Washington -- Why, you might ask, was I invited to a New York
dinner party last week hosted by mainstream media's Peter Jennings?
And, then, were there fisticuffs when the affable Jennings
introduced me to the first person standing nearby as I entered his
elegant apartment? That would be Frank Rich, the man who had just
pronounced me "insane" in the New York Times, where he,
with clockwork regularity, deposits such preposterosities. Well, I
neither belted the hyperbolist nor defenestrated him. The occasion
was all conviviality, and the reason Jennings had gathered us was
to celebrate the arrival on the New York scene of a new daily
broadsheet, the New York Sun.
The Sun will be good for New York and good for the
quality of journalism and political debate in the country. Edited
by an old Wall Street Journal hand, Seth Lipsky, the
Sun is going to be right-of-center. It is going to be
energetic in its coverage of the city and uniquely cosmopolitan in
its foreign coverage, using the foreign services of London's
Telegraph newspapers and of the Jerusalem Post.
The Telegraph newspapers, in particular, have fetched my
admiration for years, combining a lively curiosity about the world,
an informed knowledge of it, and an amused gaze across the globe.
In reporting on New York, the Sun promises all of that;
and so I have answered Lipsky's call to serve as a Contributing
Editor, but only so long as I can accord absurdity a few laughs.
That, I believe, will be a long time.
Lipsky has lined up the support of some of New York's most
successful businessmen. They and he have flourished in the city.
They are defiant, after the atrocity of September 11, that the city
thrive. Pursuant to that goal the Sun will fasten on New
York City, its neighborhoods, its commerce, and its people with
reporters who are street smart. Finally there will be politics and
culture.
New York is the cultural center of our country. Lipsky, in an
earlier life, edited the Forward. For generations it was
the leading Jewish paper in the country. Under Lipsky it did many
things well, but two departments stand out in my mind. It reported
politics and culture with a high and liberated intelligence. The
voice of the New York Sun will be unlike the gentle
moo-mooing of journalism's bovine herd.
Having disposed of that vexed question -- will the Sun
be conservative or liberal -- I move on to an even more troubled
question, to wit, why another newspaper in this age of broadcast
news? Simply stated, print is more muscular than broadcast media.
It arrests the attention and penetrates the mind more deeply.
Moreover, print can always be more independent than radio or
television journalism, even if it is the journalism of such a large
corporation as the New York Times. Print employs more
journalists and gives them more space to work in. A broadcast
studio gives the talking (and smiling and cooing) head a few
minutes for each "piece." A news story in print can go on for
several thousand words. It is more difficult to edit out meaning,
as broadcast media's sonorous lilts so often do; and several
thousand words in print make a deeper impression on the audience
than five minutes of mediocre acting-- which is what television
often is.
Print is a sturdier tool for informing or launching ideas,
political awareness, and reform. Broadcast media are ephemeral.
There is much noise. In television, there are pictures. Then
broadcast media pass on. The attention span of the broadcast
audience is childishly transitory. Print digs deeper. Its product
is left around the house longer. It is filed in libraries, nearby.
Its reporters are on the prowl inveterately. The only equipment
they need is pen and pad.
No great reform movement and no blockbuster story has ever been
launched and sustained by broadcast media. Newspapers produced
muckrakers and the fall of presidents. The Clinton scandals were
covered by The American Spectator, the Wall Street
Journal, the Washington Times, and sporadically other
print media. Broadcast media failed even to report whole stories
and accounted for very few. At this writing I cannot think of one
significant Clinton scandal broken by television.
In brief, broadcast journalism is light drama; print journalism
is history's early edition, and, at its best, a herald's call to
civic action. American print journalism has fallen into the pudgy
hands of monopolists. Without competition in city after city, local
newspapers have become dull and lazy. In New York there is a lively
tabloid competition but no competition between broadsheets. Now the
New York Sun will create competition. That the
Sun's rival is the behemoth New York Times is no
cause to worry. I handled Rich without violence; Lipsky will handle
the Times with no bodily injury ensuing.
topics:
Mainstream Media, Television, Business
