A class I wouldn't have missed

It was hard to decide which part of today’s class was my favorite.

It could have been Bruce Haertl calling Jim Kobbe “Cobra” all today. Or the fact that 2/3 of the group said they couldn’t even turn on a camera, let alone edit video, which is pretty funny when we live in a world full of one-man-band reporters.

Either way, it was an incredibly entertaining to have three local TV sportscasters in class.

I had no desire to be one television or on radio, and I still don’t after listening to Chris Frye, Haertl and Cobra.

Obviously being on TV has its perks, mainly the paycheck. But I’d rather take my lowly wage at the reporter’s desk than get up in front of the camera or behind the mic.

On a more serious note, there was something Haertl said that really hit home to me. He said the product his news station put out was more watered down than it used to be.

Heartl and Kobbe both mentioned that their 30-something producers cared about filling space, and that the quality of the content was less important than the valuable seconds of airtime it occupied.

It wasn’t the story that mattered. It was the 1:25 seconds that is took up.

I agree with them completely. As a newspaper editor, I sometimes have that mentality. There are times when I see a story as 12 inches on page two, rather than something insightful that a reader might like.

It becomes less about the content and more about the physical space the words occupy.

I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but it does happen, apparently on more than one level and in more than one medium.