A few months after I happily, if involuntarily, left the newspaper business, TV sportscaster Fred Roggin pitched a wacky idea to me for a new type of fast-paced news commentary show he was trying to develop called “The Filter.”
Roggin wanted to engage hot topics of the day with available video footage and have a variety of informed and opinionated people offer their takes on what it all meant, to provide a context to stimulate conversation..
His bosses at NBC were no more supportive of the idea than my bosses as the Daily News were when pitched with innovative ways to reinvent journalism at a time when the form and structure of the “news” has become obsolete to the point that there are now more empty desks than working editors and reporters in newsrooms everywhere.
But Roggin persevered with help from producer Jared Kiemeney and a few technical and support staff willing to do for love what they weren’t allowed to do for money.
It took a year to finally get green-lighted to experiment in the obscure world of digital cable Channel 225 where NBC, to its credit, is trying out new ideas to salvage its news operations at a time when afternoon ratings have fallen so precipitously it’s likely some stations will give up entirely.
Over the last six months, “The Filter with Fred Roggin” has been refined and a team of commentators put together: Actress and social activist Debra Skelton, columnist and author Amy Alkon, lawyer and radio talk show host Leo Terrell, Witness LA editor Celeste Fremon, LA Metblogs editor Ruth Waytz, social ethicist Charlotte Laws, even former City Councilman Jack Weiss, among others.
Next Tuesday, “The Filter” will begin to be shown on Channel 4 itself at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday-Friday, re-broadcasts of the previous night’s 7:30 p.m. live broadcast on digital cable 225. The intention is to go live on Channel 4 in a few months.
If you’re reading this, you know what a revolution is taking place in how we get our news and information because of the Internet. It’s energizing and liberating to play a small part in it on TV, on my blog and on my community-based news site OurLA.org which brings together citizen and professional journalism to tell the story of LA’s political and civic culture.
I spent 40 years developing the skills of a corporate journalist and trying to beat them and their pseudo-objectivity that sucks the life and the truth out of what is really going on.
Just the “facts” don’t tell the story. It takes a trained detective to create a narrative of the facts of a case so a suspect can be identified and prosecuted. So why would we think ordinary can make sense of what’s happening without a storyline, a context, without insights from knowledgeable and experienced professionals?
Corporate journalism as we know it with its spectacular profits and virtual monopolies is finished, as doomed as dinosaurs in the ice age or carriage makers in the auto age.
For all the talk in the news industry about re-invention, TV news still trivializes us and newspapers bore us.
Afternoon TV news ratings are a fraction of what they were a few years ago, one all-news radio station has closed down, newspaper circulation has tumbled by as much as half and employment in newspaper publishing has fallen to what it was 50 years ago.
We are getting our news in bits and bytes on blogs and websites, emails, Facebook, Twitter. Ordinary people are becoming reporters and interpreters of the news on personal or group blogs. All across the country, trained journalists and ordinary citizens are becoming active participants in a revolution that is making us better informed and more empowered to affect the course of our public lives.
That’s what makes experiments in the corporate journalism world like “The Filter” exciting. Mainstream media has the resources and reach to make a big contribution to this new world order.
The media, like the activist community, has been talking about change for years without actually changing anything. The optimist in me is seeing action replacing talk and, as we all know, actions speak louder than words.
You can watch excerpts of “The Filter” on youtube.com, including my latest contribution with my partner in commentary Debra Skelton or watch tonight on Channel 225 or next week on Channel 4. Your feedback is welcome.
You’ve taken an important step – even as an overdue experiment – toward revitalizing local news.
Good luck… and remember that to modernize is also to adapt!
Let the sun shine in.
There is no shortage of material.
The City’s budget crisis and the need for structural change is the paramount issue of the day.
Plus there is the DWP Solar Scam where the DWP and the IBEW want to plunder the Rate Payers for billions (yes, billions) extra in connection with the Son of Measure B (the “SOB”) by eliminating competitive bidding for the 400 megawatts of In Basin Solar Power.
I would list many more issues, but I don’t want to make readers ill so soon in 2010, the year of real change.
This is teriffic “news” Ron and I am anxious to watch it.
I hope they expose the city council’s stone walling of Medical Marijuana ordinance! Why are they stalling? Are they waiting for the state to make sales legal? What’s going one here? Why are some councilmembers supporting the “king” of the distribution market in the U.S? I want to know and I want that ordinace passed now, no more excuses. 15 stores in a two mile radius is insane and unfair to any community. Also, how about what impact has furloughing our firefighers had on response time!
Plus, look at the sucesses of Neighborhood Councils and how they may be affected by the city’s budget.
Happy New Year everyone!
Part of why the old media were successful is that they were trusted. They had standards and they had editors.
The new media, and this blog is sadly no different, presently do not have these filters. People like Mr Kaye, slime people continually and without proof. Which is why they cater only to people who think like themselves.
This is not the vehicle for true social change. Its a vehicle for attacking and bringing people down. Some surely deserve that treatment, but not all the people who Ron continually runs down.
5:51 is totally right. And, sadly, the “old media” has dumbed down, fired its best and highest-people, replacing them with newbies and those who have one eye on their next job (maybe, with one of their subjects they’re supposed to be objective about), so that even the once-mighty LATimes is often just another propaganda organ for whatever powers that-be hold sway over its publisher and editors.
One minute, it might have been Antonio (the old moniker “La Antonia Times”), then, wildly veering in the other direction to where it became a Shallman/John Thomas-Trutanich Republican organ, with Jim Newton, R Greene and David Z acting as PR spinners and hitmen, total absence of balanced investigative reporting. The strangely-skewed Essel endorsement and slanted pieces were another transparent attempt. Now it’s lurching crazily this way and that, but no one on any side finds it very credible anymore.
Even the San Diego Tribune, in a much smaller market, recently expressed shock that the Times has gotten so provincial, it wrote endless articles slamming David Nahai’s relatively small severance salary through the end of this year, while it ignored a much bigger matter involving our water supply, and $millions. Clearly its writers were just picking up from blogs like this and the vocal but minority activists.
The Weekly doesn’t even try to hide its bias, being on a par with THIS blog, though occasionally, Christine Pelisek reminds us of why it was ONCE a respected paper. Daily Snooze, with Orlov phoning it in, is predictable; every once in a while, there’s an editorial or article that pleasantly surprises.
However, we can’t extrapolate from this to the rest of the country: it’s not ALL as dire. In fact, as far as big cities go, we have the dubious distinction of being rather unique.
First, I can’t thank Ron enough for bringing this opportunity to comment to each other – and to write for OURLA.org.
For OURLA.org, I know that Ron and Chelsea have to vet the story before it goes up. They have to recognize the validity of an issue before it is posted.
What I am learning about main stream news is that people are seen as “experts”, and they are contacted for comment on an issue. Or, in turn, people have their media contacts, and they feed the writers the story.
In the end, I have learned, if you say it enough, people will believe that it is the truth.
Now, trying to get the media to retract what they have covered and called “The Truth” for 20 years -that is a whole other story. I have also learned that you are never going to hear an “elected official” say that they were wrong. Well…
maybe some did on “Measure B” – they may have just used some other phrase like – “we weren’t given the documents”.
The world is full of blogs. And there can be really good blogs – well known blogs like “The Huffington Post”. But there are people that post there that are uninformed just like other sites.
I think that Ron and Chelsea at least watch the Council meetings and attend public meetings enough that they know what is going on in this City.
Keep it up Ron and Chelsea – I have a story I want you and Fred Roggin to cover.
What I find interesting in news is local news. For example, I guess I’m such a wonk that I would want coverage on every city council meeting and every school board meeting—plus coverage even on some of the committee meetings.
Now some editors would say YAWN to that kind of coverage but that’s where the real decisions are made, where the tax dollars are spent, and where knowledge of local issues by our elected officials is either on display or absent.
In smaller markets and smaller towns, that’s the kind of coverage that is still performed by reporters. But not in the big city? It doesn’t make any sense.
Not all meetings are barn burners, of course, but what if 75% of them are covering things that really matter but the public never hears about them?
This is where the blogs come in. But how can news organizations make money off of them, that is the question?