A column at Editor and Publisher's web site today (hat tip: Romanesko) purports to be a "20-something freelance writer"'s defense of newspapers, and after trying to establish his credibility by insisting that he likes blogs and "The Daily Show," he gets to this:
...newspaper readership isn’t declining because the competing media happen to be more technologically advanced; newspaper readership is declining because we have deemed the medium itself -- often calm, dispassionate, and time-consuming with all its sections and space for hundreds of articles -- flawed and out of step with the way we live. Right now, we believe there is no time and no need to read and then deliberate.... Right now, it is becoming easier to get wrapped up in the seamless lifestyle and political views of our choosing and never consider the alternatives. To read the newspaper, to wade through the swamp of stats, context, and conflicting ideas, to tempt confusion and hesitation, well -- that is not an option for the savvy-minded. Rather, we use blogs and fake news as an efficient way of staying somewhat informed and, at the same time, envisioning the world. The winks, nods, and ALL CAPS denunciations are fast becoming guides and shortcuts in a contentious, jumbled world with too many other things to do.
Call me a stodgy traitor to my generation, but this growing demand for blatant cues of interpretation is worrisome.
I think the guy misses the point, and he misses the essential nature of the way blogs actually work. A good start to understanding what blogs really do for their readers can be found in fellow talk radio guy Hugh Hewitt's new book "Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World," but I'm not just talking about the author's excellent analysis and history of the new form. In the back of the book, several readers of Hewitt's own blog contribute their commentary on how they use blogs, and included are comments like these:
-The blogosphere can point out... misleading stories and help the reader to put current events in the proper CONTEXT.
-I see the blogs as the antidote to the elitism in the MSM and politics in general.... Blogs are a filter. We badly need a detector to filter the ridiculous stuff that is on the web.
-I think this is what the conventional media is missing the most- not that more of us will turn to only bloggers, Drudge or Fox News for our news, but rather, with the advent of the new media, we will end up demanding more news from more sources. Editorial decisions concerning which news stories will be covered are no longer the province of the networks and the NYT and WP.
Well, yes. There aren't studies to show this, but I suspect that most blog users use the Net to get more than the single perspective on a story that the mainstream media offers. They don't abandon the traditional mass media, they supplement it. That's what I do. Blogs have not replaced my reading of daily newspapers, but I do check blogs for opinion and context, much the same way one would read the op-ed page or the local columnists in the past. The reason the op-eds and the columnists are "past," however, is that with blogs, I don't have to wait a whole day or even longer to read what commentators have to say. Something happens in the world and there's Power Line in Minnesota, and Tim Blair in Australia, and Colby Cosh and Damian Penny in Canada, and countless others all around the world to weigh in.
And it's also a reaction to what you get on TV news as well- the same old pundits, chosen less for their opinions than for their looks or charisma. Looks don't matter in blogs- ideas do. I have no idea what most bloggers look like. (You don't know what I look like, except for my eye; you can always go here if your curiosity gets the better of you) All that matters is the opinion, the facts that back 'em up, the writing.
There are parallels, to some extent, to my business, talk radio. Like talk radio, blogs are giving voice to those shut out of the "regular" channels. Like talk radio, there's an interactive element- the callers on the radio, the comments for the blogs. But unlike talk radio, there's an even better response route. If you don't like what a talk show or station is saying, you can call in, but you can't easily start your own station that's on an instant equal footing. Don't like what the blogs are saying? Start your own. You can do it for free, you can pay a little, you can pay a lot, but there's absolutely no barrier to entry. It's the ultimate meeting of free market and mass media. Think that scares the MSM a little? Consider this- it's as easy to find this page as it is to find the New York Times online. (Of course, I ain't no New York Times, nor do I have more than a zillionth of its daily readership. But I can dream) We need the New York Times- we need all the mainstream media outlets we can get- because we need their news gathering expertise and we need the material. But, suddenly, instead of the single op-ed page and a few letters to the editor, there's an unlimited op-ed "page" and unlimited "letters." And many of those are ready and eager to point out any flaws or mistakes or- pardon the term- bias in the news columns. (Once, for example, you've read Patterico's blog, you can't possibly read the L.A. Times again without using the blog as a supplement and counterpoint. Every paper and news organization should have a Patterico to keep them honest. Hewitt would say that the papers should have blogs by the editors to keep themselves honest. He'd be right.)
Oh, yeah, Hewitt. The book? It's an excellent introduction to the form, including a compelling comparison of this media revolution to another media revolution, the invention of the printing press, which enabled Luther to get his ideas out in the open, a new New Testament into people's hands, and, ultimately, with Calvin, the Reformation ("(f)or the MSM, it is 1449 and 1517, at the same moment"). There's an explanation of how blogs are keeping (or trying to keep) the news media honest, as up to date as Rathergate, and a lot of sage advice for those- in business, in politics, in virtually all walks of life- who want to, or need to, get into blogging. It's an essential read for bloggers, blog readers, and, especially, the corporate leaders and politicians who ought to be blogging right now.
I'll bet ABC News people haven't read it, though, considering the "show us your Iraq troop funeral" debacle yesterday. So many people want this blog thing to go away. Or, as the writer in E&P concludes, they want things to somehow return to "normal," to the days when the newspapers were all you needed (and got):
Perhaps there’s something in the newspapers after all: different voices, new ideas, something to help us figure out where to go from here -- even if it means logging off for a few minutes each day. At the very least, we can listen to our iPods and read at the same time.
The different voices and new ideas, the help in figuring out where to go from here... that's exactly what the blogs are for. You can go to the New York Times and get the same old Dowd/Rich/Safire pontifications, or you can go to the Net and find hundreds upon hundreds of fresh voices. That a lot of the folks at newspapers and TV networks and, yes, radio, too haven't figured that out yet is turning out to be their problem. The rest of us? Looks like we're in the right place.
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