Sunday, October 16, 2005

Reconsidering Kevin Sites

As I was on the train from New Haven (the Springfield to New Haven line was washed out--so I had to get a ride to New Haven to get to NY) I got to thinking and wondered if what Sites is planning to do is something along the line of what Jack London and Ernest Hemingway once did....

But, in a time when the press isn't trusted, and will it work?

I'm not sure of everything in either London or Hemingway's backgrounds, or where their compensation came from, or what. I'm not sure a clear parallel can be drawn between Sites and either of them. And, frankly, I'm not sure that being a pretty boy in front of a camera will have the same long-range effect that London and Hemingway's writing had. Remember, electronic media decays faster and differently than something written on paper.

Further, I'm not sure if Site's broadcasts will have the same effect as, say, Dan Rather's did from Viet Nam. In Rather's time, it was novel to see people blown to bits on a TV screeen. As my child mind recalls, frighteningly novel.

What can Sites say that hasn't been said already? Will he have time to interact with his audience like journalist bloggers often do? It is, at least, a curious experiment.

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