A jab at Alycia

At first, I wasn’t sure I had much to offer on the latest Alycia Lane brouhaha, but after careful consideration, I decided that it didn’t matter whether or not I had anything substantive to add. I owe it to the hundreds of Google searchers that come here in search of Alycia Lane stuff. So, here’s my two cents.

THE STORY: Anchorwoman Alycia Lane's future with KYW (CBS3) is uncertain after her arrest early Sunday on charges of slugging a plainclothes New York City police officer. She is also accused of shouting obscenities at the officer and calling her a "dyke". Observers say her return to her $700,000-a-year anchor job hinges not only on her legal case - a felony charge of second-degree assault that could take months to resolve - but the court of public opinion.

Alycia’s latest dust-up with the NYPD isn’t strike one. It isn’t even strike two, and for those of us who are old enough to remember when television had real journalists, it isn’t all that shocking, either.

The early days of television news had field reporters and anchors that cut their journalistic teeth covering World War 2 and later, the turmoil of the 1960s. Men like Edward R. Murrow, Charles K. Smith, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite. They were men who wrote their own copy and conducted themselves with the dignity befitting the job. Recently, television news (especially the local end) has degenerated into a promotional device for the network and a feeder for the evening’s programming. It features one beautiful face after another at the anchor desk, where it appears that the only qualification is nice hair and smooth skin. As we know, once the standards are lowered, they are not going to return.

At this point, Alycia is little more than a local news version of Britney Spears – a celebrity by virtue of having no virtue. That is, she draws unwarranted attention to herself. She sent provocative e-mail photos to a married man-friend and appeared on Dr. Phil’s dopey show twice to discuss her divorce. She clearly lacks the common sense necessary to be a responsible journalist, if you believe that news anchors are journalists to begin with. Odd behavior is a great promotional device, but when it involves the police and arrest records, the entertainment angle is gone.

That isn’t to say that it is necessary to be steadfast and stodgy as a news anchor, but it does mean that you should comport yourself with dignity, since you are asking people to trust you enough to allow you to tell us what’s going on in the world. When you become the news, worlds collide.

Whether or not the allegations of Alycia’s most recent rumpus is true is irrelevant. What matters is that she found herself in such a situation to begin with, and it points to a general lack of understanding of both her position and her obligation to it. She claims innocence, but let’s face it, when it’s your word against a police officer we know who is going to win.

At least the people in charge at KYW (CBS3) have had the good sense to relieve her of her duties, lest the broadcast become even more of a circus than normal. For those of you who need your Alycia Lane fix, you’ll have to try YouTube or your stash of video tapes, because it appears as though she has read her last story for a while … or ever.

The best perspective comes from Tom Petner, the director of Temple University’s Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab (whatever that is) who said, “The personality is in danger of overtaking the content.”

It happened a long time ago, Tom. To be frank, there wasn’t much content to begin with, which is where the trouble always starts.