THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
December 30, 2012
The State of Paranormal Research in 2012 Explored on The Paracast
Special Announcement: The Paracast is heard Sundays from 2:00 AM until 5:00 AM Central Time on the GCN Radio Network and affiliates around the USA, and online across the globe via download and on-demand streaming.
Why It's Important for You to Donate to The Paracast: Although ads help cover a small part of our expenses, the income they produce is never enough to pay your humble hosts decent wages. Also, we do not receive any revenue from the ads placed on the show by our network or local stations. So we hope you're able to help fill the gap, if you can, to help us cover increasing server costs and other expenses -- or perhaps provide a little extra cash for lunch and utility bills. No contribution is too small (or too large
. It’s easy to send a donation. We have a Donate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. There's also a Donate link on our forums, at the bottom of the sidebar on the right. Or just send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com. And if you’ve had a problem getting to our Donate screen, please try again. We just fixed a serious PayPal access problem, and it should work properly now.
Attention U.S. Listeners: Help Us Bring The Paracast to Your City! In the summer of 2010, The Paracast joined the GCN radio network. This represented a huge step in bringing our show to a larger, mainstream audience. But we need your help to add additional affiliates to our growing network. Please ask one of your local talk stations if they are interested in carrying The Paracast. Feel free to contact us directly with the names of programming people we might be able to contact on your behalf. We can't do this alone, and if you succeed in convincing your local station to carry the show, we'll reward you with one of our special T-shirts, and other goodies. With your help, The Paracast can grow into one of the most popular paranormal shows on the planet!
Please Visit Our Online Store: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and an expanded collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt now featuring our brand new logo, just pay a visit to our online store at The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We also offer a complete lineup of other premium merchandise for your family, your friends and your business contacts.
About The Paracast: The Paracast covers a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions across the planet.
Set Up: The Paracast is a paranormal radio show that takes you on a journey to a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions. The Paracast seeks to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.
Join long-time paranormal researcher Gene Steinberg, co-host and acclaimed field investigator Christopher O'Brien, and a panel of special guest experts and experiencers, as they explore the realms of the known and unknown. Listen each week to the great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris present a year-end retrospective with long-term researcher Don Ecker, host of the Dark Matters radio show. During this episode we'll explore not just a Don's outspoken opinions about UFO and paranormal research, but his views about pop culture as well.
Chris O'Brien's Site: Our Strange Planet
Dark Matters: Dark Matters Radio
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums. We recently completed a major update that makes our community easier to navigate, and social network friendly.
Journalism: The Lost Art
By Gene Steinberg
Years ago, when I covered the news beat as a reporter, and later a news director, at various radio stations, I always had to answer to someone for the work I did. Not whether my newscasts got good ratings, but why I missed a potential scoop, or didn’t cover what management regarded as the salient points of a story. It was all about the quality of the work.
Later on, when I went into another profession, I saw how things changed for the worse, this time as just a listener or viewer. A radio or TV station’s news division had to earn its keep. It was no longer about providing a public service, but to get high ratings, and keep the advertising dollars coming in. If the talent didn’t get the deed done, they’d quickly be replaced by someone else. On TV, you had “happy talk,” where you had young, attractive, grinning anchors trying to make light banter in the brief interludes between the tragedies of the day.
But in journalism, it’s always been very much about ambulance chasing. If it bleeds, it leads. So even when I worked for stations that prided themselves at having a first-rate news division, they still had an eye, or ear, for spectacle. The serious accident, crime, or other tragedy, particularly one involving serious injuries or fatalities, had to get the most attention.
The quest for delivering entertainment has also meant that less-profitable divisions of a news department had to go, and this carried through to print. Investigative journalists are mostly missing in action nowadays, and, to seem fair and balanced, a reporter will tend to go overboard to present two sides of a story, even if there really aren’t two sides. Don’t make judgements. Just put it all down, be a stenographer, tighten the prose, and publish. At the same time, certain cable TV news outlets go out of their way to present stories that support their editorial slant.
This explains, in part, why routine fact checking seems to have fallen out of favor. But it also played a notable role in the 2012 presidential campaign. A handful of newspapers or independent sites gave a few staffers the job of checking out the claims and counterclaims from all those politicians and their surrogates, and passing on their perceived accuracy. So you had such ratings as “pants on fire” or “four pinnochios” for something that was provably (we hope) false.
Now when it comes to coverage of anything paranormal, be it a UFO sighting, or a story about someone who sees what they believe are ghosts, the media generally regards it all as strictly entertainment. Sure, there may be some degree of serious news coverage, but more often than not, the reporter or anchor will deliver the goods with a smirk, or a snarky remark. This is the human interest material that’s designed to present a humorous aside as a change of pace. With all the bad news we get these days, I suppose they have a point.
When it comes to actually doing a show covering the amazing world of the offbeat, the TV networks look to reality shows for guidance. Even when the coverage seemss pretty straightforward, there will be needlessly exaggerated reactions, or superfluous fluff, such as night vision goggles and other annoyances that are part and parcel of the genre. Events will be compressed to fit a timeframe, and deliberate efforts will be made to find the quotables, snappy comments, or clever turns of phrase to make the production more entertaining and keep the audience tuning in week after week.
Even when producers and talent are serious about the paranormal, they will have to often sell their souls to get the gig, and to keep the show on the air. Consider the plight of “Chasing UFOs,” where two of the co-hosts, including a talented UFO researcher and filmmaker, James Fox, actually complained in public about the show after it aired. I haven’t heard a definitive word as to whether there will be a second season, but I gave up after watching portions of the first episode. And this was from the National Geographic channel, which one would think aspired to a higher standard.
This isn’t the first time UFOs have been given short shrift on TV. Consider “UFO Hunters,” which featured Bill Birnes, the co-author of the controversial 1990s book, “The Day After Roswell.” Our own Chris O’Brien did a session for that show, talking at length about his extensive “mysterious valley” research. Only the powers that be decreed that Sedona, AZ was a sexier location, and so they transferred all the cases Chris discussed to that locale.
More recently, Chris recorded a segment for Jesse Ventura’s conspiracy show, where a significant portion of the interview was left on the cutting room floor. Chris also says that a hefty portion of compelling material went with it, and you can debate all day long whether certain people demanded the content be toned down, or it was just a screw up on the part of the production team. Imagine a conspiracy theory about a TV series that covers conspiracies.
Now at a time when print is nearly dead, and the media exists very much in the online and broadcast universes, it’s not as if the emphasis on entertainment, profits and ratings has changed. What’s more, the Internet has made it possible for any individual to write a blog and become reporter. It doesn’t require training, experience, or even the ability to put one word after another in a reasonably cogent fashion. You can create a blog without paying any money, and quickly become one of millions of citizen reporters.
Yes, the online universe may be a great equalizer, and it certainly gives more people the chance to express their points of view in a blog, a Facebook page or a 140-character tweet. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a crying need for more traditional journalism. I only hope that we aren’t all replaced by actors some day. That may seem a silly prospect, but it’s a very real and very frightening one.
The Paracast Copyright 1999-2012 Making The Impossible, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!
December 30, 2012
The State of Paranormal Research in 2012 Explored on The Paracast
Special Announcement: The Paracast is heard Sundays from 2:00 AM until 5:00 AM Central Time on the GCN Radio Network and affiliates around the USA, and online across the globe via download and on-demand streaming.
Why It's Important for You to Donate to The Paracast: Although ads help cover a small part of our expenses, the income they produce is never enough to pay your humble hosts decent wages. Also, we do not receive any revenue from the ads placed on the show by our network or local stations. So we hope you're able to help fill the gap, if you can, to help us cover increasing server costs and other expenses -- or perhaps provide a little extra cash for lunch and utility bills. No contribution is too small (or too large
. It’s easy to send a donation. We have a Donate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. There's also a Donate link on our forums, at the bottom of the sidebar on the right. Or just send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com. And if you’ve had a problem getting to our Donate screen, please try again. We just fixed a serious PayPal access problem, and it should work properly now.Attention U.S. Listeners: Help Us Bring The Paracast to Your City! In the summer of 2010, The Paracast joined the GCN radio network. This represented a huge step in bringing our show to a larger, mainstream audience. But we need your help to add additional affiliates to our growing network. Please ask one of your local talk stations if they are interested in carrying The Paracast. Feel free to contact us directly with the names of programming people we might be able to contact on your behalf. We can't do this alone, and if you succeed in convincing your local station to carry the show, we'll reward you with one of our special T-shirts, and other goodies. With your help, The Paracast can grow into one of the most popular paranormal shows on the planet!
Please Visit Our Online Store: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and an expanded collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt now featuring our brand new logo, just pay a visit to our online store at The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We also offer a complete lineup of other premium merchandise for your family, your friends and your business contacts.
About The Paracast: The Paracast covers a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions across the planet.
Set Up: The Paracast is a paranormal radio show that takes you on a journey to a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions. The Paracast seeks to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.
Join long-time paranormal researcher Gene Steinberg, co-host and acclaimed field investigator Christopher O'Brien, and a panel of special guest experts and experiencers, as they explore the realms of the known and unknown. Listen each week to the great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris present a year-end retrospective with long-term researcher Don Ecker, host of the Dark Matters radio show. During this episode we'll explore not just a Don's outspoken opinions about UFO and paranormal research, but his views about pop culture as well.
Chris O'Brien's Site: Our Strange Planet
Dark Matters: Dark Matters Radio
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums. We recently completed a major update that makes our community easier to navigate, and social network friendly.
Journalism: The Lost Art
By Gene Steinberg
Years ago, when I covered the news beat as a reporter, and later a news director, at various radio stations, I always had to answer to someone for the work I did. Not whether my newscasts got good ratings, but why I missed a potential scoop, or didn’t cover what management regarded as the salient points of a story. It was all about the quality of the work.
Later on, when I went into another profession, I saw how things changed for the worse, this time as just a listener or viewer. A radio or TV station’s news division had to earn its keep. It was no longer about providing a public service, but to get high ratings, and keep the advertising dollars coming in. If the talent didn’t get the deed done, they’d quickly be replaced by someone else. On TV, you had “happy talk,” where you had young, attractive, grinning anchors trying to make light banter in the brief interludes between the tragedies of the day.
But in journalism, it’s always been very much about ambulance chasing. If it bleeds, it leads. So even when I worked for stations that prided themselves at having a first-rate news division, they still had an eye, or ear, for spectacle. The serious accident, crime, or other tragedy, particularly one involving serious injuries or fatalities, had to get the most attention.
The quest for delivering entertainment has also meant that less-profitable divisions of a news department had to go, and this carried through to print. Investigative journalists are mostly missing in action nowadays, and, to seem fair and balanced, a reporter will tend to go overboard to present two sides of a story, even if there really aren’t two sides. Don’t make judgements. Just put it all down, be a stenographer, tighten the prose, and publish. At the same time, certain cable TV news outlets go out of their way to present stories that support their editorial slant.
This explains, in part, why routine fact checking seems to have fallen out of favor. But it also played a notable role in the 2012 presidential campaign. A handful of newspapers or independent sites gave a few staffers the job of checking out the claims and counterclaims from all those politicians and their surrogates, and passing on their perceived accuracy. So you had such ratings as “pants on fire” or “four pinnochios” for something that was provably (we hope) false.
Now when it comes to coverage of anything paranormal, be it a UFO sighting, or a story about someone who sees what they believe are ghosts, the media generally regards it all as strictly entertainment. Sure, there may be some degree of serious news coverage, but more often than not, the reporter or anchor will deliver the goods with a smirk, or a snarky remark. This is the human interest material that’s designed to present a humorous aside as a change of pace. With all the bad news we get these days, I suppose they have a point.
When it comes to actually doing a show covering the amazing world of the offbeat, the TV networks look to reality shows for guidance. Even when the coverage seemss pretty straightforward, there will be needlessly exaggerated reactions, or superfluous fluff, such as night vision goggles and other annoyances that are part and parcel of the genre. Events will be compressed to fit a timeframe, and deliberate efforts will be made to find the quotables, snappy comments, or clever turns of phrase to make the production more entertaining and keep the audience tuning in week after week.
Even when producers and talent are serious about the paranormal, they will have to often sell their souls to get the gig, and to keep the show on the air. Consider the plight of “Chasing UFOs,” where two of the co-hosts, including a talented UFO researcher and filmmaker, James Fox, actually complained in public about the show after it aired. I haven’t heard a definitive word as to whether there will be a second season, but I gave up after watching portions of the first episode. And this was from the National Geographic channel, which one would think aspired to a higher standard.
This isn’t the first time UFOs have been given short shrift on TV. Consider “UFO Hunters,” which featured Bill Birnes, the co-author of the controversial 1990s book, “The Day After Roswell.” Our own Chris O’Brien did a session for that show, talking at length about his extensive “mysterious valley” research. Only the powers that be decreed that Sedona, AZ was a sexier location, and so they transferred all the cases Chris discussed to that locale.
More recently, Chris recorded a segment for Jesse Ventura’s conspiracy show, where a significant portion of the interview was left on the cutting room floor. Chris also says that a hefty portion of compelling material went with it, and you can debate all day long whether certain people demanded the content be toned down, or it was just a screw up on the part of the production team. Imagine a conspiracy theory about a TV series that covers conspiracies.
Now at a time when print is nearly dead, and the media exists very much in the online and broadcast universes, it’s not as if the emphasis on entertainment, profits and ratings has changed. What’s more, the Internet has made it possible for any individual to write a blog and become reporter. It doesn’t require training, experience, or even the ability to put one word after another in a reasonably cogent fashion. You can create a blog without paying any money, and quickly become one of millions of citizen reporters.
Yes, the online universe may be a great equalizer, and it certainly gives more people the chance to express their points of view in a blog, a Facebook page or a 140-character tweet. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a crying need for more traditional journalism. I only hope that we aren’t all replaced by actors some day. That may seem a silly prospect, but it’s a very real and very frightening one.
The Paracast Copyright 1999-2012 Making The Impossible, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!
