Media criticism is a growth industry in our town.
It's often said the media are notoriously afraid to criticize both themselves and their kindred news outlets.True, the reporters and editors, being human, can be as touchy as the rest of us. Some respond to even the mildest criticism as if they'd been mugged. But as a species do they really duck criticism? Hardly. They are engaged in almost an orgy of self-examination. They know they are imperfect, and they know that institutions that have their kind of social wallop are a story in themselves.
At any rate, "Media Monitor" suddenly has lots of company.
- LAST MONTH PAUL SWENSON, the original managing editor of Utah Holiday magazine, resurfaced in the familiar role of media gadfly.
Little more than a couple of decades ago Utah Holiday magazine was alone in assessing the work of the Salt Lake media, largely through the clever and often acerbic comments of Swenson and in its annual "Best and Worst" issue.
Swenson, who quit Utah Holiday in a disagreement with the first set of new owners it had before folding, is now associate editor of the biweekly entertainment-oriented paper, the Event. Under the editorship of Greta Belanger deJong (who also edits her own monthly, the Catalyst), the Event is showing some of the same polish and pizazz as another free-circulation paper, Private Eye Weekly.
Swenson has written three long columns, which he calls "The Media Circus," and will shortly be producing these every other issue, alternating with movie reviews.
He is also responsible for generating and editing each issue's feature-length cover story. In the current issue it is "Beauty is an Uzi, or Into the Breech," an unsparing look at the recent Crossroads of the West Gun Show at the Salt Palace by the offbeat author and poet Gino Sly.
Swenson's media column is more than faintly reminiscent of his writing for Utah Holiday. He tends to be less analytical than many of his critic compatriots, but is a more facile writer and more outspoken than most. He lampoons Salt Lake media personalities with a sharper eye for their foibles and a greater willingness to use the stiletto. ("There's not cuter pair on the air right now than Channel 4's morning team of Dan Northfield and Barbara Smith, who have cultivated the smirk as a potent interpersonal device.")
Like most other media critics here, he has carte blanche to comment on his own publication. In the current issue he laments the paper's carrying of "slick four-color" Joe Camel cigarette ad inserts and asks rhetorically whether publishers don't "have an obligation not to expose their readers to second-hand smoke-and-mirror advertising."
- MIKE YOUNGREN was for several years news director at Channel 2 before departing for Denver. Back in Salt Lake City, he has been writing a free-lance weekly column for the Tribune, "Comment on TV News," since early this year.
He brings to five (count 'em, five) the number of media columnists at the paper, in addition to a platoon of movie reviewers. Three of the columnists are independent commentators from outside the staff who have been hired within the past three years. Youngren's focus is the four Salt Lake TV news operations.
Two professors, DeAnn Evans from the University of Utah, who was managing editor at the Deseret News, and Kay Smoot Egan, from BYU, who was a radio station owner, now alternate weekly in writing media criticism and explanation under the heading, "Comment on the Media." Unfortunately, these columns are buried in the back of the Sunday business pages.
Jon Cummins, a veteran newsman who is the Tribune's public service director, also became its "reader representative" a couple of years ago and writes a weekly column in which he responds to reader comments. It appears on the editorial page Saturdays.
Cummins is not your typical "ombudsman" (there are about three dozen of these in U.S. dailies) in that he is not an independent writer, but he serves some of the same purposes. He is valuable for giving readers a pipeline into the paper. Cummins initially was prone simply to relay the responses of his editor, so that he gave the impression that he was less a reader representative than the paper's apologist. But lately he has shown more self-confidence in addressing reader concerns.
Hal Schindler, the paper's longtime TV editor, is still writing a column, but Randy Peterson, who spelled him off three days a week, is devoting full time to production chores in the feature department there now.
- AT PRIVATE EYE, John Harrington, the former Ch. 4 reporter who wrote on the media for the alternative weekly, is still listed as a contributor but hasn't appeared as a columnist for several months. Some excellent media criticism has been done by other writers, recently Katharine Biele and Ben Fulton.
Not much self criticism is aired by the broadcasters themselves. My late colleague, Roy Gibson, appeared in a "Media Man" spot on the Channel 2 noon news for 18 years right up to his death in 1989 and has not been replaced. Channel 5's "Prime Time Access" nightly news show had an "RSVP" segment that invited viewer responses. The U.'s DeAnn Evans also did a commentary on Channel 7's "Off the Record" show, but as in the case of "RSVP," the segment died with the program.
- ALL THE PAPERS are prone to letting both staffers and special writers have a go at the media. For the Deseret News, Randy Dryer, chairman of the Utah Sports Authority, wrote regularly from Lillehammer, his first article dealing with the media coverage of the Winter Olympics: "FLASH! NO ONE IS SAFE FROM THE MEDIA HORDE!" Jason Swenson produced an interesting piece on the new alternative publications rushing to market locally.
When Bill Smart, then the Deseret News editor, asked me to take on this column, he wanted someone to expose media shortcomings, including those of the Deseret News, and to help demystify the news process. The News TV critic, Scott Pierce, often does the same. When we miss a beat, there are plenty of other writers laboring in the same vineyard.
- CORRECTION: Because of an editing error, last week's "Media Monitor," discussing a picture of Afrikaaners being shot, said they had invaded a black home. It should have read homeland.