The main difference between watching the U.S. Open on TV and watching it live is the addition, in the former case, of commentators. Last year, when I was covering the event, I'd see their backs as they sat silently in their studio that resembled a treehouse while I hurried between courts and press room (which they never entered). To my experience of the event they were completely peripheral, a brightly-lit collection of well-dressed bobbleheads, always seen from behind.
Now I'm a TV viewer again, and the U.S. Open comes filtered through garrulous people in makeup. They talk and talk and rarely say anything of note, especially when sitting around a desk (as opposed to covering a match, when, especially if John McEnroe is announcing, and particularly if it's a lopsided match, you sometimes get an offbeat remark). But I heard more memorable quips in one typical morning in the press room than I've heard in the first three days of this year's tournament.
And, because a camera hates nuance, the commentators overstate almost everything. Yesterday they treated the announced retirement of Andy Roddick as if it were the abdication of a king. His occasionally boorish behavior on the court - and also in press conferences (which commentators rarely attend) - was explained as simply, and commendably, Andy's way of being honest.
The bland and reverential treatment of players is explained by the fact that most of the commentators were players themselves, are or have been coaches of players, and are currently friends with players. (Mary Joe Fernandez was seen at one tournament sitting in Roger Federer's box - the box of the man it is her job to cover.) Writers - those perennially nonaligned, nondescript types tapping on laptops in the windowless press room - are the ones to follow if you want frank and lively coverage of the game.
For its 25th anniversary issue, Conde Nast Traveler has replaced the usual model on its cover with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Inside, the editor writes of the magazine's commitment, throughout its quarter century of existence, to "truth in travel," noting correctly that before 1987 the free trip was an accepted part of the world of travel writing.
Contributors remember meaningful trips; Pico Iyer describes a Christmas in Ethiopia, and concludes that "travel is ultimately about going to a place from which you'll never entirely come back." Twelve people are presented as visionary global citizens. There is a long article about a bird watching trip by Jonathan Franzen.
It is a beautiful example of what a travel magazine can be - topical, thoughtful, engaged, literary - until you get to the back, page 222, and read the "Places & Prices" box for the article on Myanmar. For lodging in Rangoon, three hotels are recommended, none of them under $300 a night. This in the capital of one of the poorest countries in the world. I wish the magazine had the same dedication to reality that it has to truth.
My Isaac MVP award goes to WLRN, which broke into its regularly scheduled programming throughout the day yesterday with calm, informative and brief updates on the storm before sending listeners back to shows like A Prairie Home Companion which provided something just as vital as information on a day when everyone was urged to stay inside: entertainment.
TV news, on the other hand, monopolized the three major networks - cancelling coverage of once-a-year events like Arthur Ashe Kid's Day at the U.S. Open - to give us blather from reporters getting rained on out in the field, to post unrepresentative photos sent in by viewers (the downed tree was the exception yesterday), to show the de rigueur footage of surfers defying the elements (I suspect it's the same film, recycled year after year) and to tell us, over and over again, what we could all clearly see through our windows: that it was wet and windy outside.
Robert Hughes, who died yesterday at the age of 74, was most famous for his art criticism, much of which he wrote for Time, and his history of Australia, The Fatal Shore.
In his excellent memoir, Things I Didn't Know, published in 2006, Hughes wrote of his bosses at Time: "Instead of keeping their heads they panicked and decided to try and compete with the Internet and TV, to go way down on the scale of intelligence, to embark on a policy of cretinous impressionism."
It was a precise assessment of the recent history of journalism.
Last night it was The New Yorker, including Louis Menand's essay, "Glory Days: What we watch when we watch the Olympics."