The Twitterization of the News

Over the past three days I've been discussing on my radio show how it is that the entire nation has come to believe, erroneously, that an Arizona legislator has called for and is pushing a law to make church attendance mandatory.  The story went from one politician's tweet to headlines within mainstream media news reports at the speed of light.  Today I wrote a piece for the Radio Television Digital News Association about how this happened, and what it says about how Twitter values have caused mainstream journalists to lose their minds.   You can find that article here.

Sylvia Allen and Mandatory Church: Anatomy of a Hatchet Job

The startling allegation exploded into mainstream news headlines. It began with a single tweet.  These days, that is all it takes.

I have to hand it to Arizona State Sen. Steve Farley, Democrat from Tucson.  He did a number on Republican Sylvia Allen.  And he did it with the full and enthusiastic cooperation of the media.  News stories from coast to coast are proclaiming that Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen “wants to make church attendance mandatory.” 


Does she really?  Well, it’s funny you should ask.  Because not one of the reporters who rushed to air or publish this story bothered to do so.  Just for grins, and to be different from the mainstream media, let’s check the facts.

Oh, my God. Is it happening? This was supposed to be fiction!

This novel doesn't have a ripped-from-the-headlines feel.  It's the other way around.  Real events are ripping headlines from the novel.  There were two more this week.

Violent flash mobs hit the streets?  Check.

Jetliners falling out of the sky, under the control of homicidal maniacs?  Check.

Sleeping sickness erupts?  Check.

World goes mad?  Zombie apocalypse to follow?  Stand by.

Coast To Coast AM listeners heard these predictions just last month.  Readers of my novel, A Journal of the Crazy Year, saw them even sooner.

In Praise of the Humble Zombie

Boy meets girl.  Girl becomes zombie.  Can’t live with her. Can’t shoot her.  Sometimes love is complicated.

Zombies are all the rage right now.  Everyone, it seems, loves a good zombie story.  And how can we not?  Cue Barbara Streisand:  “People. . . .  People who eat people. . . .”

Even my cat Ellis loves zombies.  (I kid you not.  Follow this link for photographic proof).  Really, it’s no surprise.  Cats love a good chase.  Zombie movies have those out the wazoo, along with enough other plot elements to appeal across a wide demographic:  crashing cars, falling planes, burning buildings, guns galore, explosions, action, danger and adventure of all kinds, political intrigue—you name it.  The best ones even have a bit of romance.

And the good news for zombie storytellers is that creating a zombie character does not exactly present the most difficult of writing challenges.  Zombies are not particularly complicated.  Not a lot of deep psychological layers here.  The toughest problem in writing zombie dialogue is figuring out how to spell “Graaaaarrrr!”  Zombie needs are simple.  They’re very direct.  They know what they want, and they go for it.

In fact, zombies tend to be a rather homogeneous bunch.  Most of them have similar back stories.  They wake up dead one day, and realize they’re powerfully hungry.  Only one source of food will do.  They have a hard time putting their needs into words.  But they know what must be done.  They set out to do it.  And there you go.  

Of course, zombie tales can't really happen.  They're just make-believe, and contain no possible connections to real life.  Right?

But what if one did?  In fact, what if it had both feet planted in reality?

Jail for those refusing to attend church?

Does this politician really want to throw people into jail who refuse to attend church?  Democrats and the media say yes.  They're basing that on a single statement that Arizona State Rep. Sylvia Allen made in an appropriations hearing.   Here is the full comment, which as far as I have been able to tell has not been previously uploaded or included in other news stories.  See for yourself to see whether this statement amounts to a declaration that she wants to jail non-church goers, as the media are claiming.

Note:  As of this posting, two days after the event, only one media outlet had asked Allen for her side of the story, and the quote it gave was very brief.  I spoke briefly with one of her staffers Thursday afternoon, but she was out of the office and did not return my call.  She tells her side of the story in detail on her Facebook page, however.   Her full statement is pasted below.

My Journey as an Indie Author: The Story So Far

From TV news director to novelist, blogger and radio host. Two years ago I set out to reinvent myself.  What a trip it's been.

Okay, so I did what they tell you never to do:  I “quit the day job”—which in my case meant leaving a pretty good gig running a TV newsroom—in order to pursue a lifelong dream of writing fiction.  I’m sure that struck some people as being precipitous.  It wasn’t.  I had decided long ago, in consultation with my spouse, that when the time was right, and when we had a sufficient financial cushion in place, I would do this at least for a while.

I might have been tempted to wait and pad the nest egg further if not for a couple of developments that made me suspect the midnight chimes were about to sound.  For one, even though I was feeling fine, I began to have premonitions that my health was about to take a turn for the worse.  (Such feelings have served me well in the past.  I have been blogging about some of those.)  Second, waiting until retirement to do the writing I wanted to do began to seem like an increasingly long shot.  I could not help but notice that too many of my TV news colleagues weren’t making it to the finish line.