Notice that Temperance’s first attribute/quality is that she’s “camera friendly.” In a nutshell, this is the curse of broadcast news — that there is so much emphasis placed on the appearance of job candidates that there is little room for character, intellect, knowledge or street smarts. This is nothing new, of course, but this ad is most revealing and it’s not atypical of the thinking of young people.

And here’s the real nut of it. Whether she got the idea herself or somebody put it there for her, she is marketing her appearance in order to get a foot in the door, and that idea wasn’t born in a vacuum. It is what it is, and the industry is responsible for it.

And how many of the faces in our broadcast journalism or communications schools are there based upon that same belief?

When we survey the currently journalism landscape and see the explosive growth of the blogosphere, we cannot deny that one of the reasons for the phenomenon is a lack of depth in mainstream reporting (exceptions acknowledged). People are smarter than our marketing, which emphasizes sizzle over steak and performance over content. Hungry for the real meat of knowledge, we’re turning to each other — and experts who don’t happen to carry a professional badge — to help us meet our information needs.

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