Finding a way to justify my shortcomings involves chutzpah, dragging philosophy into it, picking the right excuses, and blaming it on journalism.
At times, I feel like the Catholic Church, completely out of step with the times. Granted, a respectable religious organization has to have its feet stuck in the past, inching slowly into the future in order to preserve tradition, values, and faith. This is perhaps the reason why Italy was chosen as the seat for the Pope… since it’s a place that hasn’t changed in over 2,000 years. In fact, Pope Clement V left Rome for the south of France in 1309, but 67 years later, another pope decided to head back there, working under the assumption that time moved more slowly in Italy. (Well, that’s not exactly what happened, but it works for my narrative, so I’m keeping it like that.)
Nonetheless, a reporter like me, who supposedly writes about television, which includes fast-moving technology, should have one foot into the future. And yet, in this regard my track record is dismal. When I was at Television/ Radio Age in the late 1970s I failed to appreciate the emerging cellular technology. Before that, I was taken with laser video technology (a precursor to DVDs), but refused to get involved with computers of any kind. I’m now wondering if I was even aware that progress was moving forward for others while it remained idle for me. However, as writer Ben Rhodes recently commented in a New York Times article describing Americans, my attitude “captures the American tendency to live obsessively in the present.”
At VideoAge, I failed to appreciate satellite TV technology even though I knew that the U.S. TV networks were all studying and researching the matter, which gave way to the superstation created by Ted Turner. (Early on I didn’t have faith in Turner’s other innovation, the all-news channel, CNN, either, but I still traveled to Atlanta to interview him at CNN’s original suburban house studio.)
Should I go on? Originally, I also saw home videos as simple home recordings and was unable to foresee the new window that it would become. And then, living in suburban Long Island, New York, I hated seeing all those cable wires hanging up on telephone poles, which essentially preannounced the 500 TV channel universe.
Magically, however, I predicted streaming television in a 1999 book I wrote and aptly titled, TV via Internet.
Still, I can’t help but think that maybe my inability to see what was coming next is how most reporters should be: not visionaries, but mirrors reflecting undistorted views of what’s out there. Not experts, but philosophers who question everything. Observers who report on innovation while safeguarding tradition.
So, there you go. With this editorial I’ve managed to create a plausible excuse to justify everything I failed to envision in the past. Thank you for giving me this opportunity!
(By Dom Serafini)
Leave A Comment