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Press without a reporter? Crazy [UPDATED]
Published 11:32am Friday, November 5, 2010 Updated 11:33am Tuesday, November 9, 2010Whew! I’m glad Randy Moss was cut and went off to Tennessee.
After hearing his last-ever press conference Sunday I was scared that he was going to change the newspaper business in Minnesota forever.
That’s because Moss said he would only do interviews. But there was a catch.
He would ask the questions and then provide the answers to his own questions.
Holy crap. Now I realize that it was Randy Moss speaking and that most of what Randy Moss speaks is pure rubbish.
But what if what he was saying was true?
From time to time, it’s good to have a conversation with yourself — but not an interview.
What if other people across the state picked up on that wild and crazy trend?
Even here in Fergus Falls.
There is no doubt that Fergus Falls would become a community where everything is coming up roses.
All the cups would be half full and not half empty. There would be a pot at the end of every rainbow.
That is, unless city council candidate Jamie Cooper were interviewing himself.
I think he’d probably tell us that the world known as Fergus Falls is coming to an end and he can lead us through the gates of the city to a much better place.
This interviewing yourself and answering your own question thing could be a real problem.
So what if Randy Moss, or your city council member, county board member, or school board member held their own press conferences, provided all the questions as well as the answers and ingeniously removed reporters from the traditional Q and A, making them the subject of both the Q and the A?
When you interview yourself, you can customize the interview however you see fit.
That’s a problem.
Is it another blow to journalism, or another evolution?
As service industries eliminate actual service — first we pumped our own gas, then we bused our own tables, now we scan and bag our own groceries. Is it that far fetched to image people interviewing themselves?
I’ve enjoyed my 20 years in the newspaper business. It has been a privilege to interview the people I’ve encountered in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.
But that’s because I interviewed them and they then provided me the material that makes some stories easy to write, and some just a little bit harder.
A lot of people said the return of Randy Moss to unite him with Brett Favre was the perfect marriage, that they’d get the Vikings back in the playoff hunt for better or worse.
After hearing Moss’ plan for interviewing himself, I think the deal was for the worse.
Thank goodness for Brad Childress. Randy Moss and his “ingenious” plans have hit the road.
