Explosion of news shows is changing their focus

10/26/2007

A discussion of whether the news media, especially the broadcast media, are out of control takes center stage on this week's edition of Deadline Now.

Jack Lessenberry, the show's host and The Blade's ombudsman, remembers the days when the airwaves were seen as a national resource and the number of stations any company could own was tightly limited.

Plus, every station was required to offer programming in the public interest, usually news.

Nowadays, he notes, the 24-hour media cycle brings such "news" as the latest law-breaking escapade of starlet Lindsay Lohan or the latest public meltdown of singer Britney Spears.

Joining Mr. Lessenberry as he tries to make sense of the new media world is Jim Fouts, a Bowling Green State University professor and a former TV news editor in Youngstown, and Sandi Svoboda, a staff writer for the Metro Times, Detroit's alternative weekly newspaper, and a former reporter for The Blade and the Associated Press.

Deadline Now will be broadcast at 8:30 tonight and 2:30 a.m. tomorrow on WGTE-TV, Channel 30.