Brinkley, Cronkite, & Reasoner
I'm contemplating years gone by. Don't get me wrong. I love 21st century living. If I need the answer to a question, I look it up or phone a friend. No more having to wait until I can find just that cookbook or lug out the old encyclopedias. I forgot to tell Ron something, I text him. I know people that I have never met in person, and I've met people in person that I never would have had the chance to meet in another time. Twenty-first Century living is amazing!
One 21st century thing that has NOT advanced society though is 24/7 news. What a lot of pressure to come up with enough "news" to fill every waking (oh wait! even every non-waking) hour of the day. So, we hear the same important news interviewing the same witnesses and experts (or not so expert) over and over and over again until we either don't care or have gone into some kind of desperate breakdown, OR we get ridiculously trite information that no one should know about anyone. Thank you Ted Turner.
Hence the contemplation. I kind of miss the news coming on at 6 and 10 pm from my Texas childhood. We trusted Brinkley, Cronkite, and Reasoner (at least those are the ones I vaguely remember) to give us 30 minutes of mostly important stuff ,and then we read the rest in the newspaper. Which is another story altogether. We haven't had a paper on par with the Houston Chronicle since we left. We've been gone a long time though. Maybe the Chronicle isn't as good as the Chronicle anymore either.
One 21st century thing that has NOT advanced society though is 24/7 news. What a lot of pressure to come up with enough "news" to fill every waking (oh wait! even every non-waking) hour of the day. So, we hear the same important news interviewing the same witnesses and experts (or not so expert) over and over and over again until we either don't care or have gone into some kind of desperate breakdown, OR we get ridiculously trite information that no one should know about anyone. Thank you Ted Turner.
Hence the contemplation. I kind of miss the news coming on at 6 and 10 pm from my Texas childhood. We trusted Brinkley, Cronkite, and Reasoner (at least those are the ones I vaguely remember) to give us 30 minutes of mostly important stuff ,and then we read the rest in the newspaper. Which is another story altogether. We haven't had a paper on par with the Houston Chronicle since we left. We've been gone a long time though. Maybe the Chronicle isn't as good as the Chronicle anymore either.
I still watch the evening news! Of course, by the time it comes on, I usually know the highlights already. But I don't read too many articles during the day, so, at least partly, the news is new to me when I watch it.
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