Kids, Get Your Money Back!

Posted October 17, 2017

Share To

 

  TweetEmail

You know, some of the most innovative ideas in the tech world have come out of universities like Stanford. 

I mean, these are hot houses of invention. That's where Google was invented!

And no wonder. They attract bright young people to the field and then they give them all the tools they need to go and try out new ideas. And every once in a while, a Google, a Snapchat, a StubHub... all created by Stanford students while they were students.

No such danger of this happening at the nation's Graduate Schools of Journalism.  

If Stanford were run like most journalism schools, Page and Bryn would be busy building a replica of an IBM 360 mainframe.

OK. 

Not to beat the crap out of one particular school (I think they're probably all pretty culpable), but Stony Brook puts their Student TV News Show on Facebook for all to see. (I searched for NYU, Columbia and Hofstra, among others, but Stony Brook came up the most often. Well, at least you have to give them credit for honesty).

Take a look at it.

I mean, it looks like 1972 local news.

OK, 1978.

Is there a difference?

Of course not!

It all looks the same.

Always has.

And it is unwatchable.

Now, this is made by, what: 21 year olds?

And this is what they are teaching them to do?

To replicate what is essentially a dying business?

And how do I know it is dying?

Ever watch the news on TV?

Take a look at the ads.

Cialis, Depends, Optivo (or whatever that stuff is - you know, it allows cancer patients to live a few more days).

Do you think any 20 year olds are taking Cialis or buying Depends?

Me neither.

So they are making something that they would not be caught dead watching. (Maybe dead).

What is the point?

Now, here is what is really interesting. I am willing to bet that the kids in those classes are making video all the time on their phones - for Snapchat or FB. And I am willing to be that those videos are pretty hip and trendy and amusing.

Well kids, why not do what they do at Stanford. Take your outside interets and skills and marry them to news. Create a whole new kind of news. One YOU would WANT to watch.

Go ahead.

You can't get fired.

(You are paying to go...)

And maybe, just maybe, you can invent a new kind of newscast that someone your age would want to watch.. and maybe, just maybe.. rescue an industry while you are at it.