"Reporting on Popular Culture"

"Reporting on Popular Culture"

Alessandra Stanley

The New York Times

Northwestern University

November 16, 2009

I know what you're thinking. I get asked a lot, a lot of you have asked me, how much television do I watch a day? I can't really answer that because I never not watch television. In my house the TV is on day and night, like the Eternal Flame at Arlington Cemetery. I get very cross if anybody turns it off. I guess I would say that I watch as much TV as I would if I weren't being paid to watch it, so in some ways it's better.

Questions I get in New York a lot from people are "how can you stand to watch so much television?" I hear that a lot from my own colleagues. And the truth is if I could, I would watch more. I'm sad I can't. But I think that for people who are in a university environment, what I'm about to say makes sense. There are authors that you read for pleasure like Jane Austen or Raymond Chandler. But when you're in a class and you take a seminar, it suddenly becomes homework and you postpone it, and you read something else -- your John Grisham or whatever. And writing about television is like that. You know you have to review an eight-part miniseries on PBS, so you end up watching Law and Order. I confess to watching three hours of the Kardashians straight one day when I was avoiding work!

So I have to be able to rationalize what I do. Because it's what most parents don't want their children ending up doing. And I guess the best way to describe it is to try to view television as a mirror, a funhouse mirror, but it's really a mirror of the audience. If you want to try to understand what's going on in America, there's no better way then to turn on the television set. Not just the news obviously, but dramas, sitcoms, reality shows.

The example that I can think of that came to mind was when I first started in 2003, there were three different dramas, new ones, starting. One of was Joan of Arcadia but there were two others in which God was a character. God could speak to people, on these dramas, and instruct them to solve crimes or whatever. But suddenly there was this infusion of spirituality, and it was hard to explain. So the question is, was that something that happened because of September 11th, where people started to be more interested in religion? This happened to coincide with other things. This woman called Elaine Pagels who teaches at Princeton, she's very popular. She's got this idea, I call it the lack of strict faith - it's spirituality without any of the rules. And there were rap singers that had spirituality, and that was one way to make sense of what otherwise seemed like a weird coincidence - how come CBS, NBC and ABC all had similar shows at the very same time?

On the other hand, you could also argue that that's just fashion. That happens sometimes. The other day I was in my building and I looked in my elevator and two women in the same building were both wearing gold shoes. I realized, that must be fashionable. So it is possible that ideas spread organically. Someone hears about someone doing a project and they say well that sounds good. The job of the TV critic is to sometimes make sense, even if it's a little bit forced, of something that is otherwise too much to be just a coincidence. And that's how I try to justify what I do.

One of the pleasures of my job is to cover live events. In other words you're not reviewing the new season of The Simpsons, but the Pope is in town or there's a Presidential Election, or there's some moment on TV. It could be horrible moments like the Balloon Boy - you guys were in class, but all the cable news in the entire building were chasing the Balloon Boy up and down the country. Or there could be something extraordinary like this last election which we were talking about earlier. Every debate is not just a political debate, it's a television show, it's a drama. And when you can do that, then you can look at it not just as, "Well what is his position on health care?" But you can say "What are people seeing?" and "What are the visual dynamics between these characters, and how are people judging them?" It may not be helpful to readers, but it's fun to write about. Tom Schayles The Washington Post ... job but it's a useful thing to do.

Today, I don't know if anybody saw, Sarah Palin on Oprah Winfrey? No one watched? You're in Chicago! This afternoon I'm going to have to write about it, someone very kindly taped it for me. But a few people watched it with me and were surprised by it. It was the Sarah Palin who we thought we weren't going to see again. It was the Sarah Palin that the campaign ...... The tension between her and Oprah Winfrey, who had supported Obama, was kind of interesting to watch, beyond the obvious which is her selling her book. But she doesn't even need to promote her book because it's already a #1 Best Seller.

Several people have asked me how I came to be a TV critic, and I came to it very late. I was a political reporter and I was in Moscow and overseas. But the idea came in Moscow, when I first got there in '93 and I was writing about the first Russian sitcom, first post-Soviet Russian sitcom. And they had basically taken All in the Family and adapted it to Russian concerns. So what you had was a nouveau-riche Russian family who were only concerned about buying houses and decorating them, and they had Russian decorator. The grandparents were these old Bolsheviks who were complaining constantly about the crass bourgeois materialism. That was the concept of the conflict of the time, done in a Russian sitcom. And it was a great story to write, and an easy story to write, no reporting, or very little reporting. And that made me think, it would be fun to do that about America or Italy or anywhere else. But that's how the idea came. And I encourage anybody who wants to be a TV critic to travel.

We were talking earlier about the difficulty of understanding why something is popular. And we were talking at lunch about NCIS, which is the most popular show in America. And that would be a sense of my job, why is this the most popular show? And I've never written that story because I can't figure it out. I kind of like it myself, I see its appeal, but I don't have what they call in bad journalism a "meta idea" about why this is interesting right now. So if you have any thoughts, I will take them from you and not give you credit.

Another thing that came up in class that I felt was worth exploring in the talk was the idea that newspaper writing and magazine writing, especially if you're a critic, but even if you're not, is like writing a paper in school. You have to read it, you have to try to come up with an argument about it, and then you have to support with citations and quotes that make your case. And that's exactly what you do as a critic. You say, "this show is about this." I'll give you an example. Anybody ever watch Heroes? Sometimes it's easiest to write well about shows you don't like that much. And Heroes is an easy one for me because I'm too old for that genre, the graphic novel -- I'm too young to remember Superman the TV show. But what was striking was that the second season was in 2008, and that was in the height of the economic crisis - the bailout and everything else. And to me, as I was watching the show, it seemed all the characters, the superheroes, everything bad that happened to them was not their fault, or it was their parents fault. Somehow the previous generation through this terrible arrogance has ruined the world. It's a comic book, so it's planetary destruction as opposed to credit card debt. But, it became to be a metaphor for what people in their 20s and 30s felt at that moment, which was that people my age had basically ruined their lives by saddling them with trillion dollar debts, and HIV viruses and wars on two fronts. It's a way to look at a TV show that you otherwise might say, "well, I'm not that crazy about it." But at a certain time at a certain moment, it's interesting but it does tell you something about what's going on. Or so I claim.

People don't always like critics. I assure you I can prove this. But what you want to be ideally is basically like an Assistant Professor at college. You want to be able to take a show, and guide people through it, and make them see things or think in a way that they might not have thought of if they were just sitting there watching it. So I think you guys are in the perfect place to start that process, since you are being guided and shepherded by professors and assistant professors to think critically. And that's what you do as a journalist, and that's what you're supposed to do as a critic.

At the New York Times, the most powerful job besides being one of their columnists is probably being the theater critic. Because theater is mainly in New York, although of course Chicago has great theater. And the New York Times critic can close a show with one bad review. So it's a hideous responsibility, and I think our critics are actually very generous - they really do try to give a play every shot they have. And I think movie criticism is hard for the opposite reason, you have less power now, and readers are less tied to what the New York Times critics say. But, there are so many movies where there are not many interesting things to say about them. So it's a very hard job. They have to slog through a lot of really bad movies. And a really bad movie is two hours long, and a really bad TV show is at most an hour. But, that's another place where you're not just going to write about a movie or a play; you're going to try to find its place in everything else that's going on. So I commend them. So now I'm wondering if anybody wants to ask questions.

Question: [inaudible but related to reality television ruining

I don't think it has ruined TV, I really don't. I think some reality TV is pretty good. We were talking about Project Runway, which is not recent, but is a smart show. Watchers adapt. So networks are having difficulties because it's cheaper, it's easier and it's always going to get a big audience. But it means that it creates opportunities for other networks. A lot of the cable networks are doing more different things, including AMC with Mad Men. So it's made it a little harder for networks, they kind of had a monopoly on creativity before, and they also had a stranglehold on creativity. And it sort of forced people to think differently at networks and at cable stations. Do I have to watch all of it? No. Is it fun times to watch it? It's very fun for me, because reality shows are great fodder. You can have five reality shows that are all about losing weight, well there's something going on there. And all those terrible dating shows, those were great to write about. They weren't that much, well, sometimes they're fun to watch. But they're even more fun to write about.

Question: [inaudible, but related to how she decides what to watch each season]

What I do is I go through the list of new shows with my editor because I'm the senior critic. I pick out the stuff that I want to do. So I did Mad Men and the new season of The Sopranos when that was going on. But sometimes my colleagues will do something that I would love to do, but I just know they're just going to do it better. Mike Hale is wonderful and he's a guy. It's kind of nice finally. I have to admit that as much as you try, you are kind of conditioned, there are certain shows that I'm just not going to watch. I'm not going to watch NASCAR with the same enthusiasm that somebody else might. So it's good to have a guy in the mix to watch the shows that we would force ourselves to watch, but deserve to be watched with true pleasure as opposed to a feeling of obligation. And then, there are a certain amount of shows you have to review, and then you pick and choose what you're interested in writing about. Everything that happens in life seems to be happening on television. There's nothing you can't write about. Commercials can be an entire story.

Question: [inaudible, possibly do you ever write stories about commercials?]

Not enough. I had an idea for a story recently that I thought I should try to get that out but it stopped.

Question: [inaudible, but about the distribution of services like Hulu and On Demand taking away television viewers]

I don't know that they are yet. I don't know if I can get it in context. I think the advertisements will have to figure its way through all that. All it means is that more people are watching the show than they used to, because it's not like you're getting a different show.

Question: [inaudible]

Well we talked about that. Friday Night Lights is being held up, partly by DirectTV. But now you have content on demand, so that if you have the flu and are staying in on the weekend you can catch up with all these shows that you really should be watching or don't have time for. It's useful. Hulu is something that my daughter watches, because she's used to that. I use it for work but not for pleasure.

Question: [inaudible, but related to who she writes for]

None of the above I hope.

Question: [inaudible, related to values of the shows she watches]

Taste is taste, and we're all a product of what we experience. You can't be completely neutral - there's no such thing as a completely neutral critic. You try to adjust for it a little bit, but you can't really write - you're not writing for the producer, or the director or the writer. You're really writing for, you hope, an audience that is interested in the show but is also interested in being informed or entertained about the show. The last thing you want to do is to try to...

Question: [inaudible, but related to sending messages with writing]

Well you are sending them. If you trash a show, you're sending a message regarding you don't like the show that's on the air. I don't know of any show that has picked up and run things differently because of a critical reaction. Shows change, they evolve, and some get better and some get worse, but I'm not sure that a critic has that kind of influence. But it's an interesting thought, I could be wrong but I don't see it.

Question: [inaudible, related to NY Times readers not watching much television]

Well ideally you're not just saying thumbs up or thumbs down, because you could say that in a sentence. Ideally you're writing something that even if you're never going to watch the show or have never watched the show, you're going to still enjoy reading. Because it's about the show in a way that's interesting, or it's about something beyond just that show. I think those are the most successful articles.

Question: [inaudible]

Well we had war, we had the Chechen War, the first part.

Question: [inaudible]

Actually no, we did not have SATphones, this is how long ago it was. The nightmare was still filing. There was the first prototype of the SATphone, the semiphone is something similar. Otherwise you had to phone in your story or dictate or whatever. In Chechnya there was electricity, there was no water.

Question: [inaudible]

No you can't. Then I was lucky in a way. It was before they started kidnapping people for months. Essentially all guerilla war is the guerillas will work with you, so you can cover the war through a limited fashion. And nobody wanted in with the Russian Army, they didn't play by the rules and they were the most ill-equipped army. Logistically it was harder to cover, but the world has gotten murderous. I wouldn't want to go to Iraq now. I wouldn't go to Afghanistan now. Georgia was shorter, but prepared. I mean we were literally driving for five hours to get to a phone. However bad you thought those stories were. This is very important for journalism, and it's serious to Malcolm Gladwell. He talks about how there should be a degree of difficulty above the byline, so that yes my story is incredibly short and inadequate BUT if you only knew that my car broke down, we were shot at, they stole my computer - then you could adjust accordingly. But we don't get to do that. That was hard. It was exciting, but it was hard.

We were talking about how you start in journalism and if you're interested in working overseas. I didn't plan to work overseas but you have to go to places that people don't want to go. So I was very lucky I started in Paris, but hardship hurts. I don't think that happens anymore, I don't think they have a bureau where that would happen. But if you were to go to Georgia, Afghanistan, etc. In reality, what you see on TV reporting on the wars started as freelance writers. But that is something to keep in mind.

Question: [inaudible]

This industry is worried that now that NBC has...and if you're watching Law and Order: SVU, and you're having children awake at 9:00, it's tough. And then kids are missing a lot of their shows, I just don't know, it isn't easy to say, but maybe it won't even last that long. I'm not watching Leno at 10:00. I mean I wasn't watching at 11 either, but I'm really not going to watch him at 10.

Question: [inaudible, related to advertising-heavy shows like Glee]

I don't think any show can get by on just advertising and still be successful. But Glee is an interesting show because it's a complete rip off of every teen movie and show ever made, but I think it's great. Writing about television I don't think is hard, but writing for television, being a TV writer is really hard. I'm impressed when people do it well.

Question: [inaudible]

Well there are more opportunities to be seen now, since the Internet. In other words, back in the day you had to work for your small paper or you had to start at a very lowly job at a big paper. And now, people are on the Internet. You can start tomorrow. You can have a Web site and you can have something to say that gets currency to get started. I mean, it's a huge advantage. The problem is there's so many people doing it, how do you stand out? And that's where places like Huffington Post have been very successful. They pay nothing, but they give their stamp of approval. You know, "we think this person is good enough." If that's what you want to do, you just do it. That's the lesson we've all learned. Brian Stelter, my colleague, he covers the industry. He had a Web site in college where he just kept track of TV gossip, industry gossip - who's doing what - and it was so good, that everybody in the TV industry started reading it. And because everyone was reading it, he was getting more information. And the long story was that the New York Times hired him when he was 23 and had just finished college to start writing about the Web. It turns out he's really talented and can write about anything. He was really good, but he started from no where.

Question: [inaudible, likely about reading what other people write on the same subject]

I would love to read other people's stuff, but A) I'm afraid to read it before I've written it because I'm afraid that it would influence what I think, or worse I'll steal something they say. And then, there's fear too. Even after the fact. What I will sometimes do is go back to what Tom Shales from The Washington Post says. But that's as far as I'll go, because once you start reading all the other stuff, I'm always afraid I'm such a sponge I will just retype it the next day without even realizing it. So I have blinders on for self-protection. But there are a lot of really good writers. I mean television is a fun subject, a lot of people watch it. I don't know if you read Frank Rich. Frank Rich basically watches almost as much TV as I do, and then he writes about it. He used to be a theater critic, and now he's a political columnist, but everything he does, he gets from watching. He doesn't interview people, he just watches TV. And you know, he's one of the most popular liberal columnists in America. So he can't be all bad.

Question: [inaudible, but possibly about 9/11 or other big events and their consequences]

You mean a consequence? Yeah, I think it has to be a little bit. In terms of a moment that happens that influences how people are thinking. I've written and everybody's written about television after the recession and how it changed programming and how people warped it into their plots and stuff like that. So mainly it is history, but it can be style, it can be musical style, it can be a lot of things. Certainly, visually, someone makes a movie - Quentin Tarantino, who I don't like that much, has influenced the way everybody makes films. They have that in mind. So, we keep that in mind as well.

Question: [inaudible, related to writing about things she doesn't like]

Yes, all the time. I didn't like John Adams on HBO and I panned it. And it won every award and everybody loved it, and I got huge amounts of hate mail and death threats. Sometimes you just don't like something that is good. And I feel like there ought to be, I'm never going to do it, but every Leap Year, critics should have to go and say "I was wrong about this, this is much better than I ever realized." But it's hard to make adjustments about something based on one or two or three episodes. And some shows get better. That's my excuse too. It wasn't that I was wrong, it's just that now it's better.

Question: [inaudible]

Well that's the great thing about being a critic. You're not wrong. I mean, you say, "this will never work," then of course you're wrong. But you say "I don't like this," then make a rational argument for why not. I think the classic example at my publication was Janet Maslin. She was the only critic in the world who liked Eyes Wide Shut, the Kubrick film. She liked it, but she was the only one.

Question: [inaudible, related to 2008 Presidential Campaigns]

You can rationalize almost anything on TV, because almost everything happens on TV. So it's really what you're up for, and what they are in the mood to have. Eventually there is something, there are these moments that you watch. Whenever you have that many people watching something, you want to look at it not just as the event that it is, but also at the television show that it is. And this campaign was just too amazing not to write about. The Hillary moment, that was a TV moment. When she was in New Hampshire, when she got a little misty. It changed the primary for a while, it forced Obama into a much longer campaign, but that was an amazing moment that was on camera and was played on TV over and over and over again. You couldn't not write about that.

Question: [inaudible, related to cable networks]

I think less and less. I think that's what the networks are discovering, is that these popular -- USA Network has a lot of shows that people are watching, and they could be network shows, you can't see the difference. I think what's rationalized is that they say, "look, put Jay Leno on, we've got these other outlets." NBC has other ways, they have Bravo, they have everything. But yeah, I agree. Networks still get the biggest, for the moment at least. And CSI gets 20 million viewers. Nobody else does that.

Question: [inaudible]

Well, I'm not calling network executives and saying "what are you thinking?" But, you know, I talk to my friends, I talk to people, I read. It's not a complete vacuum, it's just that it's not traditional reporting, where you have to interview the star of the show and find out what they think. You know, it doesn't matter what they think. Which is a great relief. But I did reporting for a long, long time and it's rewarding when you're doing a news story. It can be fun, but I always found it to be an effort. I mean, you make the effort, but it's hard to go to complete strangers and make them talk.

Question: Are there any television writers that you know well?

Personally? Yes. I have to recuse myself, I can't be friends with anybody who works for TV. It's hard, because everyone in New York basically works in TV. I don't go out much. It's hard, I know Tom Fontana, who wrote Oz. I really like him, I think he's really interesting, we share an interest. I would love to spend more time with him, but I can't because I review his shows. And I just trashed one of his projects, so I don't even know if he's still speaking to me. But he wasn't really speaking to me a lot because we weren't friends. I mean, that's the very awkward thing in journalism, if you are friendly with the people you write about. As a reporter, you can make that distinction because you have to be friendly to your sources, it's access journalism. You don't want them to invite you to their wedding, but you have to have a relationship with them. Whereas if you're a critic, you have to be as removed as possible. Some critics are messianic about this. They will not go to a party where writers are present. Which basically means they can't go out in New York, ever. If you're worried about what someone thinks, Aaron Sorkin is a good example. He's very good friends with a friend of mine, and if you know him and you like him, you don't want to give him a bad review. So it's better if not to know him too well.

Question: [inaudible}

Well actually, I'm reading a novel now. But, it's not great. It's two initials, Byers, she writes these Victorian novels, she wrote Confessions. This new one, which I can't put down yet I wouldn't call it a novel. It hasn't informed my work the way Tom has informed my work with his reading.

Question: [inaudible]

Well there is the serendipity of reading history or literature. A lot of times you'll be reading a book and it will remind you of something. But that's how life is, things are hidden in other things. But, I don't read trade papers and things like that. I mean, I probably should, I don't though.

Question: [inaudible]

I love Tony Scott, I think he's a great critic. I think he's a great movie critic. I think he doesn't have the sin that a lot of us are accused of - someone wrote a whole book about "snark" in journalism. Which, even though I didn't like the book, I read sometimes -- not me of course or any of my friends, but sometimes people give reviews that are just mean-spirited and snippy but not thoughtful. I think you can be snippy, but you should have a thought behind it. That's my rationalization. And Tony Scott does not do that, he is very smart and funny. Anthony Lane is a brilliant critic. I mean, I will read him on any subject.

Question: How does a reporting background contribute to your writing? Is it necessary?

It's not necessary, but it's an advantage, I think. If you've lived in other parts of the world and covered politics, then you'll have an intimate experience, and you'll not just react to something on television. I think a lot of people only cover television and their only other analogy is television. I think it is pop culture. I probably do, especially when I started, I probably talk about Russia too much, but these are all things I was interested in anyway. And they worked their way in, because they're in your background.

Thank you.