4 -— Wednesday, November 27, 1991 - North Shore News Information overloa d: the media business Is an incestuous game ! HAVE noticed over the years that newspapers, maga- zines, radio, television, books, tapes and movies — all try- ing desperately to capture ‘‘reality’’ — keep stealing the same material from each other and recycling ii. Newspapers tend to glean their views from the other media which in turn glean their views (much more than they want to admit) from newspapers. Television of course rips off everything while in turn providing fodder for all the others. It’s an incestuous thing, media. I am still amazed at how thoroughly the mass media shapes individual perception, the Gulf War being the outstanding mod- ern example. The American rnilitary had the American media in bed from the beginning and that’s ali it took to hot-wire the consciousness of nearly everybody in the world with a TV. This monotonous sameness of perception that you find in maga- zines, TV, radio, newspapers, etc., is partially a result of reporters hanging out with other reporters, editors reading the same stylebook, instructors quoting the same authorities, producers taking the same business administration courses, publishers fooking at the same bottom lines. Beyond that, the way people in the media earn respect and recog- nition is the same as in every other field: through the approval of their peers. This is OK, except we all end up working in the same enormous newsroom of the mind, anxiousiy looking over each other's shoulders to see what the current definition of new -— i.c., ‘‘reali- ty’? — is. As somebody who has worked in just about every type of media — who has also taught courses in and written books about journal- | What ylvan helps students to succeed Through a variety of programs and teaching techniques Sylvan Learning Centres help students to -reach their full potential, increase their skills, and build their confidence. All students, even the brightest ones, lack !earning skills. The dual purpose of supplementary education is to fill in leaming gaps in certain subjects and, most important, to help children acquire study habits that will serve them for a lifetime. Sylvan Achievement Programs: Study Skills — This program helps students set up and apply a stru method of studying and covers such areas as listening, outlining and note-taking, study and reading strategies, test-taking strategies, improved memory strategies, and Time-Power™ which makes use of the Day- timer™ materials. Reading — Designed to teach young emergent readers word Bob Hunter ye STRICTLY PERSONAL ism — I am acutely aware of the differences between a medium such as print and ene such as television. But I contend that the some- times profound differences in delivery mask an underlying simi- larity in content. Television is driven by its “*time-sensitiveness’’ to extremes of immediacy, only to drop the obsession of the moment for the obsession of the next moment. Newspapers are a step behind, and therefore relevant over a Slightly-ionger period of time, weeklies, community papers and weekend editions the more so. Magazines hove in with their packages so late in the game they are forced to invent an entirely new game of their own, not tied tightly to any known or expected analysis skills, oral reading, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. For the older stuents, we concentrate not only on the basic skills necessary for success in reading, but also on higher level, critical thinking skills which iransfer to all academic areas. Sylvan CLEAR Writing.™ This program will dramatically improve your child’s ability to write essays, reports and test papers — the very thing he’s graded on. It can teach a student to think clearly, logically and thoroughly and to write with greater effectiveness. Basic Math — Focuses on ‘computation skills and the understanding of concepts and their application contemporary news eveat — maybe something coming in the next year. The Cadillac tail-fin of this par- ticular genre of ‘‘journalism”’ is the glossy airline magazine, each article dovetailed perfectly to match the company’s routes and the magazine’s advertising sched- ule, The line between ads and copy is soft-lit, to say the least. Air- brushed, you might almost say. It is difficult to say which aspect of media cranks the wheel the hardest these days. People involved in the movie industry are convinced that they set the agenda of contemporary civilization. Based on my own ex- neriences in La-La-Land, I would say this notion is so far out of whack as to leave one anorexic from laughing too long. I think the contribuyion of movies is more in the nature of a final depositing of the byproducts of history in the waste stream of time, which is to say the last place in the world to articulate new ideas is Hollywood. By default perhaps, books would still seem to be the delivery-system for humanity’s Deepest Thoughts, meaning those notions that take more than 1,000 words to express. The problem is that there are so many books today, it is nearly impossible for any one book or idea to become the dominant in- tellectual fashion for more than a coupie of weeks. Literature, I suspect, has been split up just like modern music in- to so many finely-delineated mar- kets that there is no over-zeaching popular sound any longer. On the other hand, there are so many generic ‘‘best-sellers’’ that none of them can provide material to keep a conversation going at a cocktail party for more than a few roe to do when your child | icomes home with poor crades} Algebra - Concentrates on developing the basic skills for a solid foundation in a subject that is a student's first experience with theoretical math. . Sylvan Program Benefits: ¢ MOTIVATION ¢ IMPROVED SELF-ESTEEM f° IMPROVED REPORT CARD ¢ CATCH-UP ¢ ENRICHMENT Sylvan Leaming omumm Centre. Helping kids do better. NORTH SHORE 985-6811 Richmond - 273-3266 Coquitlam ~ 941-9166 Surrey - 596-5451 minutes, let alone shape the think- ing of a generation. Intellectual giants? Literary giants? Artistic giants? Journal- istic giants? Aren’t these the fig- ures the media should churn to the surface, dredging their ideas up with them, getting the juices of the masses flowing? Maybe it’s an embarrassment of riches and I’m just not capable of recognizing it, or maybe (this is what it feels like) there has been a pausing of the evolutionary fast- forward button. In any event, for the life of me, Ucan’t discern anything that isn’t a rehashing of the same old stuff in the media these days. Every imaginabie niche of thought seems to have been filled. The intellectual firmament is so cluttered with programs, articles, columns, editorials and graphic spreads that even if new ideas were being beamed down to us from somewhere, there’s a damn- ed good chance they couldn’t break through the logjam of media. Information overload. The dilemma of our time. Recycled in- formation, at that. Could the future turn out to be the same old thing? It could, you know. NCE | FEATURES THE Kéitchers ‘TOP RATED DISHWASHER I Come in and see the quality features of KitchenAid : dishwashers today! COLONY HOME FURNISHINGS 1075 Roosevelt Crescent North Vancouver B (2 blocks behind the Avalon Hotel) OPEN DAILY; Fri. 9-9; Sun. 12-4 985-8798 A ring intended for a rare few. The 1991 Birks Limited Edition Ring Embodying all the qualities of a privately commissioned piece this ring has been designed and handcrafted in our Birks jewellery studio in 18kt gold and platinum. Limited to an edition of 225 rings, each ring comes with a Certificate of Origin and our five year guarantee. $4950. Great moments come out of the blue. | BIRKS & |