tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post113624384624772938..comments2024-03-28T05:13:13.921-04:00Comments on Books, Inq. — The Epilogue: Some thoughts on blogging ...Frank Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18410473158808750903noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post-1136380743637454272006-01-04T08:19:00.000-05:002006-01-04T08:19:00.000-05:00Damn, Ken Pierce, that comment was simply fantasti...Damn, Ken Pierce, that comment was simply fantastic. Thank you, thank you very much. I'm definitely going to use that.<BR/><BR/>And Frank, thank you. I'm going to have to read your blog more often.RattlerGatorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14401304529662738436noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post-1136375931328745802006-01-04T06:58:00.000-05:002006-01-04T06:58:00.000-05:00Melville,One other thing -- I do realize that you ...Melville,<BR/><BR/>One other thing -- I do realize that you are trying to compare the people the media trot out as "experts" to bloggers. But the "experts" are selected and given air time by journalism majors who don't really know how to tell real experts from fake; they are cross-examined (to use the term at its loosest) by anchorpersons who don't know what are the important questions; and the cross-examination usually takes five minutes at most. The level of analysis and hostile fact-checking and criticism that goes on in the blogosphere is vastly more demanding. Shoddy commentary can survive much longer on CNN or Fox than it can in the blogosphere, simply because if the comments crowd successfully nails your butt more than a few times, the blog readership goes someplace else (other than people with whom you are cooperating in forming a hermetically sealed echo chamber).Ken Piercehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12831972319944212102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post-1136375472784610162006-01-04T06:51:00.000-05:002006-01-04T06:51:00.000-05:00Melville,Taking your third point first because it ...Melville,<BR/><BR/>Taking your third point first because it is most important:<BR/><BR/><EM>After all, unlike a lot of bloggers (as far as I can tell), commentators in the MSM commonly have come by their expertise through years of working in their field. You may call them communist or reactionary -- take your pick -- put you can't say their opinions are not based on solid knowledge.</EM><BR/><BR/>I think it's highly unlikely that you have ever been quoted by the media in regard to a field that you know something about. What is truly astonishing to most of us who deal with the media is how unbelievably ignorant they are and how unbelievably bad at listening. I have gotten both press and TV coverage on several occasions for humanitarian work with Kazakh orphans -- press coverage that was entirely favorable and intended to serve as advocacy -- and in <EM>every case</EM> the reporter has completely butchered the facts. They simply don't know anything about adoption, and so they don't know what's important, and they cut the wrong parts out of the partial quotes...it's unbelievable. By the same token, if you read lots of military blogs, it takes about twenty minutes to realize that the news media (full of people who never served in the military and who don't even know many people who have) have no real idea what the words they're using mean. <BR/><BR/>What journalists know is journalism. What they don't know is everything else, which is to say, all the subjects that they pretend to cover, and all the subjects that are of any interest to anybody other than other journalists.<BR/><BR/>Now, #1: that on-the-ground coverage from Hurricane Katrina, with those 10,000 dead and the babies getting raped -- man, that was accurate stuff, wasn't it? Those people had the Real Scoop. After all, they were On The Ground.<BR/><BR/>What reporters can do is provide raw facts that are part of a picture. What they are pitifully bad at -- and what the blogosphere is exceptionally good at -- is collating and analyzing the facts. You are severely underestimating the tremendous revolution posed by a simple hyperlink and a few good search engines, which together give the entire world access to primary documents at the speed of a good internet connection. If there are twenty experts in the country capable of spotting a flaw in a news story (like the Rathergate memos), the chances that your typical ignorant reporter will know their names and bother to talk to them before he runs his story, are extremely small. But the odds are quite good that at least one of those experts will see the story and be moved to comment on his blog, "This is bullshit because of X, Y, and Z." Then anybody interested in the subject will promptly start hitting him by Google, and the blogosphere will start linking, and the next thing you know Dan Rather is out of a job. 'Cause it's a helluva lot harder to slide by with sloppy stuff than it used to be; the blogosphere brings subject-matter expertise that can't be matched by J-school graduates and combines it with genuine, implacably relentless diversity of opinions and agenda. <BR/><BR/>On your point #2: sure, that's what some people do. That's also the only reason that 90% of the NY Times's remaining subscribers have for continuing to read the Grey Lady's opinion pages. If your skepticism proves anything (highly doubtful), it proves only that you personally would not value a diversity of opinion enough to challenge yourself regularly with competing viewpoints (since if you were willing to do it you would know that there are people willing to do so). It doesn't follow that the rest of us are of equal intellectual indolence.<BR/><BR/>On #4, the media in question is lazy, dishonest, unprofessional, and pathologically homogenous, and usefully spoken of collectively. But to refer to them collectively you need <EM>some</EM> conventional term; and Main Stream Media has the advantage of being deeply satirical. The point, you see, is precisely that the Main Stream Media abandoned the mainstream long ago. The term is used for the same rhetorical effect that one might use in referring constantly to "the Becomingly Humble Mr. Kissinger."<BR/><BR/>On point #5: the term usually refers to the self-indulgently liberal wing of the media industry, and more generally to the sloppy, lazy, non-fact-checking print and television media whose culture originated in the pre-internet era and has not yet adjusted to the information revolution. It is the culture that thinks that people will be impressed and think your coverage must be accurate if you fly your blow-dried talking head (whether is name is Anderson or Shepard) down to read consistently inaccurate information from his teleprompter from a New Orleans street instead of from a boring old studio. Since it is meant to refer to a fuzzy-bordered subculture, you can't expect lots of precision in the definition, and therefore you are correct to identify the ease with which it can become a straw bogeyman. Ease is not, however, inevitability, and there do exist bloggers who use the term more or less rigorously.<BR/><BR/>As for point #6: try <A HREF="http://www.sheilaomalley.com" REL="nofollow">The Sheila Variations</A>, starting with "<A HREF="http://www.sheilaomalley.com/archives/004594.html" REL="nofollow">Waiting in Line</A>."Ken Piercehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12831972319944212102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post-1136345416148969512006-01-03T22:30:00.000-05:002006-01-03T22:30:00.000-05:00Dear Frank:Excellent post, and I am in agreement. ...Dear Frank:<BR/><BR/>Excellent post, and I am in agreement. My thought in <A HREF="http://impactedwisdomtruth.blogspot.com/2006/01/is-new-york-times-getting-it.html" REL="nofollow">this post</A> were quite similar to yours. Lucianne made my post one her "Must Reads" yesterday.Away From The Brinkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01437744242086239050noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post-1136317988406028882006-01-03T14:53:00.000-05:002006-01-03T14:53:00.000-05:00It is not just the political blogs.It is not just the political blogs.PJ Swensonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10263208264922939673noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post-1136316843600547512006-01-03T14:34:00.000-05:002006-01-03T14:34:00.000-05:00I think many people ignore the editorial side of t...I think many people ignore the editorial side of their paper and read it for arts, sports, business, etc. I told a friend of mine I canceled the LA Times because I couldn't stand the editorial slant any more, and she said "oh, I never read those anyway."PatCAhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08920623662477828662noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post-1136316839639908992006-01-03T14:33:00.000-05:002006-01-03T14:33:00.000-05:00I think the problem is that so many journalists ha...I think the problem is that so many journalists have always seen their personal income as coming in two components: salary plus political influence. <BR/><BR/>The second part is draining away and there is nothing they can do about it, so they are both downwardly mobile and terminally pissed off about it.Meme chosehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15865591948571254226noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10178279.post-1136294618715905502006-01-03T08:23:00.000-05:002006-01-03T08:23:00.000-05:00The no. 1 disadvantage of the MSM is its increasin...The no. 1 disadvantage of the MSM is its increasing datedness. Almost the entire paper is known to me even before it's out of the printing press. That is going to prove its nemesis.<BR/><BR/>p.s. Thanks for referring to me, Frank.Vikram Johrihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12016674284703056882noreply@blogger.com