October 8, 2004
Talkies
Oh, Theresa - nicely done.
Writing for the National Post, J. Kelly Nestruck, -- that's "J." Kelly, not just "Kelly" -- has written an article about bloggers and the blogosphere. JKelly's article is entitled "Why the revolution won't be blogged" and subtitled "Bloggers talk about their importance, but it's just talk."[...]
JKelly's own blog, On the Fence can be found here. Read it, especially if you just can't get enough of reporters talking about what events they're covering and putting down their colleagues. Maybe that doesn't matter, though, given that he acknowledges his readers don't all read the National Post. Tsk. Tsk. After reading his blog, I, myself, doubt that he's doing much to improve NP readership, either, especially given that he seems to double-dip -- writing about a topic on his blog and then spinning that yarn into a news article later. Yawn.
In response to the reaction his piece generated (as well as a reply in the Heart of Canada link above), he does attempt to clarify his thoughts with these obvious points, and frankly, I'd be surprised if the majority of media critic - news junkie bloggers would disagree with them.
But, yes, as someone writes in the comment to the post below, I guess I am arguing against a position that is not widely held. How many bloggers actually believe that it's "new media vs. old media"? Most smart ones recognize the symbiotic relationship between the two.
The question is, why does he think it had to be said at all, if he's as familiar with the blogosphere as he purports to be?
Some, unaware that I was involved in bloggage before I started at the Post, have seen the article as another mainstream journalist scared for his job thing. (If I am, trust me, it's not because of bloggers.) I guess what I wanted to say, and only really did at the end of the article, is that blogs aren't hurting the "old media," but actually helping it become better. The New York Times, for instance, has improved since Jayson Blair. Maybe Dan Rather will survive Memogate, maybe he won't; CBS News, however, will work really hard to restore its reputation.
Nobody that I'm aware of is seriously setting out to replace old media - it's not a primal "us vs them" showdown. Most are happy enough to simply snap at their heels, and in the final analysis - improvement in the quality of reporting is the goal. Sifting through information on current events is a lot of work - I'd rather someone else did it for me. It's what they're paid to do, after all. I didn't rip into David Kirton today because I seek to steal his audience - I ripped into him because I'm tired of being treated like an absolute idiot who needs to be told what to think about the news, as though I will swallow it whole without tasting (and without Google).
I'm tired of searching for transcripts to verify that the quotes extracted aren't misrepresented. I'm tired of double standards and having actual coverage of events interrupted by some self-important jerk with a microphone who interprets it for me, through the lens of an opponant's view.
So, J. Kelly - it's not hard to keep people like me off your back - just strive to represent the facts as they become known, and present them in their honest context. Do bona-fide followup and correct with the enthusiasm with which you reveal.
And, stop playing the gotcha game. You probably aren't Bob Woodward and it's probably not Watergate. Identify opinion for what it is, and whose it is. Don't try to recreate history or subject it to an arbitrary 48 month cut off.
I'm not your competitor - I'm the consumer. I ask simply as that you remember your role and respect mine - you report, I decide - it's not just a cute slogan.
So, yeah, don't for a minute think that things have changed all that much over the past nine months. Blogs are fun, blogs are great, I love blogs. But there are people out there saying that blogs are to the 2004 presidential race what television was to the 1960 campaign. (Sidenote: I've never really bought into that whole "TV won the election for JFK" myth, personally.) The fact is that blogs are still only visited by a small segment of the voting public. Stories like Rathergate would have never hit if it wasn't for the back- up of the old media.
And there you go again. Rathergate would have never hit if it wasn't for the back-up of Drudge.
Stories like Rathergate would never have broken in the first place if it were up to the old media. Old media (the NYT and Boston Globe, for example) tried very hard to ignore, then refute it.
Perhaps he's right and bloggers have really hit their peak as an influence over public opinion. Perhaps it's true that the best that the blogosphere can aspire to is an esoteric, exotic niche, and that it will never come within a sniff of the audience share enjoyed by old media (though there are plenty of bloggers who have higher daily readership than some mid-sized city newspapers who put the lie to that).
TZ has words of encouragement, too.
Anyhow, Kellygreen can just stop whining. The internet will never replace print journalism. After all, you can't line a birdcage with computer monitors.
On the other hand, as I write this, there's an old quote that persists in tapping me on the shoulder;
"Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo." - Mary PIckford |  |