The Warm Glow of the AM Dial: Revisiting WJZ’s Eyewitness News Morning Edition in December 2011
Looking back, Eyewitness News Morning Edition in December 2011 represents the last exhale of the pre-streaming era. It was local, it was tactile, and it was limited. You couldn't pause it easily. You couldn't swipe to the next story. If you missed Marty’s forecast at 6:15, you had to wait until 6:45. eyewitness news morning edition wjz december 2011
BALTIMORE — In the winter of 2011, the world was still shaking off the Occupy Wall Street tents and preparing for the end of the Mayan calendar’s “long count” (a panic that would peak exactly one year later). But for early risers in Central Maryland, the only count that mattered at 5:00 AM was the one leading to traffic on the JFX and the wind chill off the Patapsco. The Warm Glow of the AM Dial: Revisiting
The "Morning Edition" was still a ritual. You watched it while your single-cup Keurig brewed a K-Cup of Pumpkin Spice (which was still a seasonal novelty, not a cultural cliché). The teleprompter would flash stories about the ongoing Iraq War withdrawal, the final space shuttle moves to museums, and the Ravens’ playoff push (the Harbaughs were about to face off in the AFC Championship, though nobody knew it yet). You couldn't swipe to the next story
What makes rewinding to December 2011 so fascinating is the technology. This was the era of the "Early Adopter" smartphone. You had a BlackBerry Bold or maybe an iPhone 4S (Siri had just launched that October, and she was hilariously bad). WJZ’s graphics were still chunky, the lower thirds were bold, and the sound of the news ticker was the white noise of a million kitchens.