Radical Georgia Moderate

We were watching The Office Thursday night, and this 11Alive promo came on. I thought it was so ridiculous that it needed to be posted. This has inspired me to collect all the ridiculous local news promos I see and to compile them into a bigger video.

Sorry about the crappy letterboxing that occured there. Here’s a better Quicktime file you can watch on your desktop.

By way of Live Apartment Fire, I learned that Fox5 anchor Russ Spencer writes a blog, and that what shows up there (in this case at least) is more interesting than what ends up on TV. He’s currently in China with Governor Sonny Perdue and Secretary of State Karen Handel, who are there on a trade mission.

It’s a beautiful morning in Beijing. A strong breeze has cleared the air, giving us a rare view, I’m told, of the mountains that lift the Great Wall.

What a difference 12 hours makes.

As we stepped off the plane from Shanghai yesterday, it looked and smelled like a polluted Future World where only machines could exist. Even inside Beijing’s new, spectacular airport, the air tasted like smoke.

Handel is also “blogging” her experience, though it reads more like meeting minutes than like a blog (h/t Jason). You should check out Spencer’s posts.

I have been meaning to link to Live Apartment Fire for a while now. It’s written by Doug Richards, who has almost 30 years of TV news experience and is now a freelancer. What’s interesting about his perspective (beyond just being knowledgeable about how the sausage is made) is he simultaneously is very critical of local newscasts while also demonstrating enthusiasm for the craft of making television news. I honestly haven’t spoken with that many people who would defend local TV news, so his perspective provides a much-needed counterweight to the oversimplified “if it bleeds, it leads” perception that many people (including me) have of television news. It’s some of the best local media criticism I’ve read, and has made me rethink how I watch TV news.