Exploring Aggression

I had a driveway moment on my way home from work tonight. I could not tear myself away from the story of Derrick Hewitt, a now 15 year-old boy who examines his own aggressive tendencies in a radio feature story for a series called Radio Rookies.

Several things struck me about Derrick's story: his willingness to explore a fairly distasteful side of his personality, his level of sophisticiation and the story's high production values. I'm guessing that last factor is attributable to the level of training and support provided by this WYNC initiative that teaches teenagers from "under-resourced neighborhoods" how to produce radio stories.

Woe is Media

At first I thought this was ironic, but maybe moronic is more appropriate. Apparently, the CEO of Google is pissed because a reporter from CNET News.com googled him and published the results. Some of the information could fairly be called private, but the stuff is out there. Most of all, this reaction seems a little silly coming from the company that's trying to digitize everything on the planet. According to News.com, Google has "instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News.com reporters until July 2006" because of the story.

This is getting to be a common theme. Russia recently kicked ABC News out of the country because they interviewed a Chechen rebel leader. Daniel Schorr mentioned it this morning on NPR before waxing nostalgic about a similar event when he was with CBS.

Last week, GM agreed to start advertising in the Los Angeles Times again after pulling their ads in protest over what GM called "factual errors and misrepresentations" in the paper's coverage of the automaker. Interestingly, the story was accompanied by an ad for Infiniti when I viewed it on the LA Times site.

It's tough being in the media these days. Network TV viewership, newspaper readership and movie attendance are declining; with cable TV, video rentals, the Internet and video games the likely culprits. Kinda makes you feel sorry for them -- not!