Produced by two professors at Quinnipiac University in C.T. in 2011, just after the recovery of The Great Recession, this documentary focuses on slow but shallow nature of local news that went to viral video and same day “flash and trash” journalism. While in 2019, people obsess about D.C. government closures, and other things that aren’t in their back yards, local journalism is on their last legs, and it’s worse than when this was rolled 8 years ago.
You don’t have to study journalism to understand, you could be an observer and understand the stuff. I am on the camp of Brett Shipp, from WFAA where some flashy stories is part of a “media diet”, which he said in this documentary in the end.
Sadly some of the people featured in this documentary had their careers totaled by mismanagement by larger media conglomerates, or their iTeam units cut. And the Belo building in Dallas was sold in 2012 as they sold the TV group to Gannett (later branded as Tegna the following year.) Belo was really big on local journalism, being based in Texas where every damn thing is “big” and yes Belo defined “big journalism”. WFAA had set the national standard in my judgement.
I watched this documentary a few years ago and watched it like a Disney movie, because watching it over and over makes me feel very nostalgic of the days before we got so polarized and were active in our own community’s issues rather than obsessing about the Federal governance.
“Trigger Warning” – it may make you tear up.