The Daily Show

I guess most would consider The Daily Show with Jon Stewart a comedy, and possibly even a sketch, show, but I would have to say that it is just a reliable source for news as CNN and FOX. The Daily Show came on in the beginning of the decade and took America by storm. It was funny, had a good and intelligent host, and was on cable. All of these things are the recipe for a perfect long running comedic news show. I watched the February 3, 2010 edition of the long running program and I, having seen and enjoyed the show before, was expecting to learn a little and laugh often. As the assignment entails, the verb tenses and different uses of language are the things we are supposed to be commenting on, but the writing staff of the Daily Show must have been reading this assignment as they wrote the show.

In the business of television writing, it’s not too often that we find a blend of comedy, news, and good grammatical structure. The Show used the past tense in their reporting because all of the events that they were reporting on had happened the day prior. Since it is not a 24 hour-a-day news source, the stories are updated by the day, not the hour. This provides for easy verb tense dissection and a low chance of making English teachers unhappy. Also, the show being a news show, it can’t take a side on political issues (FOX, CNN, NBC…etc) and it does this by poking fun at Barack Obama’s name and then doing a story about how republicans are messing up the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.

This even form of reporting is why people tune into him every night and will continue to until he moves on to bigger and better things. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see him on NBC. I could get used to hearing, “And now…..Jon Stewart….your host of….The Tonight Show!”

Convergance and Consolidation

Everyone, or at least I do, knows that America is eventually going to be back to a Neanderthal state with cool toys that help us survive, make other toys, and interact with each other.

We won’t be able to operate them, they will operate themselves and they will be superior. A subtle sign of this is the way we write news now. Back in the days before the Phone, laptops, and other media devices, a story was written. Maybe a picture made it into the middle of the print and the layout editor thought it was so clever the way he seamlessly got the picture below the fold. Nowadays, the layout editor is called the media integration specialist. He finds ways to put as much information as he can in one place so we don’t have to search all over the site and the internet finding more about the story. Convergence is defined by Merriam Webster Dictionary as the merging of distinct technologies, industries, or devices into a unified whole. Sites such as ESPN.com, CNN.com, and washingtonpost.com integrate technology and media into web stories.

As of yesterday, I think Apple has changed the way we read news. They unleashed a large version of an iTouch, called an iPad, that has a 9inch screen and has all these apps in place to download each newspaper from around the world everyday and store it on the device so you can read it anywhere. The iPod is known for media and the Apple Company is one of great emphasis on entertainment, so why not be the first to mass produce a perfect handheld digital newspaper. In the layout, you can click on videos, upload the articles to your own blog, and even add your own comments to the articles to debate on with anyone in the eworld. It’s a fabulous new piece of technology and can change the way we see technology and the news. It’s the ultimate tool for convergence and will change the game for a long time to come. Sorry ink and paper, you’ve been demoted.