Scott Johnson, the straw that stirs the Power Line cocktail, has posted an e-mail from a reader raising some interesting questions about an NPR story on the families of Minnesota National Guard soldiers who have had their tours in Iraq extended. One part in particular caught my attention:
How can it be that a reporter of the stature of John McChesney drove 700 miles, interviewed members of seven families, and came back with less than two minutes of content, and less than half of which is an interview with just two of the presumably seven wives he spoke to? Of course, I know that Mr. McChesney was unlikely to have control over editing the raw material, or even what would go to air, and what would not. But if I were a reporter who had just returned from a trip that no doubt cost NPR tens of thousands of dollars, and less than one minute of material directly from the ostensible subjects of said expedition was aired, I would be worried about my job!
I've actually had the same thought a number of times regarding other stories that I've heard on NPR. How can they justify sending a reporter to Timbuk-frickin'-tu to do a story on some arcane subject that ends up airing for two or three minutes? The same goes for the Wall Street Journal. A guy does a piece about the best hamburgers in the country and then get deluged with e-mails saying he needs to try this burger, that burger, etc. So as a follow-up he flies to Couer D'Alene, Idaho to sample a particularly well-regarded burger himself and scribble an eight-hundred and twenty-two word article on it. From a strictly financial standpoint, how can that possibly be worth it?
I realize that news organizations aren't going to do a cost-benefit analysis on each and every story they cover, but there has to be some criteria about who travels where and for what, doesn't there?
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