Gotta Know What’s Goin’ On
I forgot to mention an article I saw in The New York Times a few weeks ago in the Sunday edition. It seems book publishers consider The Daily Show with Jon Stewart an A-list publicity stop. Reason: Viewers of the show are book readers. Evidence: Among other things, Amazon sales spike after an author’s appearance (to a greater extent than other shows).
This surprises me not at all. I don’t think you can find The Daily Show very funny if you don’t know what’s going on in the world and if you aren’t “news media literate” to a fairly high degree.
In my media ethics class recently, a bit of anecdotal evidence emerged regarding the intellectual chops it takes to enjoy Stewart (and Colbert). One of my students works as a news photographer for a local television station. He tells this story:
Typical of television news operations, the newsroom has several televisions tuned into various news programs throughout the day. And one of them is tuned to The Daily Show at 10:30 p.m. central time Monday through Thursday. (Which I find rather hilarious considering how hard Stewart is on television news.) Quite often, younger technical employees–fresh out of school and new to their jobs–don’t find the show all that funny. But after a few weeks of working in a news organization, they begin “laughing just like the rest of us.”
Getting smarter being around journalism? Getting it because they see first-hand what Stewart is satirizing? I don’t know. But I find this anecdote interesting.
Anyone who’s spent time around newsroom types learn it’s more therapeutic to laugh than to cry at their antics.