Off the Media: China, Russia and ... West Virginia?

I used to complain on occasion that NPR's On the Media was too foreign, too fascinated with news from overseas. I do enjoy the coverage from overseas, but how much is too much? I enjoyed a lot of the coverage of the from-Russia show, and this week's from China. Co-host Brooke Gladstone has also spent a week in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Call me -- the founding international editor of ABCNEWS.com -- parochial, but I find it a bit laborious, or at least limiting, to listen to a whole show in a week from one country. Inevitably, a lot of the coverage will repeat truisms we've read elsewhere, and the mind will wander.

Why not some other special, themed weeks. OK, they did do "books" recently. How about, though, spending a week somewhere in the U.S. where the media landscape is changing? How about, say, spend a week in West Virginia and figure out what it is about the news coverage there that convinced voters Obama is a Muslim. What can we see about local TV and newspapers that tell us something about the U.S. trends, in general. And a parochial question: How are coal miners consuming the media and news? Are they more connected than they've been in previous generations, networking socially via the Web with like-minded folks?

Slightly drunken rantings here -- yes, I admit it, I had a little to much port this Friday evening, while watching Disney Channel's "Camp Rock" with my kids -- but I'm now listening to the On the Media podcast, and found myself back on this ground.

WNYC Radio on “TV”

I’m a big fan of NPR -- not just because I’m in the 40-something, socially liberal, reasonably monied, Manhattanite, intelektual, granola-eating demographic -- but also because in addition to giving quality information and occasional good laughs on humor shows, it’s also been pretty good at making sure its material is available via the Web and podcast, and giving lots of other material to delve deeper. Some of the shows are also quite good at encouraging audience interaction and feedback, via not only phone but also blog or email or comment board.

My local station, WNYC, is great at all the above, and also available on YouTube. Or, rather, pieces of many of the high-quality talk show interviews are. Seeing them this way has a couple of plusses: It’s oddly compelling to watch Alice Walker or Daniel Schorr or Arianna Huffington or one of the other myriad high-quality guests at the the mic, and see how they looked while they were talking, even though it’s a static grainy picture.

It’s also a way to quickly survey who was on the channel organized in a way that’s not available on the WNYC site -- not by show and topic, but rather by guest in either chronological or “favorited” order. Plus the thumbnail photos make the scan easier. Sometimes the eye recognizes John Edwards’ face more quickly than his written name. Wonderful how the cross-referencing and digitization of information leads to new ways of looking at it.