I have a love-hate relationship with syndication. On the one hand, common newspaper columns and TV shows provide even faraway people with something to discuss over a virtual water cooler. On the other hand, it is killing commercial radio, leaving hordes of on-air talent to scavenge for voiceover work as the content increasingly originates from stations in other cities.
When John Hughes died suddenly last week, it seemed most news outlets carried their own tributes, which seems only fair. The sheer diversity of our country’s media critics — ordinarily a good thing — also revealed some problems in columns that rehashed the same IMDB factoids or were just plain boring. Roger Ebert’s writing is syndicated to over 200 newspapers in the country. A.O. Scott writes for the New York Times and is well-spread in his own right. Both writers excel because their work and wordplay is simply fun to read, even if one has no intention of seeing a particular film or talking about a certain director. Both wrote well crafted Hughes tributes, though Scott touchingly proved that he “got it,” and reminded us that some people just don’t.
None of that matters now. The most important tribute to date came from way outside the media system, which makes me wonder what kind of future media, information and entertainment have. This is the only John Hughes tribute you need to read. Its facts did not come from a hasty IMDB search, they came from someone who knew him. It is just as well written as what came from the big hitters. It should have appeared in every newspaper in the country.
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