The Media Zone

How the media make sense and nonsense of the world

By Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D.

Good-bye, Michael

By Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D. on June 25, 2009 - 4:07pm in The Media Zone

Michael Jackson died a few hours ago. Throngs are now gathering outside his hospital window, looking up at his hospital window. Waiting? Perhaps for a glimpse of... of something that connects their glances to his life and death. Read More

First you Googled It. Then You YouTubed It. Now You Skype It .

By Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D. on June 25, 2009 - 1:49pm in The Media Zone

With Skype, now everyone effectively lives in L.A., even if their mailing address is in North Dakota, Trinidad or Kabul.

With Skype technology, the world of televised communications tilted just slightly on its axis.

"Swarm Journalism" in Iran: Media and Political Revolutions

By Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D. on June 20, 2009 - 2:00pm in The Media Zone

In a very real sense, new journalists, from "reporters" at ground zero, whether it's in Tehran or Mumbai, along with their blogging, Twittering brothers and sisters, have begun to constitute what can only be called swarm journalism. Read More

The 2009 Tony Awards: How to Body Slam a Broadway Musical

By Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D. on June 16, 2009 - 4:06pm in The Media Zone

I love Broadway Theater. I love musicals. I even married a Broadway hoofer so she could dance for me in our bedroom and I could see her on stage. But I wept when I watched what they did to the musical numbers on the 2009 Tony Awards show. Wept, I tell you. Read More

Homosexual Sex and Passion in Mainstream American Film

By Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D. on June 6, 2009 - 9:34am in The Media Zone

Drama is the serious genre. It casts the action in a more serious light. When heterosexuals are not laughing many are likely also to be less forgiving of gay "kiss, kiss, bang, bang, bad behavior," unless, maybe, your film is about two likable cowboys... and one of them dies. Read More

Surviving A Hurricane Slaughter with Radio Riding Shotgun

By Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D. on May 24, 2009 - 7:40pm in The Media Zone

We put down the wine and clutched each other's hand. Yes, we were warned. But NO VOICE, computerized or otherwise, had predicted a hurricane and NO ONE had predicted sustained winds of 60-80 mph and gusts up to 105 MPH! Yet, here we were. Read More

Having A Stroke in the Twilight World of Dr. Gregory House

By Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D. on May 3, 2009 - 4:28pm in The Media Zone

As soon as that door closes, I go into “House, M.D. mode.” These guys are nuts! Don’t they know that good diagnoses rendered soon after intake are mostly death sentences? Don’t they watch House? They’ll walk out of my room, leaving me with a nurse –Yup, nurse is still here-- Blood will suddenly start to gush from my mouth. Maybe I will bleed from my pores, my naval, my eyes. Read More

When Newspapers Die Do They Make A Sound? -

By Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D. on April 1, 2009 - 1:06pm in The Media Zone

Quick, easy and emotionally sexy but often factually limp opinions, cross-dressing as "news," are replacing serious, objective-aspiring reportage in all news media, on- and off-line. News media moguls and syndicates, with eyes on revenue vs. cost streams, are readily defaulting to easily and cheaply acquired, intellectually empty news as they bring up the increasingly flabby rear of the fading Fourth Estate we call journalism. Read More

The Oscars Ain’t The People’s Choice Awards (thank God), So Stop Complaining

By Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D. on February 23, 2009 - 3:23pm in The Media Zone

Stars were never fated to align for The Dark Night. Like Quantum of Solace, …Knight is neither aesthetically or artistically a good film in the glamour areas. It had some good things about it, to be sure, which is why it had some nominations and the one for Heath Ledger, who may obliterate the memory of Jack Nicholson as the definitive Joker by underplaying and deploying nuance and irony like WMDs. Read More

Obama and the Attack of the Elephantine Pork Police

By Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D. on February 16, 2009 - 1:44pm in The Media Zone

networks like FoxNews, a media bag man for the Republicans, pleads that it covers both sides (nuances aside) to the spending bill fairly and accurately. Really? Not really. Read More