Background: Originally published September 20, 2006. The two excerpts in this column were part of a larger pot pouri column; the other excerpts were posted three days ago under the heading "Grants Pass Chuckles."
One of my former Ashland friends operates The Coffee House above Bloomsbury Books. He friended me on Facebook this week, which prompted me to post this. This column is obviously dated, when I refer to MySpace.
THURSDAY NIGHTS MOCHAS AND MYSPACE
Summer is now ending, which means The Coffee House in Ashland is once again open late nights Thursday through Sunday. I'll probably spend most of my Thursday evenings there enjoying a double-shot mocha or a spirulina-fortified smoothie until closing at 9:30p.m. Sorting through old newspapers and magazines is more productive than spending my time on MySpace.
I've learned that one can never be fulfilled on MySpace. Regardless of how many friends you collect online, there will always be someone else out there who has more. What I found particularly disturbing is that people who had never met me were wanting to add me to their friends collection, while people whom I know and I had sent them a little "how are you doing?" note never responded! How rude! I've since learned to be content with just 11 friends.
CAMPAIGNING DURING THE NEWS
Has anyone else noticed more political campaign advertisements airing during television newscasts than they did years ago? I forget where I learned it; it was either in journalism school at the University of Oregon or during my internship at KVAL-TV.
But somewhere along the way, I learned that political campaign advertisements were never aired during local newscasts. Part of it was an ethical concern to avoid any confusion over a television station endorsing a particular candidate. But part of it was also to avoid confusion among viewers; the prevailing fear was that some unsavy viewers would confuse an advertisement with a news story and thus now know the source of the information. (This was in the pre-internet era when everyone presumably believed everything they saw on TV.)
The first time I noticed a change in policy was during the gubernatorial race of 1990. I remember seeing a Dave Frohnmayer advertisement during a commercial break on KLSR-TV's Prime Time News. I asked my news director about it. He told me the Frohnmayer campaign had specifically requested to purchase commercials with the understanding they would air during KLSR's 10:00p.m. newscast.
Wow! I thought to myself. There's no higher form of praise than when a political campaign is clamoring to advertise during a particular newscast, because the candidate believes you have viewers who are important voters.
While channel surfing this election season in 2006, I've noticed there is no longer any distinguishing between news and non-news programming. Political campaign advertisements appear to pop up at all times. I don't know exactly when the edict changed that said television newscasts are no longer too sacred for political campaigning. I guess (or hope?) that today's television viewer is smarter than the viewer from twenty years ago, and can tell a commercial apart from regular news programming..??
[2014 note: I just wish that internet surfers would stop believing the on line hoax that actor Will Smith is dead. Perhaps viewers CAN'T tell apart a campaign advertisement from legitimate news reporting..??]
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