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New York, 8:16 AM
Tue Nov 10
55 posts in the last 24 hours
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07/22/09
07/22/09
07/22/09
I'll cite an example that's being consistently reported on by one of Gawker's many satellite sites, Valleywag. The blog Techcrunch was given leaked documents that are quite embarrassing to Twitter (http://gawker.com/5316432/techcrunch-supresses-its-best-scoops-at-...), and the response from the tech blogosphere at large to Techcrunch's publishing of the documents has been nearly unanimous in its contempt and outrage over otherwise unremarkable scoop journalism, the sort that one would think ought to be enthusiastically pursued by traditional outlets (Simon's own portrayal of newspapers doesn't seem to give the idea much credence, I have to say).
This is the exact sort of cozy, incestuous relationship between journalists and public figures that citizen journalism was supposed to do away with. Isn't it troubling that these journalists of the not-so-distant future are running screaming from the things that journalists are supposed to be doing, the things that make the fourth estate "vital to our democracy"? Even if there was a blog niche for investigative journalism that the leaked documents would have been welcomed in, the tech blogs wouldn't have run the story on principle and thus the selective readers who might be most interested in the news would likely never be aware of it. Isn't that bothersome?
07/22/09
07/22/09
What Simon is proposing might be a violation of antitrust regulations, but newspapers hardly seem to be a threat to people or their competitors.
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07/22/09
Man, we're fucked. But I guess I already knew that from watching The Wire.
07/22/09
07/22/09
David Simon, I don't need your punditry based on a p.o.v. that's 20 years out of date. Let go of that side of your brain, man, and just keep telling stories. Jeez.
07/22/09
07/22/09
1. Either you define "value" in a black/white way that denies the existence of the internet (and, by extension, the technological realities that must change how we think about this term), or you don't believe in "value" at all.
2. News publications shouldn't consider any subscription plan other than one which locks away all content behind a pay gate.
3. News publications which, by the way, have very little leverage these days, should issue ultimatums to wire service consortiums that ultimately don't need them.
4. News publishers should put together a common legal defense fund presumably so they can sue anybody involved in aggregation, which in Simon's mind probably amounts to anybody who links to a news article in any way.
5. News publishers should engage in flagrant violation of antitrust laws because it is the only way they can weather the storm. Since they're newspapers, and not, say, pharmaceutical companies, this should be allowed.
6. Online news outlets don't stand a chance of ever offering good reporting any time in the near future.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think there's a good idea in the bunch.
05/07/09
05/07/09
05/07/09
but there are those in every field
i think it's more like another phase in the industrial revolution, where we find ourselves right now
a brief history of news:
millions of years ago: everyone knew everything because the communities were so small and the needs were so urgent
thousands of years ago: if there was enough surplus to create a caste system, the rulers told the oppressed when they would eat and how much; that was the sum total of news
400 years ago: the gutenberg revolution and the advent of widespread literacy made the growing educated classes both more informed and more sharply divided from the illiterate; specialization of viewpoints and audiences gives rise to party pamphleteering
100 years ago: mass media, the birth of the objective style and ad revenues is something brand new
50 years ago: the peak of this phase
30 years ago: newspapers start losing their double digit profit margins and start cutting back on costs and quality, beginning their death spiral, which will be speeded up by the internet
10 years ago: last chance for newspapers
now: a new style, partisanship and scholarship combined, along the lines of talkingpointsmemo.com is the next best hope for quality; all else is following the mass media down the drain. blogging and bloggers and fierce and committed, but they are like brilliant indie films: gorgeous, ardent, effective but ultimately small
05/07/09
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05/07/09
It's the bunk. Here's the way the Long Tail of blogging works. Somewhere in that vast sphere there is one at least who has spent a career counseling military vets. He renders a more accurate report than you'll find out in the mainstream.
Those with actual experience in the trade know of the great gap between what the principals want reported and what actually goes down in the back office. The blogger might be one who interviewed prisoners at Gitmo; the MSM will interview the horrible joke Dohbya and his crew.
05/07/09
sitting thru the meetings provides the illusion of journalistic coverage without the substance
that said, something like the poynter foundation is better than a trust
05/07/09
One problem with your strangely right-wing free market solution is that even though this kind of volunteer work happens in brilliant little spurts, as a society we can't reliably depend on this particular really, really free market of unpaid work. Huffington's indictments of the MSM are sound (and depressing), but they aren't a good excuse for relying on unpaid citizen journalists to fulfill one of the basic functions of a democracy. It would be like de-funding municipal hospitals and hoping that all those high-minded, naturally caregiving citizens out there would spontaneously replace them. Because, you know, people want to live in a world where we take care of each other. Or something. It's almost minarchist in its radically anti-statist approach to the provision of public goods.
05/07/09
05/07/09
"...You do not see them holding institutions accountable on a daily basis.¶ Why? Because high-end journalism — that which acquires essential information about our government and society in the first place — is a profession; it requires daily, full-time commitment by trained men and women who return to the same beats day in and day out until the best of them know everything with which a given institution is contending. For a relatively brief period in American history — no more than the last fifty years or so — a lot of smart and talented people were paid a living wage and benefits to challenge the unrestrained authority of our institutions and to hold those institutions to task. Modem newspaper reporting was the hardest and in some ways most gratifying job I ever had. I am offended to think that anyone, anywhere believes American institutions as insulated, self-preserving and self-justifying as police departments, school systems, legislatures and chief executives can be held to gathered facts by amateurs pursuing the task without compensation, training or for that matter, sufficient standing to make public officials even care to whom it is they are lying or from whom they are withholding information."
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