I wonder—was I better off in the ‘60s when I could see in a minute-by-minute sequence the horrors of Vietnam and the frightening inner-city turmoil of race riots across the nation? I saw Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite and their peers serve me filtered casualty reports. I saw those flags behind Dan Rather list the number of dead with surrealistic body counts; when our numbers were less than the other guys, I felt good. But I was 10 and our TV has three channels. There was no Web. For that matter, there were no computers. In fact, it took a minute for my family’s black & white TV to warm up. Were those the days?

Or, is it today, where I have three PCs running as well as two TVs, one playing inside one of my PCs. I got to blogs to see first hand accounts—pictures and stories. I see unfiltered news and pictures and videos from the front lines. I see some guy on CNN proclaim it’s darned near the end of the world. If I were 10 years old today, what would I be thinking?

I have mostly applause for the media coverage of Hurricane Katrina; it’s been fairly honest and through, although I believe the networks must label LIVE TV shots from looped shots. I saw that guy being carried away in a bucket by a helicopter 100 times yesterday. Was it live, or Memorex ®? The TV-Web fusion creates enough of a confusion of place and time; we need our media to be accurate in its labeling.

Lastly, I want the Times-Picayune, the print voice of New Orleans to use technology to create a digital newspaper. They need to use Extensis’ Deja-Vu technology or Zinio to get a “newspaper” put together without a printing press. It would help add context to the outpouring of soul-less content flooding the channel.

I couldn’t help but notice this piece on Rachel Ray and her work as a magazine goddess. It says she’s now turning into a magazine know-it-all after having some modest success as a TV host on cable. Yikes, what is it with these semi-divas?

I noticed, when watching the first episode of her new show last Friday on Food TV, that Ray has really changed. What made her appealing on $40 a Day and 30 Minute Meals was that she was disarming and somewhat self-effacing. Now, she appears so full of herself, her accessibility and universal appeal is gone. She is the network’s next Emeril, a pseudo food star with no real game. Thank heavens for Alton Brown.

More evidence in the trend we've been talking about for a few years: newspapers will be forced to do the same amount of work (or more) with less resources. Some challenge!

But we knew that...

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