Babble on.
David Akin has put up a post on his blog in which he excerpts without comment from a couple of pieces that discuss
media and blogging. Note to David: it's a
blog, you're supposed to tell us what it means
to you.
Here's a chunk of what he cut and pasted:
I'm all for blogs and blogging. But I'm not blind to the limitations and the flaws of the blogosphere - its superficiality, its emphasis on opinion over reporting, its echolalia, its tendency to reinforce rather than challenge ideological extremism and segregation. Now, all the same criticisms can (and should) be hurled at segments of the mainstream media. And yet, at its best, the mainstream media is able to do things that are different from - and, yes, more important than - what bloggers can do. Those despised "people in a back room" can fund in-depth reporting and research. They can underwrite projects that can take months or years to reach fruition - or that may fail altogether. They can hire and pay talented people who would not be able to survive as sole proprietors on the Internet. They can employ editors and proofreaders and other unsung protectors of quality work. They can place, with equal weight, opposing ideologies on the same page. Forced to choose between reading blogs and subscribing to, say, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Atlantic, and the Economist, I will choose the latter. I will take the professionals over the amateurs.
But I don't want to be forced to make that choice.
Holy missing the point, Batman.
Let's start with the whole idea of "opinion over reporting." Journalists are weaned on the idea of objective, impartial reporting as a separate beast altogether from editorializing. One of the most interesting aspects of my little neighbourhood within the blogosphere is that the bloggers I interact with understand there's no such separation. "Objective reporting" is like a unicorn: a pleasant myth, but you'll never find it in real life. Journalism would be a lot more relevant if it would give up the ghost on that front and join the rest of us in acknowledging that everyone,
everyone involved in the flow of information cherry-picks from the almost infinite supply of facts available for reporting each and every day. Just like David did by even choosing the articles he so lamely posts without throwing in his two cents (OK, I'll stop ragging him on this now).
Let's also address the idea that placing opposing viewpoints on the same page with equal weight is somehow valuable. This has got to be the biggest single scam in all of journalism. And I'll tell you why.
Let's say you've got a pain in your side. You go to the doctor, and the doctor tells you it's appendicitis. But in the interests of "balance," you also ask your six-year-old son for his diagnosis. He says it's God punishing you for not letting him have a second helping of chocolate cake at Billy's birthday party on the weekend. Giving those two opinions equal weight is what journalists hide behind every day, in order to mask their own illiteracy in the subjects they cover.
I see it all the time in
military reporting. You query MGen (Ret) Lewis MacKenzie on combat operations, a subject he spent the majority of his adult life studying and applying, a subject he mastered to the point where he was promoted nearly to the top of his profession. And then, in the interests of "balance," you quote Dawn Black, a politician whose entire body of knowledge of things martial would fit comfortably on the back of a cocktail napkin. That's not balance, it's professional malpractice - and although I've picked on Akin here, I will point out that it's standard practice across the trade.
The rest of the argument in Akin's quoted article revolves around money, pure and simple: media outlets have the coin to fund better stories. Fair enough, as far as it goes - I don't have the time or resources to do half the research I want to do each blogging day. But that line of reasoning assumes that more time and money will attract better writers, producers, and on-air talent. I say that's garbage.
Wretchard is far more insightful than
Siddiqui, and he doesn't make TorStar money, or have a TorStar expense account. Heck, I started writing at
The Torch in order to combat the abysmal standard of media coverage on the Canadian Forces, and it's now read by journalists who actually cover the CF
for a living, MP's and their staffers, consultants, lobbyists, and defence contractors - not to mention soldiers and other officials at DND.
If folks like that who rely on good information about the CF choose to come to a site like mine to supplement their media diet, what does that tell you about the substance - or rather the lack thereof - of the journalism within my little area of interest? I'll spell it out for you: if the paid media was that much superior to the blogosphere, as the article Akin quotes suggests, there would be no audience for an amateur like me who writes for free in his limited spare time.
This isn't to say that blogging is perfect or that traditional journalism is useless. The echo-chamber criticism is quite valid, for example. And more often than not, bloggers rely on the MSM as secondary-source fodder for tertiary-source blogging.
But as more and more bloggers witness newsworthy events first-hand and post about them online, that chain of information will break down. It's already happening in
more technical fields, where the experts (the scientists, the researchers, the analysts) are taking their message directly from raw data to public consumption in one step. Who needs a reporter on the "science beat" for the Globe and Mail these days, when you can read the scientist's own words without the filter of a less technically-competent journalist in the way?
It's fascinating to watch journalists try to justify their diminishing contribution in the value chain. I'm an insurance broker by trade, a middleman - much like a journalist. I act as a buffer between the insurance companies and the insurance consumers, in the same way that a journalists acts between the creators of news and the consumers of news.
But here's the big difference: I add value. I get paid for my specific expertise. I make sure my clients' needs are being met by the products they buy, and I make sure they understand the limitations of those products. I'm their professional guide through a technically challenging insurance and risk management minefield.
Tell me what value most reporters add to their stories? Do they know their subject inside and out? Can they knowledgeably separate the wheat from the chaff for their audience? Or do they actually distort the truth by forcing it through their mostly uninformed filter?
I'd argue there's actually an advantage to part-time, volunteer blogging over paid media: we don't
have to make money on the stories we tell. We're not slaves to ratings or advertising dollars, so we can communicate a boring story without sensationalizing it. We can delve into the complexities of a subject without fear of our audience changing the channel. We can follow our heart on what's important and what's not without having to pitch our ideas to a producer or editor. We can tell it straight - and I don't mean "tell it like it is," but rather "tell it like we see it" and let our readers make up their own minds.
It's a real shame that journalists commenting about the blogosphere so often resemble the astronomers of the day who opposed Galileo. Instead of trying to justify their shortcomings, their mistakes, their flawed
status quo, they should be embracing the compelling evidence that indicates why their model hasn't been working. Because only at that point can they begin the difficult process of fixing it.
Instead of focusing on why blogging is inferior, journalists need to look at how they can add value to the information distribution chain. Without that epiphany, and the hard work that comes after, I'm afraid the mainstream media will eventually collapse under the weight of their own arrogance and sense of privilege. What a shame that would be.
Babble off.
