by Steven J. Cohen, Publisher

Three recent news stories have brought editing-related issues to the front pages of our newspapers and magazines. First, TiVo, ReplayTV and other digital video recorders are shaking up the advertising establishment by making it easy for consumers to skip commercials. The networks are taking this very seriously and predict substantially lowered income if they don't respond. One growing answer is product placement, on dramatic, reality and talk shows, without any obvious indication that what's being shown is an ad. In the future, we might not have to deal with act breaks, but television would be one long commercial -- all advertising, all the time. This is really a public policy question. Do we want our media labeled -- ads separated from content? Or do corporate sponsors deserve the freedom to say or do whatever they please?

In a related development, the computer industry is engaged in a lobbying war with the big media companies over the ease with which PCs can duplicate copyrighted material. Computer companies want to be able to make their machines as powerful as possible. They believe that copy protection can always be defeated and the "viral marketing" of piracy can work to the advantage of a distributor. But if films can be copied and distributed as easily as CDs and MP3s, how will they be financed? This is an arcane, technical issue, but it has profound implications. Should media be ubiquitously sharable? Should a Xerox machine be able to copy anything?

Finally, in a recent cover story, Scientific American offered an in-depth look at television addiction. Unlike most such articles, which typically focus on whether children imitate media violence, this one was about the act of watching TV itself. In research studies, a host of disturbing parallels can be shown between television watching and drug dependency. And in material most relevant to us, the article described a neurological effect called "the orienting response." When presented with novel stimuli, people tend to freeze momentarily and pay full attention. Blood vessels in the brain dilate, the heart slows and blood flow to major muscle groups is reduced, enhancing one's ability to focus. But if people remain in this state too long they become frozen in attention and unable to act. Sound like some couch potatoes you know? The orienting response can be measured in brain waves, and researchers have actually studied its relationship to editorial features. Cuts, zooms, pans, sudden sounds, all trigger it. One study looked at cut frequency and how this affected memory and learning. At lower frequencies, cuts actually make viewers sharper, improving memory recognition. But above a threshold, additional cuts activate the orienting response continuously and overload the brain. What's the cutoff? About one cut in twelve seconds. How many shows today are cut that slowly? And what is this kind of continuous stimulation doing to our ability to concentrate and learn?

A decade ago we were among the first people to use a new generation of powerful media computers. Today, those computers and the work we do with them are central to a series of critical public policy issues that promise to influence the content of our culture for years to come. You may not learn much about these issues on the nightly news. But maybe it's time we took them more seriously. If we who deal with media for our livelihoods don't pay attention, who will?