DECISIONS AND CHANGES AND THE MEDIA

Okay, so we all know we're in an economic depression of sorts. The news tells us the sky is falling every day. It's the worst time to quit a job, right?

I'm one of those people who hates to be stuck in a routine for too long. I don't have any desire to give my everything to some corporate company until my last dying day (or when they decide to lay me off). I've seen colleagues clean out their lockers after 30 years with a big company and it's heartbreaking. I've made my bread and butter in the TV news business, but that business is changing with each and every day. With social networking and digital access and distribution, media companies are ditching seasoned pros in news and print and hiring babes in the woods to rehash from the "wires" or worse yet, to copy and paste. Most of the facts aren't accurate. Would you let someone right out of film school direct your biggest movie? Or someone right out of flight school to pilot a jumbo jet filled with customers? Well, that's what the media companies are doing -- they're waiting for the pros to quit in disgust, or just not to renew the contracts of talented people in an effort to save money. And they will save money, but at what cost? To them and to you?

Who will speak to power? Who will reveal the next Watergate? The next lead up to an unnecessary war? Polluted water in your neighborhood? Who has the gumption anymore to ask the tough questions to the President? Who will spend their lives in other countries to tell us the hard truth about poverty, war or lack of human rights? Not many and you can't blame them. Does the public even care or are we more concerned about Ashton Kutcher's tweets vs. CNN's? It amazes me how we're such lambs for mass media -- lead us to the next trend and we'll follow, no matter how stupid or useless the latest "breaking news" banner is that flashes on screen.

Keep your eyes and ears open... and do your own fact checking. Now -- more than ever. Let's hope the theater is more authentic... but then again, playwright Neil LaBute says that corporate commercial control is changing what playwrights dare write... it doesn't matter what's in the sausage as long as you can sell it.

Until next time.
Janet Lawler
Astoria, NY