The fall of journalism, Exhibit A:
Mattel unveiled their 125th Barbie yesterday, reports Adam Tschorn of “LA Times”. Coincidentally (or not) News Anchor Barbie (we’ll call her Journalism Barbie) has come into existence at exactly the same time that real, respectable news reporting is fading into nonexistence. Images of the doll show the impossibly-proportioned classic girly girl in a pink fuzzy blazer, a frill skirt and high heels, with a microphone in hand. One has to wonder—is she doing her reporting for the “E!” channel?
Mattel’s announcement fell on exactly the same day that CNN revealed a leadership shake up. The network’s president, Jonathan Klein, is being fired and replaced by Ken Jautz, head of CNN’s entertainment news channel “Headline News.”
Based on the press photos, the toy got one thing wrong and a few things right. Let’s start with wrong:
Journalism Barbie’s aforementioned outfit, while it may look nice for the reporting part of her job, would be very uncomfortable for actual journalism. I can’t imagine that she’d be very comfortable visiting Afghanistan in those high-heel Mary Janes, and all of her investigative interviews would have to take place over the phone for her to have any hope of being taken seriously. You can just imagine Ken Jautz greeting her ideas with a condescending chuckle at meetings.
That said, career Barbies are obviously dolls and didn’t exactly become famous for their realism in the first place. It would almost be weird if Journalism Barbie wasn’t wearing pink.
What’s actually disturbing about the doll is what they got right: Besides her outfit, Barbie looks exactly like a modern reporter, i.e., a beauty pageant contestant on Valium.
Lately the hotness of the people reporting our news seems to be an inverse function of the quality of the content. I’m not saying that the hot reporters are dumb. I’m merely observing that journalism has become dumb, and that bosses are hiring pretty faces to report instead of people who make us feel safe—the Walter Cronkites and Connie Chungs (no offence to Connie).
As is always the chicken-and-egg question with entertainment, it’s hard to say if the trend is a reflection of the consumers’ values or the networks’ values.
I don’t have the answer, but consider this:
Barbie isn’t stupid—there are astronaut and doctor Barbies out there, and even a CEO Barbie—it’s really her fans (10 year-old girls and Rachel Zoe) who are dummies. At the New York Toy Fair last February, a spokesperson from Mattel announced that the 125th anniversary edition of Barbie would either be an architect, a computer engineer, an environmentalist, a surgeon or a journalist, and that it would be up to a world-wide vote of Barbie fans to decide which she’d be.
It seems as though the girls who used to be obsessed with Barbies grew up into journalists and voted this new doll into existence. Whenever I meet an astoundingly dumb, over-dressed female, it almost invariably comes up that she majored in journalism. It seems the journalism major is the new psych major. And now we’re all on Lexapro.
Wiki describes Ken Jautz’s “Headline News” like this:
“The channel’s programming focused around the idea that a viewer could tune in at any time and, in just 30 minutes, receive the most popular national and international stories, in addition to feature reports.”
Essentially, CNN is about to be run by a man who has a background in televised blogging.
Journalism Barbie is a hallmark for the fall of journalism. She should be Blogger Barbie. It seems like that’s where we’re headed, both in online and on-air reporting. The only problem is that she’d have to wear something different, because in all likeliness, her job will be an unpaid internship.
September 25, 2010 at 5:03 am, akwJournalist said:
I am a journalism major and I do not appreciate your narrow minded view. Journalism is not dying, but changing. If anything journalism is becoming more widely spread through means of social networking and the increased internet publication sites.
I agree that maybe they do put the wrong individuals in front of cameras. With the priorities of media though, you must keep up with what society wants. Society wants attractive people, sex appeal, and when things to watch like Desperate Housewives and “reality” television, news media needs to put a competitive edge by “sleazing” itself down.
You seem to be pretty biased though, that all journalism is falling apart, and any young women pursuing this girl must be an idiot to enter the industry. Although, what you are forgetting is the great things news has done for this world. The things it has expressed, any men or women has the ability to use journalism to show the real reality of world and generate change.
September 28, 2010 at 2:05 am, FormerJournalist said:
This sounds like it was written by a bitter j-school graduate that couldn't get a job in journalism after graduation b/c the industry as they knew it, or as they were taught it would be, is dying. I could be entirely wrong of course, but wow, this is so bitter.
October 05, 2010 at 11:12 am, carallel said:
If only it weren't Pepto-Bismol pink . . .
November 07, 2010 at 6:03 am, Parsco73 said:
So very true.
There are no “average” looking women doing TV news today. Anchor Barbie would fit right in at ESPN. (I'm looking at you Erin Andrews)
Old school journalists have a reason to be bitter. The days of watchdog journalism are dead or, at best, dying. I'm 36 and I was a dinosaur at a newspaper I used to work. My “advanced” hourly salary (i.e. 35K a year) made me a target when the cuts came. A year later I landed at a small daily making 6K less on the year. But everyone here are dinosaurs too. We're just waiting around for the comet to hit and put us out of our misery.
December 03, 2010 at 1:40 pm, Nicki Minaj: An Uncertain Fate | Death and Taxes said:
[...] ‘bad bitch’, is not averse to a ‘c’ word or two, and often identifies with Barbie, the ultimate symbol of the enemy, short of a Disney [...]