Tucson Weekly explores "Messages"
"Most Americans don't live in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia. They get their local news from media in small-market stations," Carr said. "Those stories have not been told. The processes at the very heart of our democratic process haven't been told."
-- Quote from John Schuster's Tucson Weekly article
I had only been the TV news business a short time before observing that, for some reason, the relationship between station managers and TV critics is usually adversarial – sometimes, intensely so (think: "scorched earth.") It only took me a little while longer in the business to figure out why: like any good reporters, TV critics by nature tend to want to drag facts into the light that powerful stakeholders – in this case, TV news directors – would rather see buried. Even so, after indulging in some nasty battles that I now regret, I finally came to realize that the paranoia about adverse publicity that pervades most TV newsrooms was ill-advised, and that excessive secrecy serves neither the public nor those newsrooms well. After my first year as a news director, I decided to experiment with a philosophy somewhat similar to "glasnost" – meaning as much openness, transparency and public accountability as possible. (That story has been told elsewhere – if you're interested, Google or Bing "The Viewers' Bill of Rights" or follow this link: http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports...). And for the record, my bosses at KGUN over the years were fabulously supportive of these efforts, which were ground-breaking at the time they began.
When I returned to Tucson as a TV news director in 2009, one of the first forces of nature that I encountered was John Schuster, the media cat at The Tucson Weekly. John had a reputation of being pretty tough on us. But I quickly found John to be the consummate professional. The nature of the beast is that I couldn't always answer all of John's questions on the record. But I always did return John's phone calls, and I found that he treated us very well. I won't claim that I always liked what he had to say, mind you. But in our democracy even powerful organizations such as TV newsrooms sometimes have to take their medicine, and it often falls to journalists to administer it. I found John to be likeable, fair and professional.
This week John penned an article about my recent writing efforts that's just amazing. He did a marvelous job. At the risk of looking silly quoting someone who's quoting me, the article zeroes in on one of the main reasons why I wanted to write the novel "Messages," and why I chose to set it in early 80's, which was in the Golden Age of local TV news. Quoting John (quoting me): "'I try really hard to be faithful to the environment back then,' Carr said. 'We fought a lot of ethical and journalistic battles, and some of those battles were lost... It set the stage for everything that was to come. As I was living through it I thought, "This is a story that has to be told. If people only knew." If they read Messages now, they'll know. It's still relevant. You can see the effects in today's news...'"
John also was kind enough to explore the reasons and strategy behind the second novel I just published, a sci-fi yarn entitled A Journal of the Crazy Year, which attempts to bring the traditional zombie tale into the realm of honest science fiction (where there are strict rules about science and nature to follow).
You can find it all here, courtesy of John Schuster and the Tucson Weekly:
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/me...
Thank you, John!
Forrest Carr
Writer and recovering journalist
("Messages" is available for the Kindle and Kindle Apps here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ECK0DBK
A Journal of the Crazy Year is available here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FY3GFDE)
-- Quote from John Schuster's Tucson Weekly article
I had only been the TV news business a short time before observing that, for some reason, the relationship between station managers and TV critics is usually adversarial – sometimes, intensely so (think: "scorched earth.") It only took me a little while longer in the business to figure out why: like any good reporters, TV critics by nature tend to want to drag facts into the light that powerful stakeholders – in this case, TV news directors – would rather see buried. Even so, after indulging in some nasty battles that I now regret, I finally came to realize that the paranoia about adverse publicity that pervades most TV newsrooms was ill-advised, and that excessive secrecy serves neither the public nor those newsrooms well. After my first year as a news director, I decided to experiment with a philosophy somewhat similar to "glasnost" – meaning as much openness, transparency and public accountability as possible. (That story has been told elsewhere – if you're interested, Google or Bing "The Viewers' Bill of Rights" or follow this link: http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports...). And for the record, my bosses at KGUN over the years were fabulously supportive of these efforts, which were ground-breaking at the time they began.
When I returned to Tucson as a TV news director in 2009, one of the first forces of nature that I encountered was John Schuster, the media cat at The Tucson Weekly. John had a reputation of being pretty tough on us. But I quickly found John to be the consummate professional. The nature of the beast is that I couldn't always answer all of John's questions on the record. But I always did return John's phone calls, and I found that he treated us very well. I won't claim that I always liked what he had to say, mind you. But in our democracy even powerful organizations such as TV newsrooms sometimes have to take their medicine, and it often falls to journalists to administer it. I found John to be likeable, fair and professional.
This week John penned an article about my recent writing efforts that's just amazing. He did a marvelous job. At the risk of looking silly quoting someone who's quoting me, the article zeroes in on one of the main reasons why I wanted to write the novel "Messages," and why I chose to set it in early 80's, which was in the Golden Age of local TV news. Quoting John (quoting me): "'I try really hard to be faithful to the environment back then,' Carr said. 'We fought a lot of ethical and journalistic battles, and some of those battles were lost... It set the stage for everything that was to come. As I was living through it I thought, "This is a story that has to be told. If people only knew." If they read Messages now, they'll know. It's still relevant. You can see the effects in today's news...'"
John also was kind enough to explore the reasons and strategy behind the second novel I just published, a sci-fi yarn entitled A Journal of the Crazy Year, which attempts to bring the traditional zombie tale into the realm of honest science fiction (where there are strict rules about science and nature to follow).
You can find it all here, courtesy of John Schuster and the Tucson Weekly:
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/me...
Thank you, John!
Forrest Carr
Writer and recovering journalist
("Messages" is available for the Kindle and Kindle Apps here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ECK0DBK
A Journal of the Crazy Year is available here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FY3GFDE)
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