All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Is the entertainment media condensing the Generation Gap?

The ‘generation’ – a slippery unit of time that once was shorthand for the age difference between parents and children – is getting crunched. And if the media isn’t causing it, there’s no more obvious way to recognize it.

Exhibit A? Last night’s showing of “Charlie Brown Christmas.”

Exhibit B? Just about everything else on TV.

Yes yes, I overstate. But to make a point. Doesn’t it seem like the younger the audience, the more that media options are chopping kids into 3-year demographics? Like, the 13-year old kid who watches “The Hills” on MTV has it all over his or her 9 or 10 year old sibling watching “High School Musical.” (Forget about Postman’s book “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” are we Niche’ing ourselves to death?)

Not all that long ago, there was a canon of Things Everybody Read. And then there were the Three Network TV Choices. So everybody, with the one TV in the living room, was starting from the same point. (Don’t worry. I, like Tony Soprano, know that ‘Remember when’ is the lowest form of conversation – and media commentary.)

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You can’t stop Harry Potter. You can’t even hope to contain him.

According to reports, some party poopers have decided to post details about the final installment of the Harry Potter series, scheduled for sale on Saturday – with one spoilsport going so far as to take pictures of each and every page and upload them onto the web. According to Salon.com:

Someone has meticulously snapped shots of each page. Some who've discussed leaked copies say that they've seen only Pages 1 through 495. But the copy I have includes all the pages; I could, if I wanted to, tell you the very last line of the very last Harry Potter book right now…

How did "Potter" get out? I have no idea. One account fingers a Canadian fellow named Byron Ng who says he stumbled upon the cache after some intrepid Web searching. But it's a complete mystery who posted the pictures. The person's fingers can be seen in some of the shots, and there's an occasional glimpse of a brown shoe. All you can tell is that the person is white and has a taste for drab carpeting -- not to mention extremely good connections.

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Just kidding.

Or maybe not. I really have no idea. My best guess is he meets up with the kid from High School Musical and they go off to dance and fight dragons.

Anyway, here's a question: How will media outlets report on the last Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," which comes out next week? As a colleague's wife (sort of) said: "If they tell me the ending before I've finished the book, I'll never watch them again."

But it's NEWS, people! NEWS! So how do you cover it? That decision is somewhat simplified by the fact that almost no one has read the book – media outlets couldn't spoil it even if they wanted to. "We're trying to find out as much as we can, but there's really only so much we can find out," says producer Erica Zolberg, who is doing a story on Pottermania for tomorrow night's "Evening News." (For the record, Zolberg says she wouldn't spoil the end even if she knew it.)

The angle of tomorrow's story, then, isn't going to be what's in the book, but how the publishers and their partners are keeping that information quiet. Zolberg spoke to Jim Dale, the voice of the Potter audiobooks and one of the few people who has gotten his hands on the book, as well as the webmasters of two of the big Harry Potter Web sites. Everyone, it turns out, is following the "no spoilers" policy to the letter.

And that's a good thing, says Patricia Shevlin, executive producer of the CBS Evening News Weekend Editions -- and a big Potter fan.

"People who really love the story don't want to know the end before they read it themselves," she says. Shevlin was recently in the newsroom when a correspondent started talking about who dies in the book according to an account that had been posted online. She cut the correspondent off before any names came out. "I just said, 'don't talk to me!,'" recalls Shevlin.

Even after the book comes out next Friday, Shevlin says she won't reveal anything. "I think you owe it to the children out there not to tell them," she says. "We're probably doing another piece next Saturday, and we'll show the lines, people buying it, Pottermania. But we're not going to tell the end. Most kids are going to need some time to get through the book. I would never give the ending away before they do."

Just kidding.

Or maybe not. I really have no idea. My best guess is he meets up with the kid from High School Musical and they go off to dance and fight dragons.

Anyway, here's a question: How will media outlets report on the last Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," which comes out next week? As a colleagues wife (sort of said): "If they tell me the ending before I've finished the book, I'll never watch them again."

But it's NEWS, people! NEWS! So how do you cover it? That decision is somewhat simplified by the fact that almost no one has read the book – media outlets couldn't spoil it even if they wanted to. "We're trying to find out as much as we can, but there's really only so much we can find out," says producer Erica Zolberg, who is doing a story on Pottermania for tomorrow night's "Evening News." (For the record, Zolberg says she wouldn't spoil the end even if she knew it.)

The angle of tomorrow's story, then, isn't going to be what's in the book, but how the publishers and their partners are keeping that information quiet. Zolberg spoke to Jim Dale, the voice of the Potter audiobooks and one of the few people who has gotten his hands on the book, as well as the webmasters of two of the big Harry Potter Web sites. Everyone, it turns out, is following the "no spoilers" policy to the letter.

And that's a good thing, says Patricia Shevlin, executive producer of the CBS Evening News Weekend Editions -- and a big Potter fan.

"People who really love the story don't want to know the end before they read it themselves," she says. Shevlin was recently in the newsroom when a correspondent started talking about who dies in the book according to an account that had been posted online. She cut the correspondent off before any names came out. "I just said, 'don't talk to me!,'" recalls Shevlin.

Even after the book comes out next Friday, Shevlin says she won't reveal anything. "I think you owe it to the children out there not to tell them," she says. "We're probably doing another piece next Saturday, and we'll show the lines, people buying it, Pottermania. But we're not going to tell the end. Most kids are going to need some time to get through the book. I would never give the ending away before they do."

What does speculation over the possible demise of Harry Potter and the political debate about the war on terrorism have in common? Over at Captain’s Quarters, proof that we can put politics into just about anything:

On the other hand, we could also explore what others might do to justify Harry's death. Suppose, for example, that Rowling let Howard Dean write the last volume. We could then get treated to Voldemort as a misunderstood victim, or perhaps a bad guy but no worse than the arrogant and arbitrary Albus Dumbledore, who tried to control the wizarding world just as surely as Tom Riddle. Why, Dumbledore taught Voldemort almost everything he knew! And the Ministry of Magic spent years denying Voldemort's danger, so obviously they are to blame for all that has happened, not the evil wizard (as if there is any such thing as evil). Harry, therefore, is little more than a fool that chose the wrong horse and got himself killed for it. Good thing, too, because if he survived, he would get blamed for all the deaths that occurred just because he found it necessary to oppose Voldemort.


Now that would make one creepy ending for a delightful series.

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