Col. Mustard, in the Conservatory, With an RSS Feed

So why did I go to Cambridge last week anyway? To attend a lecture in honor of the Wolfson Press Fellowship's 25th anniversary, delivered by Financial Times columnist and Reuters Institute brain John Lloyd. It was a sobering catalogue of the challenges facing the media.
Lloyd said journalists are right to reflect with "some foreboding" on the woes we face, "but we must have some faith that serious journalism is worth doing." (An excerpt from his remarks ran in Cambridge's Varsity student newspaper.)

The evening reminded me of one of those Agatha Christie mysteries where it turns out more than one killer offed the victim. Who does Lloyd think has stabbed serious journalism, leaving it hovering near death in the intensive-care unit, a respirator in its mouth, a catheter bag hanging by the bedside? Among the suspects:

Pack journalism that's intent on tearing down politicians and other public figures by accentuating the negative. (Especially in Britain, which suffers, Lloyd said, from "endemic incivility.")
The concomitant rise in spin, as politicians try to shape the news.
The hungry maw of the 24-hour news cycle, which requires a constant supply of fresh meat on which to chew.
Dwindling news staffs, which means fewer journalists doing more work of lower quality.
The growth of the public relations industry and the embrace journalism has given it, resulting in journalists who do little more than "launder" press releases.
Free sheets such as Metro, which threaten established evening papers such as the Evening Standard.
The ability of consumers to put together their own news from myriad sources, commodifying journalism.

Most of these, Lloyd suggested, are the result of market forces, prompting him to wonder if perhaps the market has failed when it comes to providing serious journalism. If that is the case, then other methods of support should be contemplated, including funding from the state (as with the BBC) or from not-for-profit institutions (such as Pew or Carnegie).

I would hate to see it come to that, desirous as I am that journalism--serious and otherwise--be able to pay its own way. And I was trying to see the appeal that would be made to the public on journalism's behalf. Would the argument by that this is like trying to save, say, a homegrown steel industry (vital national security issues are at stake) or like seeking funding for an experimental ballet company (sure, it only appeals to a few people but culture is important for our society)?

Sean Taylor, R.I.P.
Sean Taylor, the Washington Redskins player, was shot and killed near Miami earlier this week. A tragedy to be sure. It's interesting watching the media pick through the 24-year-old's life and death and create narratives or explanations. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson makes an impassioned plea that we resist thinking in these terms. Writes Robinson: "Do me a favor: If you have to impose an off-the-shelf narrative on Sean Taylor's death, pick something other than the Young Black Men story."

The Post's Len Shapiro performs the sort of linguistic gymnastics columnists all over America are doing today, writing in one paragraph "At the moment, it is far too soon to draw any conclusions as to how or why this tragedy occurred..." before a few lines later concluding: "Still, could anyone honestly say they never saw this coming?"

Taylor had several well-publicized brushes with the law, with the NFL and with his own team. He once spit in an opposing player's face. He allegedly threatened a group of men he thought had stolen his all-terrain vehicle (not his car, as a British paper reported yesterday). (And what is it about ATVs anyway? They're always in the news for the wrong reasons: breaking the necks of 6-year-olds or inspiring feats of misguided loyalty.)

Every story about Taylor mentions that his father is a police chief. I guess the two didn't talk much about the best way to behave in tense situations. We can be sure of one thing: Writer's strike or no, the folks at "CSI: Miami" are sharpening their pencils as we speak.

Look, Up in the Sky...

Sunny? Yesterday My Life Was Filled With Rain...
The British media doesn't seem to obsess about weather to the degree that we do in the States, at least like we do in the Washington area, where it seems that every TV station has its own doppler radar and cloud-seeding airplane and where, come winter, meteorologists Bob Ryan and Sue Palka compete to see who can go the longest without sleep.

(For those of you reading this blog in England, imagine a local TV newscast where fully a third of the program is devoted to the intricacies of the weather: that day's actual highs and lows; that day's perceived highs and lows [they're different somehow]; the amount of precipitation at various spots around town; computer graphics in an endless loop showing the eastward march of clouds and wind and minute fluctuations in isobars; that day's deviation from normal temperatures; the deviation from record temperatures; a quick round-up of statistics compiled by amateur weather buffs tending back yard anemometers; a five-day forecast; a seven-day forecast; a 10-day "extended" forecast. And if there's any possibility the weather may be slightly extreme--a slight chance of snow for example--the TV weather machine goes into overdrive, with reporters dispatched to snowplow marshalling yards, tricky intersections and the milk aisles of supermarkets. We take our weather seriously in Washington.)

Perhaps because the weather is so changeable in England--sunny one minute, rainy the next--TV weatherfolk don't get too invested in making ironclad, and apocalyptic, forecasts. Or maybe it's that the weather is pretty much the same all the time, so there's no reason to get all freaked out over minor blips in the status quo. The weather report at the end of the evening news is just the briefest of snippets, delivered almost apologetically.

I still care about the weather, though, and I can't shake the habit of asking out loud "What's the weather going to be like today?" before pulling on an outfit. For the last few days--and, it looks like, for the rest of the week--I think there's just one answer to that question: "English."

The weather will be English today.

That translates as "moist and raw." There hasn't been anything so vulgar as a driving rain, though. Instead, England seems to specialize in a nebulous mist. The sky spits out a fine precipitation as if from a celestial soaker hose. You never actually get anything as common as "wet." After venturing into it you return to your house sort of dampened, like a tennis ball that's been carried in the mouth of a Labrador.

Indoor Fireworks
Over on the island of Jersey a man named Terry McDonald was eager to recapture his world-record crown for the most pyrotechnic devices set off simultaneously. He was planning on launching 110,000 fireworks in August, breaking the Guinness record of 56,405. But environmental concerns forced him to scrub the endeavor. Officials didn't want the detritus from all those rockets littering the beach.

You can sort of understand that. Here's the rest of the story: According to a brief item in the Daily Express Saturday ("The world's greatest newspaper," according to the motto printed on the front page, though its Web site leaves something to be desired), McDonald has had to sleep in the same room with all the fireworks for the last two months, guarding them, presumably against accidental detonation. "It's a living nightmare," he was quoted as saying.

This is probably not a guy you want to sneak up behind with an inflated balloon and a sharpened knitting needle.

How Green Was My Alley?
I haven't yet decided how I feel about the British preoccupation with the environment. I'm pro-environment, of course, but there's a hectoring, sanctimonious tone to much of the conversation here. People drag their carbon footprints around like a family ghost. They wear their green-ness on their sleeves. (Greensleeves?)

That does leave room for comedy, though, and a columnist named Terence Blacker has a funny, satirical piece in the Independent today about the upper class's embrace of All Things Green. It's not often you see the expression "tickety-boo."

Reuters Foundation
At the end of this week a half-dozen journalists from around the world will arrive in Oxford, the latest crop of fellows to study at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, where I'm hanging out for the next year. The institute, and the fellows, are sponsored by the Reuters Foundation. Yesterday's Guardian had a story about the foundation and the work it does.

One of its most important functions is training journalists in foreign countries. Instructors don't, foundation folks insisted, tell people what to write, just how to gather information. "You have to be cautious about trying to impose some kind of neo-colonial pattern on it," Oliver Wates, a former Reuters reporter running a seminar on reporting on climate change, said of the training.

They may rank somewhere below used-car salespeople in the public's perception, but most journalists really do try to do the right thing.