Great Hacks

Name: Aaron Barnhart
Title: Television Critic, Kansas City Star; also, TVBarn.com
Age: 42
Years in Industry: 11

Name: Adam Buckman
Title: Reporter, New York Post

Name: Ted Hearn
Title: Multichannel News, Washington News Editor
Age: 47
Years in Industry: 13
Years left in the industry: “Not sure.”

Why Them? Forget the ink-stained wretch, these 3 are Internet journalists, but with old-fashioned reporter values. Barnhart is the quintessential onliner, marrying knowledge, tech, and superhuman energy-in addition to his day job at The Star, he’s on 3 radio shows weekly, oversees the massive TV Barn site, and blogs, vlogs and Webcasts. His hack cred? He was tight with John Higgins. The NY Post’s Buckman is notable for his self-deprecating wit, trade reporter roots and independence (he loved “John From Cincinnati”). He’s also a big-media scribe who touts cable programming. “The networks are fighting a losing battle with cable” over TV drama, he wrote Aug 27. Noting John, AMC’s “Mad Men” and HBO’s “Big Love” simply “blow away” the fall network fare. Sweet swinging on the links and cutting with his pen, Multi’s steady Teddy “Ballgame” Hearn makes another 100 appearance due to his D.C. scoops and provocative blog. SA  

Aaron Barnhart
The cable industry’s biggest challenge in 2008: “Convincing people they should NOT dump their cable boxes for home networking streamed shows off the Internet.”
Top personal achievement in 2007: “My wife’s book, which I published, was named a Kansas Notable Book and won ForeWord’s book of the year in biography. And it just sold out its first printing.”
Person (other than my boss) who I’d most like to work for: “Myself”
Favorite restaurant: “In N Out Burger, which I love as only a Midwesterner who doesn’t live near one could.”
Favorite city: “Kansas City – no contest!”
Favorite TV Show: “The Wire” – “It’s going to be sad to see it go. But my answer will remain ‘The Wire’ until something better comes along, which could be a while.”
I wish cable would: “Stop making excuses and just put BBC World, France 24 and Al Jazeera English on their systems. And Link TV while they’re at it. You can’t measure the audience for most of those digital channels anyway, so why not measure something –like  the greater good you’ll be doing giving Americans real news from the rest of the planet.”
Favorite piece of tech: “Mobile TV from Verizon. Not that lame V CAST… actual CNBC, ESPN and Colbert on my phone, in real time.”
The three most played songs on my iPod are: “You Are My Sunshine” by Ray Charles; “Holiday/Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Green Day; “Donde Estabas Tu” by Omara Portuondo (“a song given to me, along with many others, by my dear friend John Higgins”).

Ted Hearn
Favorite restaurant: “Silver Diner”
Favorite song: “God Bless America”
Favorite movie: True Grit (1969)
Favorite piece of tech: “TV remote sleep timer”
Favorite TV show: “Columbo”
The world would be a better place if: “If the World Series were played in daylight.”


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