Media Curmudgeon

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November 01, 2007

Colbert’s Campaign—Too Much Coverage?

When I tossed my hat into the ring to be Stephen Colbert’s VP—an opportunity to get some laughs for a satiric campaign that makes fun of the main-stream media—the issue of media coverage never occurred to me. But some critics believe Colbert’s campaign may have received too much coverage.

As Jon Friedman, the excellent senior correspondent and columnist for MarketWatch.com, wrote on October 30, “The clever host of Comedy Central's ‘The Colbert Report’ is holding the usually clear-eyed media in the palm of his hand and bringing out the worst in some star-struck journalists who should know better.” And later in the column, Friedman wrote, “It's depressing to watch respected journalists lower themselves just to tickle Colbert's funny bone. Dowd is the wittiest columnist anywhere, and Russert is the best interviewer in television news. They shouldn't be kissing up to a comedian, even one as talented as Colbert.”

Friedman is right, because by covering Colbert’s campaign, some media are not covering some other important stories. Jerry Lanson wrote an article in the Christian Science Monitor titled “War protests: Why no coverage?” with the sub-head “Newspapers have a duty to inform citizens about such democratic events.” In the article Lanson writes, “Coordinated antiwar protests in at least 11 American cities this weekend raised anew an interesting question about the nature of news coverage: Are the media ignoring rallies against the Iraq war because of their low turnout or is the turnout dampened by the lack of news coverage? …[that]most Americans oppose the war in Iraq is well established..an ABC News-Washington Post poll in late September found that 55 percent felt Democrats in Congress had not gone far enough in opposing the war.

…Given that context, it seems remarkable to me that in some of the 11 cities in which protests were held – Boston and New York, for example – major news outlets treated this "National Day of Action" as though it did not exist. As far as I can tell, neither The New York Times nor The Boston Globe had so much as a news brief about the march in the days leading up to it. The day after, The Times, at least in its national edition, totally ignored the thousands who marched in New York and the tens of thousands who marched nationwide. The Globe relegated the news of 10,000 spirited citizens (including me) marching through Boston's rain-dampened streets to a short piece deep inside its metro section. A single sentence noted the event's national context.”

I agree that the anti-war rallies are more important for some media to cover than Colbert’s faux candidacy. “Some” media would be newspapers, serious news magazines and television news outlets (notice I didn’t call TV news “serious”—most of it isn’t) because they are constricted by space and time in how many stories they can cover; therefore, they have to make either-or choices. Websites have virtually an infinite amount of space, so giving space to one story on a website doesn’t mean it can’t cover another one. Furthermore, most news websites have a “most popular” (or “most emailed”) feature that allows readers to track which stories resonate with other readers and select those that interest them.

This is a good journalistic system: have editors pick which stories they think are most important, that readers need to know about, and also let readers pick the stories they find most interesting from a list of what other readers like. It’s similar to an online Chinese news menu--lots of choices. This morning on the NY Times website, I read the three top stories: “Nominee’s Stand May Avoid Tangle of Torture Cases,” “Ex-F.B.I. Agent’s Trial Fizzles, as Does Chief Witness,” and “Room at the Top for Black Executives?” and the three Most Popular –Emailed, “Hello, India? I Need Help With My Math,” “Chinese Chemicals Flow Unchecked Onto World Drug Market,” and “Maureen Dowd: Hillary la Française, Cherchez la Femme?” I also checked Most Popular-Blogged, and Most Popular-Searched and saw nothing that interested me. Then I read the three links to Stephen Colbert’s faux candidacy featured in a large Opinion box titled “The Colbert column.”

I found it interesting that none of the Most Popular features or any of the stories picked by the Times’ newspaper editors for the website included any mention of Colbert. But the Times website editors gave him a prominent box below the fold on the site, which I was, of course, interested in. Therefore, reading the Times online is a much richer experience than reading it as an old-fashioned newspaper, plus it saves a lot of trees—it’s very self-righteously green. It’s interactive, too. I can post comments on the Times website and see other people's comments. I can’t talk back to the gray lady in newsprint, so online is a much more satisfying experience.

Jon Friedman and Jerry Lanson’s criticism is OK as far as it goes, but it is limited to traditional, dinosaur media that has space and time limits. Let’s hope coverage of Colbert’s campaign continues on the Web because it’s fun. But let’s also hope that Colbert uses his campaign to continue his blistering, satirical criticism of the dinosaur media and not just to promote his book and himself. Remember our campaign slogan, Stephen, “Mock on, baby?”

Posted by Charles Warner at November 1, 2007 10:06 AM

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digibandit at November 1, 2007 11:17 AM writes:

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