National Public Radio website is becoming more text journalism oriented

NPR is bringing its unique form of journalism to the web, according to the New York Times.

At a time when those of us who love newspapers are finding them shrinking almost before our eyes, it appears that journalism is not dead. Instead it is finding other methods of taking good reporting from the news sources to the interested public. As a part of this, National Public Radio is expanding its online presence and focusing on presenting stories more in text versions.

NPR's Morning Edition blew it this morning.

I woke up this morning listening to Morning Edition on National Public Radio. Usually its informative and current. But this morning the best that can be said it that it was current.

There was a segment on the non-news called O.J. Simpson. That's celebrity gossip, no better than the latest on Brittany Spears, Nicole Richey or Donald Trump. If I want that garbage I'll choose to waste my time and read the National Tattler in the supermarket checkout line. I do not expect that from NPR's Morning Edition.

An O.J. segment is a wast of my time, a horrible waste of NPR's scarce (but linear) air time, and it was rotten news judgment to present it.

That's just one more case of the general dumbing down of the news media. It's a damned shame that the disease of the American media has spread to National Public Radio.

"The Brain on the Stand" by Jeffrey Rosen

Terri Gross of "Fresh Air" on NPR today has Jeffrey Rosen, who wrote the article published Sunday in the NY Times Magazine. Rosen is discussing the legal implications of the advances in brain science and the use of PET scans for getting at the truth and assigning legal responsibility for criminal behavior.

This is the future. Only it is tomorrow, not next century or even next year.

What can the new brain science tell us?

How much of it could be used in a criminal trial? Can it be used to determine guilt, or can it be used to determine responsibility punishment.