NewsNation Bets on the Middle of the Road: A New Venture and an Old American Story

NewsNation a threehour nightly show on WGN America delivers its news as its creators describe down the middleamp8212quotneutralquot compared to the cable competition that WGN39s executives accuse of tilting right or left The show premiered this month A cynic might say it39s a bet on the calendar as well as the quotunbiasedquot cachet After all following four years of a manically partisan president and with TV screens featuring walltowall campaign ads election weary Americans just might be more than ready to tune in a broadcast that trashes the cantThe resources behind NewsNation are impressive Nexstar Media owns nearly 200 stations across the country the largest number in the United States The program will draw on their 5400 local journalists to cover the news It also benefits from WGN America39s cable access to some 60 million households The staff and scenery display uptown qualities Chosen from big city markets for their experience if not their nationally known names the anchors work on a major league set As elsewhere cameraready conviviality and the usual network promotions fill the time between narrations of the newsBut what makes NewsNation different isn39t production values It39s positioning the show is literally and figuratively channeling middle America Airing from Chicago the city39s name conjures Carl Sandburg39s poetic quothog butcher to the world toolmaker stacker of wheatquot heartland theme The program presumably will feature the audience39s views as well as appeal to their purported desire for factsonly reporting Whether Nebraskans want different stories than New Yorkers of course remains to be seen But NewsNation is presenting itself as the antidote to the alleged opiniondisguisedasnews purveyed from the coastsWGN America39s Executive Vice President Sean Compton used the pitch to stick the needle into the competition in the Wall Street Journal last month quotI39ve heard so much about how news has become coastal all with opinionated talk all far left or far right with no one covering news anymore in prime time Part of the problem is all this content is created in New York City or Washington DCquot To be sure like high tech firms in Silicon Valley and the cruise ship business in Miami the media industry is geographically concentrated on the left and right coasts As for the origins of the news while Compton has a point it39s not necessarily the one he is trying to makeThe news begins with men biting dogs Both have to be somewhere When it comes to national politics foreign policy global finance or a president who lives 247 on TV Washington and New York are where the news happens That39s why reporters file stories with their datelines The Willie Sutton rule applies Asked why he robbed banks the famed safecracker replied quotThat39s where the money isquot Put bluntly whether it39s Fox News39 propagandizing as President Trump39s Ministry of Truth or fevered hosts on MSNBC the crosscontamination of news and opinion is all about the bottomlineamp8212audiences that drive revenuenot geographyNewsNation also deserves credit as more than an effort at clever positioning in a competitive market The program can and should claim its place as a 21st Century incarnation of a vital American political right a free press Whatever its future the modelamp8212drawing on local journalists and eschewing opinionamp8212aims to provide what the Founding Fathers knew Americans needed in order to exercise their democratic rights Two and a half centuries after they enshrined freedom of the press in the First Amendment when the president attacks journalists as quotenemies of the peoplequot that news itself testifies to the importance of reporting that simply delivers the factsThomas Jefferson made the point 233 years ago when he described the role of a free press in the American experiment quotThe basis of our governments being the opinion of the people the very first object should be to keep that right And if it were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading themquotClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet

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NewsNation Bets on the Middle of the Road: A New Venture and an Old American Story

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Kent M. Harrington

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NewsNation Bets on the Middle of the Road: A New Venture and an Old American Story

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