Is There Life After Marv?   

As surely as night follows day, the flurry of Marv Albert coverage followed the Diana extravaganza. Will the cycle be unbroken?

Anyone have a number for Betty Ford?

Because it's clear that journalism is in desperate need of its very own Betty Ford Clinic. It just can't overcome its addiction without help.

Its addiction, of course, to celebrity stories and tabloid stories and plain old news of the weird, overcovered to stunning degrees, replete with tawdry details that make the Penthouse Forum look like a newsletter from the Promise Keepers.

It's become a ritual. After the latest "feeding frenzy" or "media circus," the news business takes on the air of an alcoholic paralyzed by guilt and shame over the events of the night before.

Until the bars reopen.

In the past, there was at least the proverbial decent interval between one episode of journalistic debauch and the next. But not anymore.

On September 18, at its annual convention in New Orleans, the Radio-Television News Directors Association convened a panel on the Princess Diana excesses. New RTNDA President Barbara Cochran told me afterward she saw raising standards as one of her most important missions.

She should be busy.

Because the exclamations of dismay had barely died down when sportscaster Marv Albert went on trial for sexual assault. Even in a world whose senses have been numbed by O.J., Nancy and Tonya, the Menendez brothers, the Bobbitts, etc., etc., The Marv Albet Extravaganza was special.

ît's hard to say what made it most special. Was it that it was so egregiously overplayed? Or that it set records for the amount of really graphic and sordid sexual detail to enhance the nation's news reports, sometimes on the front page?

Think about it: The sexual assault trial of a low-level celebrity, thanks to some seriously kinky elements, got the sixth most airtime on the nightly network newscasts for the week of September 22.

ün September's AJR we praised USA Today for evolving into a serious newspaper. The editor talked about the paper's first issue, in which Princess Grace's death was the lead and the assassination of a key figure in the Mideast was briefed on the front page. Wouldn't happen today, he said.

So what story did USA Today showcase most prominently out front the day after Albert pleaded guilty? That's right, the Marv Albert story.

When we talk about the infotainment binges of recent years it's important to make distinctions. The O.J. Simpson trial and Princess Diana's death were major news stories. News is not just budget hearings and arms negotiations and Bosnia and campaign fundraising abuses.

Simpson was an American icon. And his trial touched raw nerves involving race and sex. Princess Diana and her fairy-tale wedding, nightmare marriage and struggle for self, not to mention her charitable causes, were a source of fascination for an America still seemingly entranced by the royals.

So treating these two stories as big news isn't the problem. It's the sense of balance, of proportion, the sheer overkill that can make it seem as if nothing else that really matters is happening anywhere in the world.

The other problem, of course, is the crass way that stories like these are often chased and portrayed.

Even more troubling is the way that the small bore curiosities involving Nancy and Tonya and John and Lorena and Marv and the paramour turned victim become world-class news.

üake JonBenet Ramsey. Will someone brilliant explain to me why this is such a big deal, rather than a good local murder mystery whose weird child beauty pageant angle might propel it to 15 minutes of national fame rather than what seems like 15 years?

When I described this as the most outrageously "overcovered" story in years, "60 Minutes" Executive Producer Don Hewitt corrected me. It was really the most "overmentioned" story, he said: Most of the virtually news-free updates hardly rose to the level of coverage.

So what next? Is it really possible to do anything to break the cycle of sleaze?

It's certainly an uphill struggle as far as the networks are concerned. Hewitt points out that's his fault. For years news was a loss leader for the networks. Then along came "60 Minutes" with its lofty ratings. News became a profit center.

And what about newspapers? In the increasingly crowded media world of cable channels and Web sites and talk radio and TV, individual decision making, following your own instincts, holding firm to your convictions when the story is "out there," when everyone else is running with it, is not for the fainthearted.

ýhat's why Sandy Rowe's idea sounds intriguing. Rowe, editor of Portland's Oregonian and president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, has launched an ASNE initiative to help salvage journalism's credibility. One aspect will be a think tank including the editors of some of America's major papers.

¡aybe, Rowe says, if a good number of editors agree on a strategy to downplay or ignore tabloid-style stories, it will make it easier for others to follow suit.

Often mainstream journalists complain that they are lumped together with those who practice lowest common denominator journalism. How, they wonder, can they get the public to differentiate?

Maybe by acting in ways that show that there is a difference.