Wednesday, August 19, 2009

American Icons

Don Hewitt, a person I do not know, was the reported "inventor of 60 minutes." I doubt if he really invented 60 minutes. It just happened to be an hour show. By the way, the show is approximately 45 minutes of popular news and 15 minutes of paid advertising.

But it is not called "45 minutes." The advertising must be included in the length of the show, albeit the show title, because the advertising is what gives birth to the show's reality. No advertising. No show.

The real loss of people like Don Hewitt is that the age of the investigative reporter, the unbiased reporter, is gone. The good news, however, is that it may be back in the form of thousands, if not millions, of people with iPhones who video stuff and publish it for all to see. In this age, we do not need news "aggregators" or news "summarators;" we need the facts and then we can reach our own conclusions. We now are our own "60 minutes" with no advertising.

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