agproducer -

100% agree that being correct is more important than being first.

I like your insights on the print/tv dynamic in bigger markets. I've often wondered about it since I've mostly been in smaller markets.

At all my small-market stops, the emphasis has been on investigative work and digging up the story first because if we beat TV to something, they can respond to it that night. If they beat us to something and run it at 6 (or worse, 10), we'll be at least one, maybe two days late to the party. So the emphasis is always on being very proactive. And you're right, I definitely have far more time to develop my stories than my tv or radio peers do.

The biggest market I ever worked in was interning at WOR radio, a news station in NYC. That job was almost entirely reactive. News breaks, I grab a recorder and run to the scene. I don't remember us breaking a single story that wasn't brought to us on a silver platter. It was fun as hell, though!

Ultimately, the reason I opted for print over radio is because I hated that pressure to cram every story into 30-90 seconds. Some stories are just too complex and don't fit well in the TV/Radio medium.

Do the constrictions of what does and doesn't translate well to TV ever drive you nuts?

Watched the first 4 episodes the last 2 nights and wanted to wait until I finished them until I came here. Thoughts without the politics:

It's an intriguing show with some really great human drama and writing. It's hard for me to buy that they are that unprofessional (talking back to Will, throwing water in his face, etc.) but it is intriguing. The behind the scenes is good and I can't believe I actually like Jane Fonda in the show. There are some really good "highs". It's not West Wing good but it is quality programming, though it has room to go up. Some of the romantic drama is almost corny and I am already worn out with the Intern/Associate Producer with the EP "hey here is a nice little piece of ass I can take or leave". The Will/Mac romantic drama is better though she is pretty much psycho. Hopefully they can keep it a little less predictable.

Ok, begin political thoughts:

It is REALLY hard to ignore the blatant conservative bashing and completely false accusations thrown out (especially in the context of the show where they are supposed to be "showing the REAL facts). Obama is really a gun lover that hates gun control. SERIOUSLY? Bob Bennett was a hard core conservative Senator from Utah? Say what? I can accept the constant parade of "every conservative is a nutbar that only cares about forcing people to be strict Christians (while being hypocrites themselves) and destroying America" stuff with every one on the show looking like a rube or a crazy person. That's just typical, the outright factual errors though are very hard to stomach though.

The "I'm a Registered Republican" stuff is really weak. He hasn't shown any tendency toward anything remotely conservative. Also, the scene where he shows he has intimate knowledge of not only guns in terms of identifying them but how to use them is just not believable considering he clearly hates guns. Not to mention the "statistics show this would happen" line which simply isn't true, even remotely. I personally don't know if I have ever even heard of a case where a criminal disarmed a victim and shot them in the context he stated. Pull out a gun on a criminal and they either shoot back or they run.

End rant.

I'll keep watching for now if for no other reason there is really not much else on. The show would do much better with a smart conservative or two added to the mix. West Wing was a Dem Administration and they were far more balanced than these guys. I am hopeful they will do this and appreciated that they kept calling Will a "liberal" last episode and loved the "MSNBC's angry brother" or whatever line that was. The thing that made West Wing great was you DID have some intelligent arguments from both sides even if it certainly leaned left. Right now Will sounds a lot like Ed Schultz and I can only take so much of that. If they stay true to what they actually are saying they want to do in the show by having intelligent counter viewpoints then it could be great. Right now it is just a bunch of liberals vs a bunch of really loony liberals.

Aggie Journalist-

It does irritate me that sometimes you can't do a story on TV. Some stories are just paper stories, the same way some stories are TV stories. You can use a car chase story as an example. It looks great on TV, but it isn't as good the next day in the paper. On TV, emotion can come through better. Newspaper lends itself to longer investigative pieces. Many TV stations have investigative units that will dig, but it takes awhile to get the story to air.

For TV, it is mostly about immediacy. Newspaper is more in-depth. It seems like it is nature of the beast. That's why you see TV stations making more of an effort when it comes to their websites. They can write out a lot of their stories long-form so viewers can read and re-read them. The web is a good tool.

I worked in smaller markets, and the TV stations seem to chase the papers in a lot of the political and government stories. That's because they don't translate well for TV. They are visually boring even if they have good information.

I don't particularly like the way that some print journalists act like they are better than tv and radio journalists and carry the torch of "real" journalism. It's almost snobby in a way. Journalism as a whole is being eroded by bloggers with no training or credibility. Social media is also taking away from it all. The "convergence" idea that we talked about in college is now coming to fruition.

Hah, I can't wait until some stereotypical blogger gets caught in The Newsroom's crosshairs and destroyed. Those guys drive me nuts.

No joke about all the convergence stuff. Almost every story I write is now accompanied by blogging, tweeting and HD video reports. Heck, the newspaper over in San Diego is in the process of creating its own in-house 24/7 local news channel. I'll be interested to see how that experiment turns out.



[This message has been edited by Aggie_Journalist (edited 7/19/2012 5:14p).]

Sorkin fired the writing staff?

Just my 2 cents (can't sleep)

I know a lot are upset about the 'conservative bashing' but I don't think it's all that bad... hear me out

The show really isn't calling out the McCain, or Paul Ryan types, they're focused on Rush, Palin and Beck... 'the crazies' if you will, and they're a different breed of conservative in my honest opinion (the lost tea party)

Example of the difference:

Romney, Ryan, McCain, whoever (a regular republican) - Obamas policies are not working, we need to make a change (ok, rational and fair critisimn/ opinion)

Bachman and co. - Obama is a cyborg muslin sent back in time to destroy Christmas and give American engineering jobs to illegal immigrants to build mosques in your childs school..... (or something like that) (the woman is hours of entertainment )

This is a really good show guys, try not to look for a reason not to like it

/End of 2 cents semi rant

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And that lady was running for president!

Agreed. You really have to be looking for it to find political issues with this show. It's just so subtle that I'm surprised some of you conservatives are even able to notice it. I think they summed it up well when they said he's only considered liberal because he doesn't think hurricanes were sent by God to punish the gays.

And again, he's a REGISTERED REPUBLICAN.

You'd think that Mr Sarcasm would appreciate that sarcastically thrown out line.

This week's lecture on gun control, in light of th TDKR slaying last night. Just disgustingly timely.

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Odd and terrible how ironic it works out

I know I've said several times on this thread not to make it political, but episode 3 compared Bachmann to McCarthy... This week she and 5 others call out a Muslim woman in the state dept as possibly being in a Muslim brotherhood conspiracy...

And her rationale was weak, and the way she went about it was bad

If you suspect something that big, go to the freaking FBI and dont tell the whole world, geez.... she has no clue, looks like the McCarthy comparison was pretty accurate

quote:

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Just my 2 cents (can't sleep)

I know a lot are upset about the 'conservative bashing' but I don't think it's all that bad... hear me out

The show really isn't calling out the McCain, or Paul Ryan types, they're focused on Rush, Palin and Beck... 'the crazies' if you will, and they're a different breed of conservative in my honest opinion (the lost tea party)

Example of the difference:

Romney, Ryan, McCain, whoever (a regular republican) - Obamas policies are not working, we need to make a change (ok, rational and fair critisimn/ opinion)

Bachman and co. - Obama is a cyborg muslin sent back in time to destroy Christmas and give American engineering jobs to illegal immigrants to build mosques in your childs school..... (or something like that) (the woman is hours of entertainment )

This is a really good show guys, try not to look for a reason not to like it

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you know, last nights events really put some emphasis on this show for me. I've heard cnn flip flop 3 or 4 times on a variety of different subjects today.

ABC reported it was linked to the tea party earlier, then had to come back out and say it was incorrect.

I won't be holding my breath to catch that on an episode of the newswroom.


***Edit all that cause it's not needed***


the show is fine, not the greatest thing since sliced bread, and it is not only Sorkin's commentary on instant news, it's his chance to bash all things conservative. If you can get around the last part, then it's enjoyable enough.
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[This message has been edited by Bunk Moreland (edited 7/20/2012 4:49p).]

I don't get why everyone is so vent out of shape about the hurricanes/gay marriage. It was a sarcastic dramatic way of saying that he is fine with gay marriage. Which IS out of place with the Republican base. That type of sarcasm is pretty consistent with the rest of Will's dialogue, I don't see why it keeps getting brought up.

I completely agree. I found it as exactly that. the guy posting that I quoted was saying "it can be summed up" with that statement, "it referring to the "subtleness" of Sorkin's slant, which I took issue with. It can't be summed up with that line, because it was just a line of dialogue.

And I have no idea if it has continued to be brought up, I was a few eps behind so I haven't read the middle pages of the thread the last few weeks, just looked on the last page today because I figured there would be discussion about the tragedy, so I didn't mean to "continue" to bring up that line.

[This message has been edited by Bunk Moreland (edited 7/20/2012 11:40a).]

Not sure if anyone else has seen this - but its a twitter feed for Will McAvoy. Supposedly tweeting to character. Not sure if it's HBO sponsored, or a fan..

The recent tweets about the TDKR shooting are interesting, though:

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Dear @ABC: Typing someone's name into Google isn't the same thing as reporting.

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http://twitter.com/WillMcAvoyACN

[This message has been edited by Keatre (edited 7/20/2012 12:10p).]

I don't know why that line is so upsetting to people either. There are vocal and influential people within the Republican party who say things to that effect every time something bad happens. Those are the people Will was going after, not all Republicans in general.

Here's John Hagee saying gay pride parades caused Hurricane Katrina to hit New Orleans.

http://current.com/community/88917136_hagee-thinks-gays-caused-katrina.htm

Not the same subject, but another example of the crazies in the party Will was talking about - our very own Aggie Louie Gohmert is already blaming the Colorado shooting last night on America not being Christian enough:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/20/louie-gohmert-aurora-shootings_n_1689099.html

There is a difference between these people and normal Republicans and normal conservatives, and an attack on the former isn't necessarily an attack on the latter.

Some of you folks scare me that you vote. If you actually buy some of the absolute garbage thrown out in that show as remotely accurate about the Tea Party it makes me sad and a bit scared considering most of you are Aggies and college educated I assume. There was actually very little in that show about the Tea Party that was accurate at all. To act as though the show isn't political is also assinine. I'm a libertarian leaning Republican but I read Democratic and liberal perspectives regularly and at least have an honest understanding of their POV, I just think it's wrong almost all of the time. This show seems to act as though Rachel Maddow's opinion of the Right is the only one that matters, no need to actually involve the thoughts of those behind them outside of making fun of blowhards like Palin and Bachmann who often misspeak and are not good communicators to go with being "easy to hate".

I was a huge West Wing fan, still love watching reruns of it. What made West Wing so great though is you had a good amount of intellectual honesty when dealing with conservative issues. The show was certainly left leaning but it rarely made conservatives into a caricature of lunacy as every one of them seems to be so far on the show. They rarely had true conservatives on the show except the one character who came in after a couple seasons but when they discussed the "right" they generally gave a "devils advocate" opinion that showed on most issues it is an honest disagreement at least.

Somehow this show has discussed the Tea Party at length without actually discussing what the Tea Party is about. The Tea Party is about reducing spending and reducing the role of the Federal government in people's lives. The primary reason for the '10 landslide was Obamacare which somehow has received no mention AT ALL. You also have some very deceptive and dishonest writing such as the emphasis on Bennett losing in Utah but then moving quickly to another fictitious Congressman who had a "97% ACU ranking" leaving the viewer to assume the same is true of Bennett. The truth of course is that Bennett was one of the most liberal GOP'ers in the Senate who moved farther left over time. He made KBH look very conservative. At the same time he represents the most Republican state in the US. He was primaried and lost because he was a career pol that had a record that was very different than the folks he represented. Yet the way he is portrayed in the show you would think he was a hard core conservative that made one or two decisions to help homeless veterans buy food and thus he was thrown out of office by a nutcase rube that is owned by the Koch brothers. BTW, it is so laughable to compare the Koch brothers to Soros I don't know where to begin. Soros is behind dozens of liberal groups that wouldn't exist (like Moveon.org) that he gives hundreds of millions of dollars to. The Koch brothers give a decent amount of money to conservative causes but to act as though they are behind the Tea Party is beyond laughable.

The gun control segment was also asinine as I previously mentioned. The impression that Obama isn't a heavy gun control advocate simply because he hasn't tried to push through gun control legislation that has NO CHANCE of passing proves nothing. How can they possibly say that when his Attorney General led "Fast and Furious" which is basically a program to run guns into Mexico (resulting in countless deaths) as a means of trying to gin up support for gun control measures here? It's like saying Obama actually favors the "wealthy" having tax cuts because he extended the Bush cuts under heavy pressure in spite of spending every moment he could to try and raise taxes.

If you want to understand the Tea Party go to Redstate.com. That is the essence of it. It certainly isn't led by Bachmann or Palin even remotely. If there is a "leader" it is probably Jim DeMint who of course they mentioned casually but never actually had anything they could actually say about him other than he is Christian. The Tea Party though is actually far more libertarian than religious right. Some members of the Tea Party are religious conservatives but that isn't the primary issues of the movement which is really about fiscal issues. The only mention of fiscal issues brought up was the straw man "Debt Ceiling" question for some made up Congressman that "couldn't hear" with the implication he was too stupid (and of course Tea Party folks are as well) to understand what the Debt Ceiling is. Of course they never mention that the discussion of truly voting against the debt ceiling was not the issue, the issue was that vote being contingent on SPENDING CUTS which is never mentioned AT ALL.

I really hope they do better. There are a few signs that maybe this is a setup for an "epiphany" that if they want to remotely live up to their balanced viewpoint that "Hey, maybe we should actually have someone in the Newsroom that isn't a radical screaming liberal!" The "Registered Republican" thing is already stale. It's like Geoff Ketchum going to Chad Hastings for the "Aggie perspective".

John Hagee? Seriously? That's worse than saying Reverend Wright speaks for Democrats only Wright has far more credibility. Hagee is someone most GOP'ers won't even accept donations from. More than that though The Tea Party isn't about Christianity. This isn't 1994 where the "Christian Coalition" was the big force in the GOP.

honestly I skimmed your post because i really dont care to read something that long. I dont believe everything thats said in the show. Why? Because its a tv show, not the news. Its entertainment and nothing more.

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BTW, it is so laughable to compare the Koch brothers to Soros I don't know where to begin. Soros is behind dozens of liberal groups that wouldn't exist (like Moveon.org) that he gives hundreds of millions of dollars to. The Koch brothers give a decent amount of money to conservative causes but to act as though they are behind the Tea Party is beyond laughable.

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Oh come the **** on..........

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How can they possibly say that when his Attorney General led "Fast and Furious" which is basically a program to run guns into Mexico (resulting in countless deaths) as a means of trying to gin up support for gun control measures here?

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You actually believe that grand conspiracy BS? Seen any proof of it? Oh right, you haven't, which was exactly the point of the ENTIRE ****ING EPISODE.

The point of the episode was that Obama really has no intention of implementing gun control which is simply false. You would think O is an NRA member because the Brady folks are mad at him for not being able to implement any gun control legislation. He has done everything he could from an administrative perspective to make things difficult on gun buyers and on ammunition though, anyone that has been to a gun show the last few years has seen that. To act as though F&F was no big deal is also mind numbing, you could certainly say Obama hasn't been tied to it directly but Holder is all over it and it is amazing he hasn't resigned yet. Last I checked Holder worked for O. Mainly though it is just patently false to act as though Obama doesn't advocate gun control or that if he had his way gun ownership would be severely limited in the US and to use his failure to enact his campaign promises from '08 as evidence he isn't a threat to gun owners is just asinine.

BTW Holder has been held in Contempt over the issue and the Obama Admin has used Executive Privilege to prevent Congress from seeing quite a bit of the documentation between itself and Holder over F&F. Unless you think Obama is using EP for fun instead of covering up information he doesn't want made public about his involvement it's hard to see how it isn't an issue.

I also still don't see how you could possibly compare the Koch brothers to Soros. Soros is a man who systematically destroyed currencies for his personal profit. Even super liberal Krugmann coined the term "Soroii" for people that actively try to bring about the destruction of a currency for their own benefit. He did it to England and he is thrilled with the way the American dollar is going in the toilet. He is an endless money spigot for every radical liberal organization around. He gives his money to 527 groups like Moveon.org and America Coming Together. Soros also was convicted just a few years ago of insider trading in France. He is a very dangerous man.

The Koch's are big oil refiners and dedicated libertarians that primarily give their money to individual candidates and Think Tanks like the Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation. They are all about economic freedom and minimalist government issues and certainly don't put big money into social conservative issues as the show seems to imply. They aren't saints but they also don't run the Tea Party nor does anyone consider them criminals outside of a few left wing loonies that think anyone in the oil business or that donates to the GOP is a criminal. The worst they have done is give money to some groups that also support the Tea Party which is really all they could say on the show, they just made it sound as though there was something wrong with that.

The larger point though is there is no sense of context in the show AT ALL. The "facts" are highly selective and misleading. No attempt is made to show both sides in spite of the show repeating over and over that is the whole POINT of the program. I don't really care if they want to show the liberal POV. I don't even care if they don't show the conservative POV, though it would make the show better. What is annoying though is they are taking on the pretense of showing both sides when MSNBC is to the right of the program and they have yet to make the slightest attempt at showing a conservative to be anything but a lunatic. It's also incredibly disappointing because with WW you saw what Sorkin is capable of.

Seriously, if the show upsets you enough to write multiple novel-length rants about it, maybe you should just not watch it and let those of us who enjoy it talk about it.

quote:

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honestly I skimmed your post because i really dont care to read something that long. I dont believe everything thats said in the show. Why? Because its a tv show, not the news. Its entertainment and nothing more.

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There's plenty of space on the Politics board for politics yammering.

We need a "The Newsroom" thread for people who don't bitxh and moan about politics...

If it weren't made by the same guy who made WW I wouldn't bother. The show has shown signs of being great, I just am pointing out what I think is holding it back and responding to specific comments by other posters that seemed to reinforce false statements in the show as fact.

I also like to hear what people I don't agree with have to say so that I can get a better understanding of their perspective. I just don't think I have an obligation to be quiet about it when something outrages me. I'm fine with cutting the political talk about the show to a minimum but I won't just "cease fire" with if others do not do the same.

Bunk, as a Wire fan, I know you appreciate subtlety, but that jschroeder guy was being sarcastic. Check out his post prior to the one you replied to!

haha, wow. Yeah, as I stated above, i just hopped on the last page cause I hadn't seen the last few eps and needed to get caught up before posting. Maybe I should stop doing that.

93 loves him some novel writin

Wow, so I've been avoiding the politics part of this thread, but I can't let this one go:

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How can they possibly say that when his Attorney General led "Fast and Furious" which is basically a program to run guns into Mexico (resulting in countless deaths) as a means of trying to gin up support for gun control measures here?

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The first "gunwalking" operation (like Fast and Furious) was Wide Receiver, which started under President Bush and resulted in numerous guns disappearing. Both operations were tremendously stupid ones and there are differences to them, but to say "fast and furious" was conceived as a liberal plot to drive up gun violence so the libs could take everyone's guns away is simply out of touch with the history of the operations.

Any news organization suggesting this plot is real should run with a laugh track.

Which is ironic, because that's exactly what McAvoy was talking about. Like that character, I agree with a lot of what the early tea party was all about, but it does seem like it is been taken over by some extreme views and crazy conspiracies. I bet the majority of them believe that Fast & Furious stuff. Don't get me wrong, F&F is a HORRIBLE idea...but it isn't some vast left wing conspiracy.