Laziest Journalist in America?

Who is the laziest journalist in America?

We have a nominee for that "honor."

You won’t find any lazy journalists at the New York Times, Birmingham News, ABC News, National Public Radio, or CNN, or any legitimate news gathering company. These firms must earn their readers, viewers and listeners. Lazy employees can’t be tolerated and so they are fired or they leave for "personal reasons."

To find the laziest journalist in America, you have to find a company that does not have to earn its audience – where lackluster performance does not negatively impact the number of people reading, watching or listening to your news content.

There is only one major company like that: Channel One News.

Channel One’s audience is largely pre-determined because school boards over 15 years ago signed contacts saying their schools will show Channel One’s TV "news" show at least 90% of school days in exchange for the rental use of a TV network. Schools could keep the TV equipment only as long as the school forced the TV show, loaded with ads, on the captive audience of schoolchildren.

If a Channel One anchor read a phone book on air for the entire 12 minutes of the show, there would be no drop-off in viewership as would happen on a legitimate news show.

When you have a captive audience that MUST be shown your program, all sorts of bad things happen.

If you are Channel One’s management you get to the point that you just don’t care anymore. So what if your programming takes off weekends and every holiday and most of the summer months? Who cares? Channel One likes to proclaim themselves the "only" source of news for many young people. If that is true, they have never taken that responsibility seriously.

Channel One has had the capability of streaming their news show on their website for over six years. They could have had an after-school version of their show on the web so students could watch their favorite Channel One News anchors give them current news on their home computers. The anchors could continue news stories that the students first saw during that morning’s 12-minute classroom TV show. The after-school version could be longer than 12 minutes. It could be an hour long show that could give kids the background on complex stories that is impossible during the classroom show. The show the students see at school is taped the day before so it often stale. Channel One also had the ability to produce and air webcasts of their news show over the weekends, holidays, and during the summer months.

Channel One never did ANY of these things. They had the money (maybe not now), they had the equipment, they had the people to do it, but what they lacked was the WILL to do it. Keeping students informed is not important to Channel One – it never has been.

Oh yes, our nominee for Laziest Journalist in America is Cali Carlin of Channel One News. She edged out the three other remaining Channel One anchors.

Our nominee for Laziest Journalist in America: Cali Carlin

Above: Lazy Cali on the Tuesday, April 3 show. This was taped on Monday, April 2. Cali evidently wanted to wrap this up early so she could go home. The script for the completed show was posted online at 8 PM EDT (possibly earlier). That meant the show was "put to bed" very early in the evening. (Why knock yourself out if you aren’t really reporting hard news and the kids aren’t paying attention to the show anyhow.) Below: Channel One’s NCAA basketball portion of the April 3rd script (posted on their web site the night before):

The producer evidently had Cali do an audio tape of both outcomes. On the show students see Cali on screen talking about the game, but when it’s time to mention the winner, students only hear Cali’s voice. They discarded the "Ohio State victory" tape and played the "Florida wins" tape.

Parents and teachers can learn a lot about Channel One from this little example of lazy journalism. First, why is Channel One even talking about the basketball finals? Is this the most important news Channel One could find for this day? Notice that Cali mentions the previous story about the first day of Major League Baseball. What a wasted day on Channel One News. It is just one of many.

The basketball story is a "double-whammy" of laziness. The story was easy to cover. No Channel One reporter had to go anywhere and they simply used footage from other sources for their "filler" story. Then they taped two versions of the story and ran out of the studio. The story was easy to do and even then they didn’t have enough energy to wait around for the end of the game.

If Channel One’s people had stayed at their "news desk" and waited to film Cali mentioning the winner of the game after the game ended, they might – just might – have seen a late-breaking wire story that they could have substituted for the basketball story. Since Channel One is taped the day before it is shown, the company should try to maximize the timeliness of the show by staying up a little later.

Is Cali Carlin going to do that? Don’t think so.

Later that same week, on Thursday, April 5, Cali breaks the news to the students that there will be no Channel One News the next day. Many schools close for Good Friday and many schools do not, but that doesn’t matter to Channel One. If there is any reason to shut down their studio, they will do so.

Did Channel One go ahead and filmed a news show for Friday, April 6 for kids to see on their website? Of course not. It was Wednesday evening or afternoon when Cali Carlin read the above lines off her teleprompter. The show taped on Wednesday would be the last news show the anchors would do until the next Monday. This is great work if you can get it.