Two simultaneous, personal, experiences galvanized as never before why we need newspapers (to answer your “professor’s question”:

(1) all other media would be bereft without them; (2) NO INDIVIDUAL (i.e., NO ONE person), no matter how capable, could possibly, nor merely, be aware of what ANY (even single) government is DOING to him (that word: huge implications) (nor, in truth, could any newspaper; but, that’s immaterial to my point).

One night a couple weeks earlier, I’d switched off my bedside lamp. No sooner had my head hit the pillow, than I shot back up, turned on the lamp and raced across the room to my desk, grabbed a pen and legal pad and got back in bed.

That proverbial “idea” had materialized in the immediate dark: that I, a yankee executive recruiter marooned in Texas, who’d bardly set foot in a television studio (twice as a quiz show contestant and as a media-buying marketing exec with Fortune 500 companies) would produce and moderate the world’s first-ever TV, business-oriented talk show.

Moreover, on the Metroplex’s NBC affiliate, Ch. 5, KXAS-TV.

Before the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” was abolished. Mine was a right-of-center notion, though on the surface it didn’t appear such.

Early the next morning, I dashed to a girlfriend’s house to type my treatment; I just happened to have a lunch date with the station GM.

A few days later his program director gave me carte blanche to choose my topic, invite guests and host a pilot. If they liked it they’d have me do more. They…and I…did.

(1) I came up with 100 potential, current events around which to build my first program. How did I find them? How else? NEWSPAPERS. From all around the U.S.

My pilot topic: Should Texas have a public utilities commission?

I opened my front door to find a BIG box from one of my guests, a state senator in Austin.

Dyslexic, I had a helluva time wading through all the different bills recommended by the senator and his colleagues. And had a lot of questions.

On the telephone, his chief of staff repeatedly answered my queries with the objection, “Oh, Allan, THAT’S been changed since we sent it to you. Indeed, all of them are in constant flux.”

(2) My conclusion, “If it’s IMPOSSIBLE for one man to come to terms with a SINGLE bill in a single government body, Texas’ state, how on earth can the man or woman on the street truly KNOW ANY of the many “governments” which impact their lives?

They can’t. Newspapers are our only possible recourse. Unfortunately, not enough of them REALIZE this. Of those who do, most are not willing nor able to mount the behemoth effort to become man’s eyes and ears into the lair his overlords.

Allan Wikman
845 + 802-0403

I think, truthfully, that best we can do is let obama speak for himself, because if we do trust in his abilities and I do (http://www.spinwhip.com/obama) we must let him act and save this country (not alone of course but with our support and that of this country’s political apparatus.

we have indeed come a long way!

over at themusicologist.wordpress.com I have just begun a week long musical tribute to a legend whose influence is beyond doubt.