Your Surly Editor

Mike James is something of a hero of mine and not just because a single plug on his well-traveled website quadruples my traffic. NewsBlues, a daily take on the inherent absurdity of TV News, is read, appreciated and often hated by many in my business. Maybe that's because the man behind it rarely bites his tongue. Instead, The Surly Editor lashes out at an industry that so richly deserves it. Doing so doesn't always win him friends, but it damn sure earns him readers. Paying ones, too - at $35.00 for a six month subscription, James must turn a tidy profit off all that inanity. Recently, he answered Ten Questions posed by fellow ex-newsman Terry Heaton and the resulting screed features plenty of his trademark blister.

"TV news has lost its way. Forget the excuses. No one cares that your bosses are asking you to fill more time with fewer resources. The business is contaminated. The content is fetid and foul, shallow and pointless. Get a job selling time share. Drive a bus in Reno. Do anything but continue foisting polluted, noxious news feces on the superficial American public...Television news (if you believe it is a form of journalism) has the ability...the responsibility...to capture and preserve the moments, the events, that pass through our daily lives. Instead, it has fallen back on trivial weepies and frothy feel-goods, on medical "studies" and video news releases, or political spin and opinionated shoutfests, hypothesis, rumor, and supposition. TV news is no longer in charge of itself. It deserves to be shot at sunrise."

And you thought I was churlish...