English 101 - Mindich Essay

German Rivera

English 101

Professor McBride

July 2 2015

Rhetorical Analysis

Word Count: 970

                                                     News That’s Not Fit To Print

Mindich’s article “The Young and the Restless” puts forth his lament of news agencies and news programs as they lose readership and viewership to the younger generation in today’s online and social world. He strives to employ many sources and resources to corroborate his findings.  He divides the article into three assertions:

1)      Young versus old readership

2)      Over all failing health of the news media

3)      Solutions

David T.Z. Mindich is a professor of media studies, digital arts and journalism at Saint Michael’s College in Vermont.  He has worked for CNN, received a doctorate in American Studies from New York University and has published many articles for the Wall Street Journal and New York Magazine.  He is passionate about this subject and has toured the country talking to media groups and schools about the flagging  readership of the news.This essay is something that Mindich holds dear to his heart and he desperately wants to show his audience the failings of news media in our online world and how to adapt and thereby survive.

Mindich’s main argument states that teens through adulthood don’t care about what’s happening around the world.  He cites CBS News president Andrew Heyward quoting that the older a person gets they become more interested in what is going on around them.  But Mindich lists the evidence that the teens and even grown adults are apathetic.  He also mentions in his article that Wolfram Peiser, a professor of communication studies and media politics says that as people grow older they continue the habits they had growing up.  So as teens, if their parents did not read the newspaper, they did not either, which carried on to adulthood.  He states that in 1972 50% of 18-22 year olds read the newspaper.  Today one fourth of that age bracket read.  Thirtysomethings now are reading less than previous generations and the newspaper has all but become extinct in families today.

Mindich also regards the fallen viewership of television news as another nail in the coffin of the news media.  He mentions that the young are not interested in watching and that the older generations are targeted by the ads of Viagra, Metamucil and Depends, which are only a source of amusement to the under 22 crowd.  In the old days most families had one TV set and every night all would gather around and normally watched what the parents wanted to watch.  So kids were inclined to watch the news if it was on.  Today almost all kids have a TV set in their room, along with gaming and mobile devices and computers which gives them a plethora of entertainment options, which contain nothing newsworthy. 

Mindich gives a great example in the tail wagging the dog, as he relates the story about Jon Stewart and Crossfire.Mindich incredulously questions the actions by CNN president Jonathan Klein to replace a critically acclaimed news show based on the advice of a comedian for the sake of viewership.

Most young people online do not specifically seek out news stories on the internet, unless it’s something

life shattering like September 11^th.  The author points out that although they are “engaged”,  young people reading the news are more likely to be emailing, streaming music, playing games or looking at social media. He also cites that young people were connected with reality shows and sitcoms because of their feelings of “emotional” attachment and gratification.  They don’t get the same feeling about the news because by its nature, is dry and boring.  As I mentioned earlier if the news does not closely impact lives then teens would skip over it. 

He bemoans the fact that in the 60’s CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite had a captive audience of 80% watching the news.  Today there are so much more options on television.  In the current channel surfing era if the consumer does not get wowed in about ten seconds then it’s off to the next channel.  News programs don’t stand a chance.

Mindich also offered the correlation of the political sphere and the news in general.  He tells of how his research found that young people are “disaffected” by politics.  He says that in today’s world, we have become more isolated and the sense of “community” has become the thing of the past.

The media in the essay was not portrayed in a favorable light.  Mindich recounts that the news media in an effort to get more broad appeal stoop to bad journalism.  Fair and independent has given way to unjust, glory-seeking and inaccurate thereby ineffective news reporting.   A good point was made that the readership has dwindled so much that there is no oversight on the watchdog role of the media.  Different opinions and viewpoints as well as accuracy make for good journalism and there are too few news outlets that follow that formula.

The essay certainly contains a lot of doom and gloom for the news purveyors and rightly so but as seen recently, more and more media companies have entered the digital battlefield.  Mindich implores that no matter how appealing or well written news articles are, the news will be defunct unless the older generation start taking more than passing interest in presenting the news to the younger set.  He relates a story about a teacher in New Orleans who made it an assignment to read the New York Times online.  What was made mandatory became a habit.  Mindich questions why schools should not include current events and civics lessons in their curriculum or why high school seniors should not be able to take civics tests like the ones given for U.S. citizenship.   The last paragraph was meant to enjoin all news administrators and agents to make adjustments and meet the demands of an ever changing , short attention-spanned world.