This article just cracks me up:
Bloggers and personal, non-journalistic Web sites are starting to tick me off.
Poor baby.
But people, let’s not confuse what random fans and wanna-be pundits are tossing out there with legitimate reporting. The line is getting way too blurry now between Internet noise and actual journalism. It’s actually getting to the point now where some (too many) of the bloggers are using cyberspace to discredit the legitimate media.
“getting to the point”? Ha! Do you still use dial-up or are you a noob? (that is pronounced ‘new-bee’)
Journalism employs trained professionals. We actually have to go to school for this stuff. We take our jobs seriously. There are rules and standards that we are beholden to. There are ethics involved.
HA! HA! Oh please, stop! my sides, my sides! geeze!
I posted this comment:
Dude, your rant is so far off base it is sad.
It really does show why the stock, subscribers, and readership of newspapers is plummeting. What an arrogant bunch of tripe.
Most bloggers I’ve read link to their sources. Even if they disagree. Especially if they disagree.
Lots of newspapers have “accuracy” issues. Ever heard of Jason Blair? Small-town paper he fabricated stories for, eh? How ’bout Beaucamp? Please.
And papers distort in an even greater manner – you “frame the conversation” by choosing which topics to cover and — most importantly — which to not cover. How’s the economy? Doing well but a Rethuglican is in office? Well, don’t report on it. How’s the war doing? We’re winning? Report on how the funeral homes are having trouble with no business. Please. You guys lie and distort so much you don’t even know what the truth is anymore.
Here are some facts for you:
- Blogs are the modern equivalent to Guttenberg’s movable type printing press. “Journalists” are the equivalent of the clergy who lost so much power when the unwashed masses got the ability to read and interpret the bible on their own.
- You folks have a valuable role in society, but don’t for a second think you are ‘indispensable’. That arrogance is what has made so many people yearn for other sources of information. Think about it; if the News Industry had done an adequate job of providing the information people wanted, there would have been no market for blogs. *You* screwed the pooch. Blogs are filling a _demand_ your industry didn’t.
- Making Buggy Whips used to be a profitable industry too.
Have a nice day.
ROTFL… I love your response.
Puhleese, even the NY Times has had major credibility issues! Since I am a former journalist and a former blogger I can speak for both the news industry and bloggers alike. Edward R. Morrow – remember him, always felt hampered by his editors and producers.
Macluhan, in his seminal book “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man” broadened the definition of media to include more than the communications media of his day (1964) like radio and TV. Like the visionary he was, he included the spoken word, the written word, clothing, housing, money, the clock, and cars, as message extensions of man. In fact, his book has chapters on 26 different types of media.
If he were alive today he wouldn’t look at the net as just one medium as most journalist dinosaur’s do, but as many different types of media (written word, pictures, audio, video, cgi’s [computer animated graphics] that impact the reader depending on its contextualized format. In other words, the impact of an email message and its contents are different from a page at a news site and are different from a page in an encyclopeadia. A great majority of readers know the difference. A great majority of young readers who have grown up with this medium know the difference all to well and are therefore, doing the same things Abby Hoffman did on campuses across the country: Not only ‘Question Authority’ but more importantly, question the messenger and the message!
Yes, the times have changed and its all for the better. We have moved way beyond yellow-journalism and the penny press to a free medium where institutional newsocrats are forced to take their place in the far and wide-ranging world of media.
Mr. McCoskey, the realm of the news media has been liberated from a purely subjective format in which “editors” dictates whats covered, to the masses, who through the democratizing process of the net has viral power to dictate that which is most important to them and which must be covered by the news media.
I beg to differ that the lines are being blurred for there will always be a need for your perspectives (with the filter of of highly experienced and well educated perspecitive – albeit a male one) and your resources. I think what you are lamenting is the dethroning of your position. Sadly, your dethroning happened decades ago when you weren’t looking, before the advent of cable even. It was with the advent of news magazines, who could make news stories more complete and richer and whose own pictures brought to the reader’s their own perspectives and questions.
Questions you (as the news media) neither brought to the forefront nor addressed. That is when the media as a whole lost credibility and that was when you lost your footing, never for it to be regained.
Sadly, you’re coming to this argument with too little and very, very late. As for me, I won’t be visiting a column who celebrates and fosters complaining rather than urging solutions. If that is the premise of your column your editors are wasting both your time, energy and effort and theirs, you will not be wasting because I won’t be visiting again.
What we need more in this world is an aim at clear thinking, analysis and problem-solving. Complaining, as you will be doing weekly in your column, will do nothing for your city and your readers who are in dire need of help and of economic solutions to alleviate your 20%+ of unemployment. Sir, that would help them more and bring more dialogue to the table than any bitchin’ you ever do!
THIS is what I love most about your blogging! Nail? Meet Hammer!
Perfect reply, dude.
This is what I love least about your blogging – having to follow up thoughtful, intelligent commentary like NYC’s with something lame like “great post”.
Which, by the way, it was