Interestingly enough, a few days after I wrote my first half of this post, Verily Magazine online provided a similarly-oriented article, basically discussing the addictiveness of online shows.
I was particularly struck by some of author Lacy Cooke's commentary on comparing addictive TV shows to books you can't stop reading:
"We’ve all had that book that we couldn’t put down, though, so what makes this different? There’s something about TV that manipulates our emotions in a way that books do not. Music and visual cues are powerful. With books, we create images in our minds, while in TV shows, images are fed to us, crafted to produce certain emotions."How does this tie into the life of a journalist, thereby making this topic relevant to my generally journalism-oriented blog?
The issue of creativity.
As a writer and reporter, a lot of what I do is create. Of course, my framework is always based on the facts I gather from my interviews and sources, but it requires a creative mind to be able to construct a readable story out of so many scribbled/haphazardly typed notes.
When I begin to sketch out the images of my stories (so to speak), I have to be certain that my readers can envision what I'm describing. With growing multimedia platforms, this has changed to a degree, as you can now include video and audio clips and all sorts of other interactive things to digital stories.
But the words do remain.
If I get accustomed to solely being fed stories that are played out on a screen before me -- without ways of experiencing real life around me, like reading, exploring or adventuring -- my craft will suffer. My ability to create lively, interesting stories will diminish if I forget how to use the imagination.
This is a bit drastic of an example, I suppose. As I mentioned in my other post, I'm not condoning the elimination of all TV shows everywhere for everyone. Moderation, folks, moderation.
But it's food for thought. The imagination is a rather valuable thing: it's important to keep it alive.
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