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What makes this delicious is that these "spokesbloggers" are the same sanctimonious twats who are constantly spouting bullshit about the glories of "citizen journalism" and patting themselves on the back and congratulating themselves for being so much more ethical and independent than the dreaded "Mainstream Media." Riiiiight. That anyway was their story a few years ago. Now that they're all struggling to make money they're bent over their desks with their pants down, and it turns out they're even easier to buy off than their Old Media counterparts.
You want to know why nimrods like Winer and Scoble make me want to piss on their shoes when they go on about how bloggers are better than mainstream media, more ethical, better looking, etc.? Fake Steve's article hits it perfectly.
Although I don't think it's like a prostitute trying to say they're an escort. I think it's like a guy caught cheating in mid-stroke, and telling his wife, while he's still banging the other chick that this isn't really cheating because "she doesn't mean anything to me and I'm really drunk".
"Teh Blogosphere" can dislocate its shoulder patting itself on the back all it wants, but in the end, they're everything they accuse mainstream media of being and then some, only with shittier grammar and writing skills. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, and bloggers ain't better than mainstream media.
Technorati Tags: Blogsphere = Stupid, Fake Steve Jobs rules, TEH STOOPUD
Posted by John C. Welch at 11:15 | Permalink
Comments
Well, I can easily agree with you in regards to bloggers such as Malkin, Althouse, InstaRynolds, Ace, anyone at Pajamas Media, etc etc etc, ad nauseam.
But there _is_ real non-corporate journalist going on. How do you feel about the writing coming out of the Talking Points Memo sites? How about the research and context provided by Marcy at The Next Hurrah? Did you follow the Libby trial via the real time data provided by Firedog Lake? Do you read the critical essays written by the fabulous Digby at her Hullabaloo? Christ, can you read Glenn Greenwald every day and _not_ believe that he's a journalist?
Rick Perlstein, Dick Polman, The Editors, Swopa, Holden, Kagro X, Carpetbagger, Bob Geiger, you can read the information product that they come out with every day and not consider them journalists?
Talk about teh stupid. It burns, it burns.
Posted by: David | June 28, 2007 7:58 PM
David is right. There is a large subset of blogs that perform real journalism, in any traditional sense of the word (think Cronkite/Murrow). You can't tar them all with the sins of the Winer/Scoble/Thurrott wankosphere. Even in tech -- consider Macintouch, for one off the top of my head.
(Is Digby really a girl? I did not know that.)
Posted by: Thumpasaurus | June 28, 2007 8:56 PM
Sorry, but Glenn Greenwald would have been flunked by any of my journalism professors, unless he were writing for the editorial page. For that matter, most of the ones I recognized out of your list would have been flunked - as would any of the people at Fox News, so the 'official' press doesn't exactly get off scott-free either.
A *real* journalist, I was always taught, does their best to report the news without bias or favor. Glenn Greenwald comes up with a lot of interesting tidbits, if they're true. The problem is that too often he comes across as having an ax to grind, which doesn't exactly help the case he's trying to make. And he often uses highly emotionally-charged language, which sets off all kinds of warning bells in my head. That's the kind of writing that belongs in an editorial, not a news story.
Some websites do make an effort to report neutrally and avoid slanted language, and I generally do respect them as journalistic entities. I also call them 'news sites' rather than blogs. Macintouch is one of them most of the time, though occasionally the editorial comments seem to be taking a side instead of just reporting.
Posted by: Travis Butler | June 29, 2007 12:08 AM
@Travis
::::climbing on my soapbox::::
If your journalism profs would fail Greenwald, then they shouldn't be teaching journalism. He's a journalist and an editorialist. The two aren't mutually exclusive.
You are correct. He doesn't report without bias, so no one would should mistake him for an reporter. He's an editorialist who combines opinion with thorough research and annotation.
I'd also disagree with the proposition that all journalism is supposed to be unbiased and fair. In practice, journalism is never unbiased. One can only hope for fairness. If the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Wetumpka (Alabama) Herald all send reporters to cover a Whitehouse speech by Cheney, the stories won't look anything alike. Why not? If they're all trying to be fair and unbiased, shouldn't the stories be (at least somewhat) similar? No. Each reporter has a different understanding, based on what they believe, what their audience wants to read, and a hundred other factors.
In the old days, no one spoke about an unbiased media. Papers were known for being conservative, or liberal, and people read them with that understanding. I think that's the proper way to think about the media.
I actually think it's funny, in some ways, that your journalism profs emphasize reporting news without slant or bias. Watching from Canada, I think the US media are so obviously biased and so obviously slanted that I can't believe any journalism school in the US teaches anything like fairness in reportage. It just isn't common US media practice.
I'm sorry for sounding so strident. I think Greenwald — and several others mentioned above — are fine writers and journalists. Everyone at Fox News, on the other hand, would fail Journalism 101... But not for being biased. For being stupid. I mean, really... O'Reilly never lets a fact get in the way of his opinion.
The real difference between blogs and traditional newspapers is that with newspapers, editors stand between the writer and publication. The editing process, and back and forth in a traditional newsroom, usually makes for better writing. The best bloggers often have editors (like Greenwald, I imagine), or they're so talented they can overcome this limitation.
::::climbing down::::
And yeah, I have two degrees, and one of them is in journalism.
Posted by: Richard | June 29, 2007 8:45 AM
David is right. There is a large subset of blogs that perform real journalism, in any traditional sense of the word (think Cronkite/Murrow). You can't tar them all with the sins of the Winer/Scoble/Thurrott wankosphere. Even in tech -- consider Macintouch, for one off the top of my head.Um, that would be what is known as a very, very, small subset of the "blogosphere". The vast majority of it is an echo chamber that only exists to recirculate whatever is at the top of the list on Digg and Techmeme.
And Macintouch is nothing but a PR / User comment reflector/aggregator, so I fail to see how it even comes close to "journalism" on any level.
Posted by: John C. Welch | June 29, 2007 9:47 AM
That would be what we call Sturgeon's Law. Ninety percent of EVERYTHING is crap. And that applies to mainstream media as well as to the blogosphere. There is also, then, Zen's Corollary to Sturgeon's Law. (Sturgeon was an Optimist.)
I agree that 'unbiased reporting' is no longer a part of 'mainstream media' in this country or in any other - the vast majority of those media outlets are owned by large corporations, all of whom have their own particular agendas, and aren't going to let truth get in the way of that. That said, there ARE still major media outlets that come close to a fair and balanced treatment of most news - the Christian Science Monitor comes to mind, ironically enough.
In the end, when following ANY information source, evaluating its probable accuracy can be summed up in three words. "Follow the Money".
-j
Posted by: Jaime | June 29, 2007 11:41 AM
In the end, when following ANY information source, evaluating its probable accuracy can be summed up in three words. "Follow the Money"
Or the blogger corollary: Why do they care?
Posted by: John C. Welch | June 29, 2007 1:27 PM
