News Media Gatekeepers In a NY State of Mind

If you look at an aerial map of Nashville, it's easy to see the Cumberland River winding through the city. It's not as easy to see the faces of the 1.5 million people in the metro area - thousands of whom are flooded out this week. And it's not easy to see those flood victims on  television, either. They can certainly be seen and heard on WSMV, our client in Nashville which is doing yeoman's duty the last few days, broadcasting literally life-saving information around the clock on-air and online. But in terms of national attention, the guy with some fireworks and three gas grill tanks in his SUV in Times Square is getting top billing. Oil in the gulf is - rightly so - competing for attention, too. Both are legitimate and big stories worthy of coverage. But it does make you wonder how it would be handled if the gatekeepers of big media were flooded out in Manhattan and the guy with the SUV had parked on a busy streetcorner in Tennessee.

There's a lot of speculation about what newscast rundowns will look like when citizens take control from the media "gatekeepers" and build their own lineups. It's already possible online, and the trend is building. Somehow I think we are speeding up the audience's dissatisfaction with some of the TV news judgments being made today. The "East of the Hudson" view can sometimes be a little too narrow in a country of 330 million. It especially looks that way if you're flooded out of your house in Nashville.

-John Altenbern