Larry.org

At the risk of offending the very sensitive, I'm beginning to glaze over with regards to keeping up with the war coverage. I feel I'm experience the same sensation my wife seems to get when, against her will, she is forced to watch a complete baseball game. This usually happens to her when she joins me, for whatever reason, in attending a baseball game, and somehow forgets to bring a stack of magazines.

I can tell I'm glazing over because:

1. I'm unable to distinguish new information from old information in the war coverage


2. The parts that seem especially interesting are initially overanalyzed and then interspersed with so much fluff that after a while I don't really now if they were really important or just interesting


3. It seems the coverage is both too dramatic and too general at the same time


4. The peanuts are too salty and you can never find the beer guy when you need him

Which brings up a thought.

In the "Dead ball era" of baseball a two hour ball game was considered very long. Now it's typical that a game take at least 3 hours. Yet as much action, excitement, talent and pathos occurred in that 2 hour ball-game as occurs in todays 3 hour ball-games. They still played 9 innings and the rules haven't changed appreciably. The only real difference was the physical changes to the baseball that made it go farther when hit ( or more 'lively'). The game today is played in a different era often referred to as "The Modern Game" but I prefer calling it the "Jack-Rabbit" ball era.

The world hasn't been creating more reportable news today than it was 100 years ago. Sure more of it's reported and as a result I can be more informed on all viewpoints related to some tiny facet of the human experience, but that's not more real news. It used to take us one good read of the daily paper and maybe 1 hour of watching the evening news to be 'up to speed' on the days events. Though we don't do more that's news worthy today, we report the same amount of news 24 hours a day on 3 cable news channels. The underlying news story is more 'lively' or, because the world is so much more interconnected, goes farther when reported.

Reminds me of the change in the baseball game length.

So let's can consider the first era, where reading the newspaper and catching the evening news on TV was adequate, as the "Dead News" era and the modern era as the "Live News Era" or to extend the baseball analogy, the "Jack-Rabbit News" Era.

An interesting phenomenon I perceive of the "Jack-Rabbit News" vs. "Dead News" eras is the decrease in the involvement (or active participation) of the general population in discussing and reacting to the news. This despite an incredible uptick in our capacity to tell the world how we are reacting to a news story.

In the Dead News Era you were more likely to have an opinion, an idea what you would do regarding big questions of the day, and some criticism, constructive and otherwise, as to decisions made or actions undertaken on your behalf.

I think this level of engagement occurred more often in the "Dead News" era because the part of us that considers our input important and relevant to 'the news' become overwhelmed today by the sheer volume of reporting that occurs on the tiniest part of the news. It's sad to say current events that don't get reported often prove more news worthy and relevant than what was reported that day but that's another topic.

In the Dead News era the news outlets had a few 'takes' on the news and that was it. You were left to fill in the details. Thus the human experience was to a degree sketched out for you, with most of the relevant details intact. You were left to yourself to relate it to your life and your viewpoints. Today's news outlets have as many different viewpoints on the news as there are people in the world. Yet the weight and authority with which it is presented it so powerfully done that each little viewpoint on a given news story takes on a perception of credibility that encourages us to simply accept that viewpoint as an acceptable 'mapping' of the underlying news story to my life and my viewpoints.

And so we don't really need to do the work of mapping the real event to our viewpoint ourselves. Since we are less likely to do that work ourselves we are more likely to forget the relevance and to draw conclusions about how we relate to the world at large and pretty soon we just feel irrelevant and the news is what happens to other people so we don't think about it to much.

This resignation is further reinforced when news occurs that somehow transcends our normally disengaged consumption of the news. These events are usually very news worthy and very relevant (how else could they be able to snap us out of our apathetic approach to the news?). So we over report it and over expose it to an amazing degree so that eventually our renewed interest is sated and we can consider the relevance and viewpoint of the event to our lives effectively 'handled' for us by the news outlets.

This is how I'm beginning to feel about the "War" on Iraq. There's a great deal of news worthy stuff going on, but it's not being completely reported, for many good reasons. The news worthy stuff that is going on is amazing stuff, but it's being over dramatized and reported without enough thoughtful detail so it's sort of hard to distinguish really important bits from just interesting bits.

I really want to continue to be engaged on all this so I'm taking myself back to the 'dead news era' I prefer to live in by simply being very selective about the amount of news I consume and the sources I get it from.

Besides baseball season is about to start.

Come back home boys, come back safe, and come back soon.