A Whole 'Nother Approach to Media Reform:  Newsbreakers
New York Times

Contributed by Charles Miller, IBLTV

Sunday's NYTimes.com features an article about an outfit that attacks local news from a whole different perspective. Read about the Cheese Ninja, Egg Man, etc.


 By MARK LASSWELL

A group devoted to monkey-wrenching live reports on local news, the Newsbreakers have a standing interest in media mishaps.  Since Jan. 6, when the five-member Rochester-based group executed its first bust, as it calls them, of a live remote in their hometown, viewers in Boston, New York City, Manchester, N.H., Columbus, Ohio, and several other cities have seen their local news briefly hijacked by elaborately planned vignettes that are more likely to baffle or alarm reporters than make them curse on the air.

The Newsbreakers' repertory of characters includes Cheese Ninja, who cavorts in the background of live news broadcasts, derisively tossing slices of processed cheese, and Jiminy Diz, a supposed newspaper reporter, wearing a loud jacket and a hat with a "Press" card in the band, who is angry with local television news for lifting reports from the morning paper, [and] Invisible Suit Guy, appearing live and unbidden behind a reporter.

During the busts, one Newsbreaker watches and records the newscast, telling the Newsbreaker provocateur through a hands-free cellphone earpiece when he is in the camera frame and when to make himself scarce for a while if the report switches over to a taped segment. The group sends its own cameraman to record a Newsbreakers'-eye view of the bust, tape that is then mixed into the actual newscast tape, along with music and graphics. The results are then posted online at newsbreakers.org.

...The Newsbreakers idea was born of what [Chris] Landon described as his disillusionment with television news while working as a part-time assignment-desk assistant for Time Warner Cable's R News operation in Rochester. The blurred lines between the cable company's business concerns and its news side - as when management asked to be notified by the news staff when local officials were being interviewed on the premises, Mr. Landon said, so the company could lobby them - prompted misgivings about media consolidation and "vapid and banal" local television news. "I said: 'You know what? I'm not going to take part in this beast any longer,' " Mr. Landon said.

(click here to read the entire article)
Mark Lasswell is an editor at Broadcasting & Cable magazine.
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