Word: featurish
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Rather like an electronic USA Today, all three shows offer up not only hard news, interviews and weather but featurish pieces on everything from heart disease to tips for keeping children happy on car trips. What these programs do best is live exchanges with two or three people on different sides of an emotional issue. Good Morning America, for example, recently paired Holocaust Survivor Elie Wiesel and Conservative Columnist John Lofton; when Lofton criticized Wiesel for not speaking out against other atrocities, Wiesel's blunt rebuttal ("How dare you, really") made for affecting television...
...last July, some observers claimed that the Herald went soft. His powers were divided between Publisher Richard Capen, 49, who favors a less accusatory approach, and Executive Editor Heath Meriwether, 40, who spends much of his time discussing journalistic ethics in columns and at public meetings. Coverage is increasingly featurish; staff members joke that they sometimes produce "Jell-O journalism," with the main point of a story buried beneath paragraphs of scene setting...
...News executives, who have been beleaguered by budget cuts, controversy over a shift toward featurish news, and some highly publicized libel suits, were suddenly buoyant. They predicted that viewers would opt for the "stability" of Rather's broadcast. CBS is a little worried, however, about competition from PBS's MacNeil/Lehrer Report, which will expand to an hour on Sept. 5 and will run opposite network news in many cities. Said a CBS official: "Right now, we have the pointy-headed intellectuals and Volvo drivers. But if MacNeil/Lehrer starts doing better, more graphic television, it may win some...
Executives of the two papers display little of the courteous approval that journalists typically accord competitors. News Editor William Giles, 55, calls the featurish Free Press "superficial, flighty and frilly." Lawrence says that Giles' paper, which earnestly stresses hard news, is "dull, bland and less complete than the Free Press." Giles and Lawrence live just a block away from each other in suburban Grosse Pointe Park, but as Lawrence dryly observes, "We have certainly not had the opportunity to become close friends...
...considering an overnight news offering for years, decided to hurtle ahead: in October it will launch weeknight news shows from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m. E.T. Also in October, ABC will follow Nightline with a midnight-to-1-a.m. show featuring Interviewer Phil Donahue. NBC last month premiered a featurish hour of news from 1:30 to 2:30 a.m. four nights a week, and from 2 to 3 a.m. on Friday, and a morning program preceding Today, from 6:30 to 7 a.m., and using Today's personnel. ABC countered with a 6-to-7-a.m. headline news...