20161228

NEWS

By 2002, viewers watching the 6:30pm network news tend to be over 50 rather than under 30. Barbara Walters confessed, "My daughter (in her early 30s in 2002) doesn't watch the news. She doesn't read a newspaper, either. She gets her news from the internet." Neal Shapiro believed, "The evening newscast is evolving, and it will keep evolving." 

In the 21st century, Steve Capus conceded, "This is a 24-hour news environment. Many of the people who are watching us have already read the headlines on the internet. We just have to go beyond the headlines." Les Moonves reasoned, "There’s a big, big shift in the evening news and how people are looking at their news. Right now, the average age of the news watcher is way over 45. We have people 30 years old not watching the evening news." 

Gail Pennington of the 'St. Louis Post-Dispatch' remarked, "In 1983, the year both Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings began anchoring, 72% of Americans regularly watched a network newscast. Now (in 2004), only 30% do." Mary McGinnis offered, "Maybe the next generation will watch at a different time, or on demand. Maybe they’ll watch … a reworking. Maybe that reworking will be aimed at a different audience – not a dumbing down, but a younging down. As a kid, we watched Cronkite and then had dinner. The question is how viewers in the future will watch." 

"Quality news and watchable news are not the mutually exclusive entities the networks think they are," Matthew Felling from the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington argued. "Bringing viewers back means taking the tough subjects and putting them in context – saying, this matters to you, because. They need to put more vegetables on the plate instead of ice cream every day, even if the audience asks for it." Andrew Tyndall pointed out the network newscasts, "They’re serious newscasts dealing with domestic policy, politics and international news, with very little human interest, little water-cooler material. It’s a hard newscast."  

The Y2K (or year 2000) glitches, said, stemmed from a longstanding programming practice of using only 2 digits to represent the year (that was, 00) was the most reported news story at the start of the millennium. With every tick of the clock toward 12:01 January 1 2000 rollover, it was said older computers may misread dates beyond December 31, 1999 (1900 instead of 2000) leading to crashes.

However "the sky is not even thinking about falling." At a Y2K conference in 1998, Leon Kappelman from the Society for Information Management expressed, "To paraphrase Winston Churchill, if the (computer) profession lasts for a thousand years, hopefully we will be able to look back and say, 'This was our finest hour.'" 'Knight Ridder Newspapers' reported at the time, "The magic date of 01/01/00 isn't only one that’s making programmers work late. As the Y2K bug moves closer, the numbers '9999' are starting to symbolize what '666' meant in 'The Omen'.

"Now (in 1999) '999', used decades ago as a code for 'erase this' or 'end of data' will soon coincide with September 9, 1999. If represented as 4 nines in a string of data, there is a chance that the date could confuse a computer. Software firm Unisolve representative said mainframe computers from the 1970s or 1980s, which use decades-old programming, languages like RPG or COBOL, may be affected, and cause miscalculations. Aside from the much-ballyhooed 01/01/00, September 9 is one of more than a dozen other dates that programmers are keeping an eye on."

On political front, Todd Harris of Kasich told the press, "The internet will be to the 2000 campaign what television was to the 1960 campaign. It is a crucial medium that you have to employ to get your message out. People who use the internet to garner information on candidates are much more invested in the political process." Campaign communications director Jonathan Baron added, "It is the focal point for campaign activity in a high-tech world. Any campaign that makes full use of the internet will have a competitive advantage over those who don’t." Larry Sabato, a professor at the University of Virginia at the time made the forecast, "The real revolution will be when we have internet voting."

At the time there was an emphasis on the big picture. It was explained vision was not the same as seeing. Using Joseph as told in Genesis, the big picture involved seeing "beyond the years". A visionary's dream, it was noted, was a mission in life, not just a job. Bill Clinton was described as a visionary. Joe Quigley wrote the 1993 book 'Vision: How Leaders Develop It, Share It and Sustain It', elaborated, "(George) Bush (senior) had a very strong sense of values, there's no question about it."

However, the press was told, he could not enunciate where those values fit into his vision. "On the other hand, Clinton has not just good words … he has a sense of where we're going. In addition, Clinton, while he has this vision, knows the goals. He will talk about values. He will talk about his aspirations." Long-range planner Diane McCarthy gave an example, "When you drive around the (West) Valley (in Arizona), do you really care whether you're in Peoria or Glendale? You just want the streets to connect. The streets don’t know city boundaries, just like air quality doesn’t know city boundaries. You have to plan that way."

The professor, John Hoyle told 'Detroit Free Press' that vision was "a step beyond creativity. There are a lot of creative people who do not have the ability to grasp the big picture. There’s a real gift, a charismatic aura about visionaries. Not everybody has it ... It’s a lot like beauty. It’s difficult to find. But you know it when you see it." Examples provided were Leonardo da Vinci who vision resulted in flying machine; Henry Ford who vision of mass production resulted in cars becoming available to almost everyone; Ray Kroc who envisioned a new way of eating founded McDonald's.

In Sunday School back in 1922, the Rev. Dr. Wallace L. Gallup told students "where there is no vision the people perish" from the text Prov. xxix:18. "Did you ever compare an ordinary map of some place in which you had an interest with a bird's-eye view map of that same place? One is mechanical, precise and detailed, but is decidedly unromantic and unimaginative; the other is wide, broad sweeping, far-reaching, and is a bit poetic and perhaps visionary.

"A bird's-eye view of a place has a suggestion of values and relationships of the different parts to the whole. One sees a sort of meaning and evident purpose in a map like that, and there is something beauteous and inviting and indeed appealing about that kind of map. Take, for example, New York City; an ordinary map of the metropolis is a very dry, meaningless and confusing thing.

"But the stranger who can see a bird's-eye view picture of New York, the form of the island and its neighbors, the location of its skyscrapers, outstanding buildings, parks and squares, will have a vision of the city which he will never lose. All this is by way of introduction to the thought that it would be a good thing for us to have a bird's-eye view of life."

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