While trying to get work done on a rainy day, I’ve been repeatedly distracted by episodes of “This American Life.”
Reading about host Ira Glass in the wayward sort of way you read about things on the Internet, I found this quote:
Send this through a series of tubes.
This is such a random statement for Mr. Glass to have since it is contradictory and more representative of his own work.
It makes no sense that a “day” would define the finiteness of a story and/or a journalist’s work. I think there is a need for due diligence to hold one accountable for daily news if they were a journalist, but if they decide to expand upon the time of a story, it makes them no less of a journalist than anyone else.
Any story could be defined within any parameter that the narrator gives it. If Umass sinks 3 million into another gym, that can be just tomorrow’s news. What about the person that was hired 2 days to manage the project, or the students who will be hired in the next few weeks? Does the story of employment begin when someone hears about it? When we find out the manager has been to prison? When the Daily Collegian has enough ground troops to uncover the loss of work-study funds?
The longevity of any story can be expanded or consolidated based on many factors, some not having to do with the time of information released or realized. Because a journalist doesn’t come up with his time to deliver news on the basis of the daily print media makes no sense whatsoever.
Ira Glass ( and maybe he would agree ) and his show would fit the perfect this argument with his programming clearly promoting the anthropology of his work. When he did his show on scamming, and the story of the two people getting into trouble with the bait car ended, did that story end?
Did it begin with American Life? Is there a story within a story? The guidelines of journalism are always in the hands of the editors of the media at large. The Washington Post held up a classified document on investigations on specific congressman. They possessed the story, and they delayed it to their online website to push up a buzz.
The excuse for a story to stop being is when it possesses no interest to anyone at anytime. A story can circle the entire world, with wars between countries. It can captivate a national audience, as did the Yankees World Series victory. It can be within the family, such as when someone finds out their mother is ill. And it can even be within one’s self, where one can can have their own story that would never be told to the world.
In essence, there is no excuse for a story to stop being. For Ira Glass, someone who produces a show with stories that have a long shelf-life, to make a statement against the longevity of news, I find the quote to be meant for his view of the non-journalist/blogging circle. Maybe it is a feeling that if you don’t have the talent of daily reporting, than you can’t be a journalist.
A story develops over time, and sometimes the story of the day is meaningless, if it weren’t for the anthropology and history behind it. How else would the last 40 pages of the Boston Herald have so much importance?