WAS: What Adults are Saying About the Difference between Action and Effectiveness
Breathlessly reacting may not mean you in new media are on the case--it may mean you are delusional.
Any serious student of TV mass news media is fluent in a number of so-called “journalist” presenter styles contrived to evoke importance. Stand-up presentations where with hands clasped, the ubiquitous “chicken wing” is flapped is one. So too is the non-verbal cue of split hands jabbing sharply downward. A more modern style is finger jabbing toward the fourth wall with a louder voice at a higher octave. These examples are styles offered by on-air presenters meant to punctuate parts of an enunciated story—or in the case of many MAGA shills—a senseless screech to promote more Kool-Aid consumption.
These idioms are frequently done for affect. Perhaps they-and dozens of other tics-are done to personalize a presentation or to emphasize a spoken part like a flourishing piece of music. Perhaps they are involuntarily. Perhaps they are the latest thing a new consultant whispered into the “talent’s” ear. But none of them fulfill their intent—to convince the viewer the presenter is “tightly on the story” and thus a more credible communicator.
It’s been long observed that far too many have extreme difficulty in believing and behaving as though mere activity amounts to effectiveness. Just moving (while inherently better than inertia for humans) doesn’t mean all that action has any impact. While its not understood if this is a human condition or one peculiar to Americans, it is (and for decades) has been abundant in how TV news professionals try to do their jobs. Frequently, this is accompanied by a sort of breathless urgency as though the news person has just run from the scene of social mayhem. Then whatever is reported is almost always “teased” with “we’ll have more for you on this at (fill in the blank of time, website, or other programming)—yet another presenting news feature compliments of the mysterious news consultant.
More than irksome this approach has become rooted as an addiction in TV newsrooms and is a serious contributor as to why television news has imploded into a pile of churlish irrelevancy. It is the participation trophy of the journalism world. It was bad then, it got worse and still is bad. At a time when TV news (both local and national) was watched for a key ordering of the community and nation this practice impacted many negatively. It still might, but with so few now watching and even fewer trusting, it’s hard to know.
What is clear, however, is that endless efforts to frequently write, post, podcast, or fill some other personally curated platform, the trend has grown to monstrous proportions. Daily on this very platform Bulwark—a place that has helped unlock the voices of so many including some who have something important to say—the bias to show action over communicating meaning is full-throated and vigorous. It comes from all angles: Neophytes, social media poseurs, professional journalists transitioning from conventional media, so called “clerks” who solely repost others’ commentary and many other types keep asserting the mantle that action and endless reporting of minutiae equals import.
This is bad especially on a platform like this one. Marshall McLuhan correctly taught us over 60 years ago that the medium is the message. Since then it has been poked, prodded, stretched and misinterpreted far more than most chapters of lasting social criticism and continues to stand the test of time. It also tells us that “new media” platforms like this are doomed if we don’t start leaving our “legacy media” ways.
On any given day respected former journalists of the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, MSNBC and other places appear here with their original professional tics and fully miss the boat as to how they might be contributors to an evolving news style with heightened meaning and less schtick. The ones from TV fumble because suddenly they are not supported by graphics, a producer, writers, news crawls and other broadcast features and end up looking like the wizard when Toto pulled back the curtain. The ones from newsprint stumble because their professional value was always found in writing to an audience that they now feel compelled to entertain. Then most of them stare into a static camera on a desultory podcast (a medium with very low communication fidelity) evoking recollections of DMV trip or mugshot. Once that happens the merits of what they have to say start to dwindle.
This trend has been noted here before and specifically about Paul Krugman and Steve Schmidt. Rightly, they have legendary followings on Substack and in their writings found here or elsewhere have brought immensely beneficial perspectives to the madness of the day. But they then undercut it with frequent appearances in low-literacy media thereby ensuring the dilution of their own genius. Both may claim they are not writing to exercise genius but to urge folks to get of their asses. That’s easy to understand. But visions of getting folks moving in a meaningful way via podcast is folly. Any audience is not an army awaiting military orders and without spending time in other media that (according to McLuhan) gives other messages, movement to effectiveness is unlikely to follow.
That’s why all new media types are urged to rethink today’s common approaches. One can’t read Krugman or Schmidt and not understand their views, and frankly, not be moved to either support or oppose. That’s a prime example of communication being so much more than the massive polenta that fills TV news and most social media channels. But its a lot easier to envision these two gents as possible polenta when daily they pop-up on endless, soulless, almost aimless podcasts as a greying nerd (who just happened to win a Nobel Prize) and a big bald guy who speaks pointedly and forcefully. Their impact is not found just in their message but in how their message is delivered in the written medium. When shoe-horned into a different medium their collective impact dwindles. One wonders what is the cost/benefit return?
Perhaps they are moved to this action to simply reach other audiences. Fair enough. But for those who want the wisdom of these elders but don’t wish to read—an obvious choice exists. Heed McCluhan and use the medium that in this instance provides communication vigor and meaning or, keep on your present path and keep doing, and talking and urgently screeching to followers that all the action your expending will really amount to communicative meaning. But please don’t be breathless about it and try not to flap your wings.