I love journalism. On the one hand, I am a ravenous consumer of news, commentary, and analysis, with a strong preference for the former but a somewhat forced acceptance of the modern blend that melds these all together. 1 On a sort of meta level, I also love the process -- the formulation of a story, the ethical scrutiny of reporting, the word choices in descriptions, the format, the delivery, and the whole ball of wax. I come and go from cable news (I used to watch A LOT of SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight before they went to hell), but I steadfastly read print and online stories and listen to the radio daily.
When I run morning errands, I like to listen to the radio. ESPN 1000 airs a morning show with a host, David Kaplan, who is not my favorite. Though his credentials are excellent and his on-air charisma is strong, his style drives me crazy. While one has to stomach some level of “personality” infused into any media program these days, it’s the insistence on extremes that drives me especially nuts. I like many of his guests who come on for interviews and appreciate the news and analysis that comes in between the other stuff, so I try to weather it. But one segment in particular really gets my goat -- Kap calls it “Shot or No Shot.” Kap’s producers cue up a string of propositions, some formulated by the staff and some by listeners. Each one looks forward to the coming weeks or months in sports to solicit opinions on whether or not they may happen. They ask Kap and his co-hosts whether there’s a “shot” or “no shot” of it happening.
Unable to suspend disbelief and refusing to accept the level of gooberishness that modern media often requires, I struggle to even flimsily go along with the premise of this segment. To basically every prompt, the answer should be “shot.” Virtually every scenario suggested carries with it some degree of likelihood, even if small, that it will happen. Yet, for the sake of sensationalism and to fuel a lusty argument, Kap and/or his co-hosts will almost always insist that some things have “no shot,” and do so with a thick layer of insistence caked into their declaration. The presumed need for antagonism and debate is just silly.
Here’s an example of a recent morning a couple weeks ago.2 Funnily enough, Kap was out and substitute hosts had to do the segment. One host even remarked, “Kap will [always] have a hard-line shot… I know Kap takes a hard line.” To this, the producer, slightly facetiously, responded, “Well, it’s shot or no shot, not partial-shot… you have to have a hard-line stance and make your point!” The point is they know it’s ridiculous and satire themselves a little bit, but they still partake in it with full throats. Over the course of this segment, and across many programs, the frequency of phrases like “of course,” “absolutely!,” and “100%” is quite excessive.
I’ve previously bemoaned the need for everything to be reduced to a take, to stray from factual contexts and nuanced discussion by veering into opinion-spewing that leaves little room for collected insight. The sad thing here is that topics are rarely engaged with at face value and debated on their merits. There’s a difference between being pithy and being abrupt, between being concise and being obtuse. While brevity may be the soul of wit, condensing one’s position down to magnify extremism and squeeze out nuance is reductive and counterproductive.
I totally get that sometimes a structure and branding makes a process more engaging than general conversation, but the vehicle here is so shoddy. Other segments across the station fuel the conversation without cheapening the content -- “The Good, The Bad, and The Dirty” gives each host and producer a chance to weave a story by describing highlights from a weekend’s worth of sports; “Over/Under” gives a former football player host a moment to predict how an upcoming game will go; “On This Day” looks back at a particular day across sports history and fires up nostalgia and retrospect for years past.
The Church continues to explore the New Evangelization as it soldiers forward into a future full of variables and unknowns. We remain under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and its grace filling our pope, bishops, priests, religious, and laity, yet we grapple also with declining affiliation, inconsistent Mass attendance, and uncertainty on how to best engage the modern faithful.
Differents groups and organizations in the Church are striving to engage with the new norms, to apply to always responsive coherence of our Tradition to the challenges of this day. The University of Notre Dame’s Campus Ministry and Grotto Network are striving to carry substance into the social media stream. The work of our Church toward the 2018 Synod on young people has begun in earnest with delegations laying the groundwork now and conferences starting the ministerial formation. America Magazine continues to support a robust staff and editorial team to create substantial content and share it widely (including this recent piece on Catholic media utilization). I could go on and on.
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| One of the many great ones from Catholic Memes. |
Meanwhile, the mainstream of the Internet is dominated by memes, GIFs, loops, and listicles that offer a quick laugh and instant gratification. This is the “Shot or No Shot” audience. This is the culture that ravenously devours the quickly consumable, often preferring to scroll through dozens of tweets, pictures, etc. rather than slow down to read a handful of articles. This is the norm of quick gratification, of controllable content, and a fully curated image and consumption pattern.
So what can we do? I think, as usual, the Catholic wisdom is to embrace a both/and solution. While the Church would look somewhat silly and backwards trying to turn itself into BuzzFeed or Reddit/imgur, it also could become an afterthought and socially sidelined if it wholly rejects all that is modern or technological. The answer, then, is that the Church must remain itself, close to its roots and true to its Tradition, while engaged with the norms of today’s society. The Church must engage with the pithy, punchy medium of quick hitting stuff as well as continuing to share deeper dives, substantial reflections, and rich expositions.3
I always hope our blog will be a home for that latter group, as I don’t think my gifts (and relatedly, my fellow writers are gifted in this area, too) are especially well-suited to the former. Yet, I acknowledge we need capable, well-formed people to lead the charge in that latter category, too. While I hope we can find something a bit richer than the faulty dilemma of a “Shot or No Shot” segment, I know there’s some value in the way that medium engages its consumers. A major challenge and a potentially huge breakthrough would come if and when we as a Church can solve this puzzle.
Can the Church do it? I’d say, “Shot.”
1 I had an unfinished journalism minor at Notre Dame. I initially went into my college search as a prospective journalism student. I have always loved breaking a story, and I love when I get to spread the word to friends and family when news breaks. I didn’t have the grit necessary to climb the ladder as a journalist, but a part of is still drawn to it so strongly.↩
2 For the sports fans among us, here were the propositions for the week, all met with some combination of “shot” or “no shot,” though all of them have a shot.
From the producers: Yu Darvish has most Cy Young votes among Cubs? Concerned about Michael Kopech’s bad spring outing? Tribute montages to former players gotta go?
From the callers: Bears sign Richard Sherman? Derrick Rose signs shorty to retire with the Bulls? Will Bears be over .500 this year?
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3 Great commentary from our writer, Laura: “It's good that the Church knows what's true -- I think this is how we accomplish that. You can make a short, true statement. ‘Love one another as I have loved you,’ for example. Hopefully that draws people in. Then people have to ask, ‘How?’ and what ‘loving one another’ looks like must take into account the complexity of the world, hence the complexity of Catholic wisdom. You can't reduce everything because you can't reduce life. That's what I usually have to say to those who ask why the Church can't ‘simply’ do X.”
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