Why Jon Stewart's Business Plan is Winning

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  danogram04/24/08 Report as spam
  1

  Humor Wins Whenever Incompetence Rules

  Jon Stewart is a gifted comedian who, much like Will Rogers of several generations ago, has long mined the ever present and rich resource of government nonsense. It is Jon's great fortune that the grotesquely bloated government bureaucracies today offer exponential magnitudes of new material.
  
  Just as was true in Will Rogers' day, the humor one finds in often inexplicably inept, incompetent, and dishonest government activities dwarfs what is to be found in the private sector. The chief difference in these two arenas is simply monopoly. Much of the private sector operates in competition; incompetence and dishonesty generally result in failure. Government has no such burden.
  
  NYT does have a problem doing serious reporting on the GAO report; the report is a veritable mine field of political implications difficult to fit into a template which will support the DNC without exploding on one or both leading candidates between now and November.
  
  That Jon's humor was the closest thing to ?serious? reporting on this GAO report is less to his credit as a ?business? plan than it is an indictment on the MSM for the manner in which they select what to report, how, and when.
  
  You might consider resurrecting an investigative news service to produce a new white paper, SMSMOPTRAONRTECPQ (Suggested Main Stream Media Plan To Reduce Agenda Oriented News Reporting To Enhance Core Product Quality).

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  hotweir04/24/08 Report as spam
  2

  RE: Why Jon Stewart's Business Plan is Winning

  I did not take any position here on the Times' report. In fact, I believe I made it clear that it was boring beyond belief. What I respect is Stewart's unique approach to packaging serious news. He gets points for taking on the issues that matter. From my perspective, it is far less important what point of view he has than the fact that he is committed to engaging Americans in what (apparently) many consider too boring to consider: the national security implications of the current administration's foreign policy strategies. That that strategy has failed is no longer debatable. What's next? That is the question.

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  macnamband04/24/08 Report as spam
  3

  RE: Why Jon Stewart's Business Plan is Winning

  The Gray Lady has come to reside in the journalistic equivalent of Gray Gardens. From the A Section to the Editorial page they've been getting it wrong in the last six years, and and actually you could argue the decline began long before the WMD debacle. So yes, open it up. They need to recreate themselves.

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  hkohn04/25/08 Report as spam
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  RE: Why Jon Stewart's Business Plan is Winning

  There's a reason Jon Stewart and the rest of Off-Broadway TV is winning the ratings game, and it's not just that we want more laughs. They're the cutting edge of of the TV biz, with more acumen, more clever ideas, more hey-wake-up creativity and more of a let's-try-again attitude. Actually it's the same thing that worked for Network TV, but that was back in the Fifties & Sixties.

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  AMPorterfield04/25/08 Report as spam
  5

  RE: Why Jon Stewart's Business Plan is Winning

  Right on, Howard (and hi). Jon Stewart (and Mr. Colbert) win because they are compelling. They're compelling because they take several old techniques (jokes, journalism, television) and turn them on their ears to produce something we've never seen before. Now, sometimes people do that and it turns to mush. This time, they've more than hit a nerve. And they've been doing it for years. Meanwhile, the NYT continues to bore (even with groundbreaking, important stories).
  
  Anybody remember the movie "Network"? The brainstorming session with Faye Dunaway and her staff?

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  kdoctor@...06/07/08 Report as spam
  6

  RE: Why Jon Stewart's Business Plan is Winning

  David: Good piece. I've had similar thoughts lately, based both on Stewart and Colbert and the emergence of This American Life moving beyond Culture to Serious Policy. Check out recent Ira Glass (radio) programs on The Prosecutor (http://thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=356) and The Giants Pool of Money (http://thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1242), the latter the best to-the-point storytelling on the subprime meltdown I've heard/read.
  
  Multimedia journalism is being born in unexpected and exciting ways. It's curious that the Times (boring) treatment grows simply out of the print newspaper metaphor and that Times, while adding more multimedia, isn't yet learning from Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Ira Glass. Maybe soon.
  
  Ken Doctor (www.contentbridges.com)

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  uzigzag07/30/08 Report as spam
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  RE: Why Jon Stewart's Business Plan is Winning

  Having been in the media business for some time, it never fails to bring a smile to my face. All the old additives and fillers spooned down my throat by my mentors never really sunk in because of people like John Stewart. Today media is a changing everything it touches, and it should. It's everywhere and it should be...it's our info..give it
  to me (us). Jon just has a way with people and policy that is right for the time. I for one am happy for him. At least he's not one upping for upping sake. He actually has competent views that reflect society and the morals that ride with them. GOOD FOR HIM!

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  hotweir12/25/08 Report as spam
  8

  RE: Why Jon Stewart's Business Plan is Winning

  Thank you, all, for these comments. A long time after I published this piece, it continues to get visits, and I really appreciate all of your comments!

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  SariahU03/18/09 Report as spam
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  RE: Why Jon Stewart's Business Plan is Winning

  Unbiased reporting is what we need. At any rate, unbiased reporting might be dead on CNBC. Rick Santelli put on a show that?s being dubbed the Chicago Tea Party. During his business news segment on CNBC, Santelli got on the floor of the Chicago stock exchange and went on a tangent were he extolled the virtue of giving gobs of money in a cash advance to Wall Street and advocated for everything including the execution of the average citizen. CNBC got called on their shenanigans, including both Santelli and Jim Cramer by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, where the unbiased reporting is intentionally left out ? but that?s called satire, not dereliction of duty.