way a father looks at one of his sons after listening to a particularly trumped up account of how the car was dented in the middle of the night. In fact, Jim Lehrer’s face is kind of scary: there is something about the structure of his mouth that makes me think he’s smiling when in fact he is not, when in fact the process of him shifting into a smile is so awkwardly noticeable that for a split second it seems something has gone terribly wrong. I like the way Jim Lehrer speaks. When he sets up the top story, he says “Judy Woodruff has our lead story report,” even though ‘lead story’ or ‘report’ would suffice. He says the word ‘killed’ like he means it, and when someone important is coming on – and someone important is always coming on – he introduces the segment by saying what the subject will be, and then adding, always, “among other things.”
On Friday, I watched Jim Lehrer introduce the changes being made to his program and wondered, as I often do, what he might have to say about it at the breakfast table. The jist of the changes, as best I can tell, go something like this: the name of the program is being changed from The News Hour with Jim Lehrer to The PBS News Hour. At the same time, the Web site is being enhanced and brought into closer alignment with the broadcast. There will be graphics, and there will be videos. Along with, of course, Facebook, and Twitter and blogs.
Pardon my language, but after hearing that bunch of non information, all I could wonder was, who gives a shit? As usual, I thought, the marketing people have managed to turn their lame attempt at relevance into a news story – literally, in this case. I shudder to think at the amount of time and money that was wasted on this schlock in order to advance a few egos that have likely already been hopelessly inflated. It’s yet another example of the sheer power that’s been amassed by the C students. But Jim Lehrer – and this is one of the many reasons I love the man even though we’ve never met – managed to reserve the last word for himself. I cannot recreate how this transpired exactly, but he somehow ended the show with this. Does The News Hour have a list of rules? Why yes, Jim Lehrer said, as a matter of fact we do, and even though the Web site and name are changing, the rules remain. And then he read them, not from a teleprompter but from paper. The rules themselves, with one exception, were pretty standard: respect your sources, don’t resort to anonymous sources unless absolutely, undeniably necessary, do not allow a story to become about someone’s personal life unless it is demonstrably critical to the story itself. “And finally, we are not in the entertainment business,” he said, placing his emphasis on the word ‘not’ in the manner usually reserved for the word ‘killed.’
