Video out x4

Four years ago this week, I walked away from television. It was June 2002 when I left KCPQ-TV Fox Seattle as its part-time technology analyst and commentator, contributing live and taped segments to both the morning and night-time newscasts. I'd done it for four years, the people were great, the parting was amicable, but the station was moving in a direction that didn't fit my skills or interests.

I've earlier recounted my thoughts on the state of TV tech coverage at the time on Lost Remote, and on the state of TV news a year later on Byte Me Online. Now, with four years of perspective behind me, the most telling effect -- now that I no longer have to watch TV news -- is how little of it I do watch. (And earlier, I was a full-time broadcast news reporter/anchor before a consultant and commentator.)

So, with my rear-view mirror getting a clearer picture, consider these Three Tips for Better News Consumption:

Befriend technology. I have two TiVos, two XM Satellite Radios, an iPod Nano and way too many computers. Between these, I can pick and choose which news programming I want, and consume it when I want. I get my breaking news from Google News, my commentary from Comedy Central's The Daily Show via TiVo and NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me via podcast, and my live news from BBC World via XM. I still listen to local NPR stations in the car and get two daily newspapers, but that's for the familiarity of newsprint. Think of it as comfort news.

Beware experts. Take anything an "expert" on TV (yes, I know I was one) says with a grain of salt. Many have conflicts of interest, some not so hidden. Back when I was doing commentary, for example, another regular contributor to a major market TV station -- who, to all viewer appearances, was reporting on cool new products and trends -- had advertising on his own Web site for some of the same companies he might talk about. Here, disclosure is important. Yes, technically he was not a "reporter." But the ethicist in me says if you talk the newscast talk, you walk the ethical walk.

Become independent. The one failing of a long essay I wrote on the future of news back in 1992 was the assumption that the proliferation of satellite and online media would mean more original reporting to fill the news hole. Instead, the hole just got deeper and muckier, clogged with opinion and blather on the same rehashed news. I don't need a shouting host to tell me how to think. Instead, I need someone to draw out and illuminate the issues, keep opinion clearly labeled and respect that I can think independently. Good decisions in a democracy should be based on solid information. But reporting and analyzing are hard; pontificating is easy. If it's too easy, it's probably wrong.

I still get the occasional glassy-eyed stare from someone who recognizes me from, well, somewhere. But these days I don't ask if they watch Q13. I just tell them I have a common face.