Archive for the &;media-anniversaries&; Category
Columbine and the Dread Media AnniversaryStory
April 20, 2009
Here we are, &;celebrating&; ten years since the maniacal shootings at Columbine. And last week, &;20 years ago today Sergeant Pepper&; didn&;t teach the band to play, but 96 people were killed in a soccer stampede in England. And today is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing; time to wallow in the people&;s grief.
Perhaps this is one reason people hate journalists, not just asking victims how they feel at the scene of the disaster, but revisiting it 10, 20 or more years out.
As I said last year,
&;If I ran the journalism world, the first thing I would ban would be the “anniversary story.” Even though I won an LA Press Club Award for this LA Times piece about the Rodney King beating.
Basically, a media ‘anniversary’ is an excuse for journalists to write a little history, bring up some (generally lurid) event from the past or do some “Trivial Pursuit’ style follow-up on half-remembered players.&;
And the big one is coming up this summer. No, not 40 years since the moon landings. I&;m sure we can look forward to an interview with Roman Polanski, on his thoughts on the 40th anniversary of his wife and the others slaughtered in the Manson killings.
Tags:Columbine-killings, Manson, media-anniversaries, moon-landings, Roman-Polanski, soccer-stampede Posted in media-anniversaries, tabloid-journalism | Leave a Comment &;
The Dread Media &;Anniversary&;Story
November 10, 2008
If I ran the journalism world, the first thing I would ban would be the &;anniversary story.&; Even though I won an LA Press Club Award for this LA Times piece about the Rodney King beating.
Basically, a media &;anniversary&; is an excuse for journalists to write a little history, bring up some (generally lurid) event from the past or do some &;Trivial Pursuit&; style follow-up (where is Kato Kaelin now?!) on half-remembered players. It&;s a hook to write something that will get page views or blog hits, requires little actual reporting, and often gives the reporter the chance to play historian, draw parallels to our own time, or better yet, pontificate.
Certain dates are inevitable. I&;m sure November 22 this year (the 45th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination) will bring both memories of that tragic day in Dallas and the death of Camelot, and sober comments on the threats against President-Elect Obama.
A few guidelines: generally, anniversary dates have to be for events in living memory. Hence, 9-11 will generate recaps of the events and commentary for at least the next fifty years, but April 14 won&;t get much (the date of Abraham Lincoln&;s assassination 143 years ago).
Second, round numbers are key. Like my Princeton reunions or wedding anniversaries, the big ones are 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40 and 50 years. Thus, January 28 won&;t be an important media anniversary date until 2011, when it will mark 25 years since the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986.
Third, &;if it bleeds, it leads.&; Significant numbers of dead, or the notoriety of the incident, are sufficent reason for &;celebrating&; the anniversary.
The last few weeks of October and early November have brought major looks back at the Jonestown massacres and even at the murder of Nancy Spungen by Sid Vicious (relived in New York Magazine&;s Entertainment Section!), each taking place in 1978, 30 years ago. Each of these stories fits the &;anniversary story&; criteria perfectly: In living memory, lurid, and a round number.
A fourth criteria for the anniversary story, importance, is highly subjective and thus easily ignored. I was surprised and dismayed by the lack of update coverage on Los Angeles 15 years after the LA Riots last year. And the 70th anniversary of the Nazi pogroms of Kristallnacht, the terror against Jewish homes and businesses that ignited the Holocaust, while commemorated in Germany, received precious little coverage in the U.S..
As George Santayana said, &;Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.&; But whether we remember or not, all of us are condemned to a lifetime of anniversary stories from the media.
Tags:9-11, Barack-Obama, Kato-Kaelin, Kennedy-assassination, Kristallnacht, media-anniversaries, Nancy-Spungen, Rodney-King, Sid-Vicious, space-shuttle-Challenger Posted in Journalism, media-anniversaries | 1 Comment &;
9-11 andRemembrance
September 11, 2007
Have we forgotten, as Anna Quindlen charges?
I don&;t think so. Even on the most superficial level, 9-11 has become a &;where were you on&; day like the Challenger explosion of February 1986, President Kennedy&;s assassination in 1963, and for an older generation, Pearl Harbor in 1941 and VE and VJ (victory in Europe/Japan) days in 1945.
And in terms of how many Americans (and people worldwide) remember what they saw that day, the absolute numbers of those who remember are probably bigger than any of the other &;anniversary&; days.
9-11 isn&;t just a &;media anniversary&;, like two years since Katrina or 15 years since the LA Riots. Even if the media didn&;t remind us, we&;d remember.
But memories do fade. We saw that with the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana&;s death&;I remember quite well it was the summer of 1997, probably August, but I&;d be hard-pressed to say what day. (August 31, 1997, for the record; I had to look it up.) And already, many challenge her legacy.
But artists are starting to make 9-11 their own, like Don DeLillo with Falling Man and Paul Greengrass&;s absorbing United 93. This is an encouraging development for continuing and expanding memory, even if they run the risk of trivializing 9-11, as with the Holocaust.
The challenge is continue to honor the 9-11 dead and their families, find ways to memorialize them going forward, and learn how to say &;never again&; and make it mean something. One size doesn&;t fit all here, and soundbites about &;sacrifice&;, &;helplessness&;, &;revenge&; and &;justice&; don&;t say much more.
Posted in 9-11, Don-DeLillo, Los Angeles Riots, media-anniversaries, Paul-Greengrass, Princess-Diana, United-93 | 1 Comment &;