I found myself watching Teacher’s Pet, a 1958 romantic comedy about a hard-bitten hack going to journalism school and was struck that even then journalists were arguing over hard news versus analysis. This clip could be worth slipping into your teaching if you are a journalism prof:
“This isn’t a rehash – I’m talking about The Big Why behind the story. This is the function of a newspaper in today’s world. Why, TV and radio announce spot news minutes after it happens. Newspapers can’t compete in reporting what happened any more. But they can and should tell the public why it happened!”
Great fun… and shows how long the debate’s been going…. and you then add in Birtism, update to 21st century and rewrite to say twitter provides the spot news and tv and radio then explain why…!
Comment by Kate Ironside — 25 June 2015 @ 11:48 am