I've got a question for all those fancy smancy academics at universities.
Is there any research available to us folks in the field who are trying to communicate with citizens about childhood immunizations, services for elderly, road closures, etc?
Sure, you can call me a flak, not worthy of consideration within a discussion of journalism. However, if you are going to devote more time to scandals and fires, then someone has to convey information about municipal service availability to the 360,000 citizens in my county.
Implicit in the traditions of American journalism is civic education.
It's my observation that our collective ability to absorb and filter information has changed.
We used to have the seven second rule -- you had seven seconds to get someone's attention.
Has that changed? I bet it has.
Are we becoming more attention deficit?
How does this affect how we absorb and filter information.
Is there anyone in the communications field who is studying how we've changed in response to overwhelming information input?
Again, where is the help of academics in understanding how people are changing in their processing of information.
Is that being taught today in college? In communications? Or does one need to transfer to psychology in order to understand the changing nature of cognition.
Or sociology, on how people are spending their time.
What the hell are all those Ph.D.s in communications doing around the country? Just teaching the same old dribble I got 100 years ago -- spelling, AP Stylebook and inverted story?
Blah.
How has 500 channels changed our ability to find and absorb local TV news, for example?
What are the generational differences in absorbing civic information?
2 comments:
i started reading this but got to "raod closures" and started wondering what the drive to bachelor is going to be like this weekend. there's supposed to be lots of snow on thursday, which is when we're going up there.
whoops. should have been "road".
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