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I really enjoyed reading your articles about blogging. I am one of the ‘older generation’ that still enjoy reading a paper or a magazine. I think you make a great point in saying with the younger generation who knows what will happen to real journalism.
I was a journalism major at OU for about a year and a half in the late 70′s (old!). Just yesterday I was talking to my parents (older!) about the demise of newspapers around the country. I said something that had stuck with me from one of my classes – that good journalists should have multiple (2?) sources to back up a story before reporting it (or maybe I was remembering that from All the President’s Men). that way the story is probably true. Anyway, I feel like if that integrity is lost, then how can we trust what we read? Or can we now anyway? I read some online news stuff and blogs now and then, but I am fully aware that a blog is personal. Anyone can put a blog out there. They might be interesting, but they are not necessarily true. But after reading YOUR blog, I think I was also being a blog snob in terms of journalistic ethics. I appreciated what you wrote about the person who was writing from the war zone. I’m pretty sure what he wrote was true, or at least true enough to give the rest of the world a better picture of what was going on over there. How much better it would have been for all of us if we had known first hand how war was affecting millions of people during the holocaust. What you said is true – the younger generation will make the changes that the older generations can’t or won’t envision. It will be interesting to see how technology will impact journalism in the coming years. Thank you for the provocative observations. I enjoyed reading YOUR BLOG!
“Anyway, I feel like if that integrity is lost, then how can we trust what we read? Or can we now anyway?”
To me, it would appear there’s a faulty assumption here. That is, before the rise of the internet one could ‘trust’ journalism corporations before, and now with a massive decentralization of information, journalism has become ‘less reliable.’
I personally think that’s wrong, and flawed. Most of the problems of our country currently stem from faulty propaganda disseminated by multi-national media conglomerates with political ties. Most saliently, I think, is Fox News and CNN. What the rise of the internet is going to do is force people to take a more skeptical viewpoint to the news they get in general, whether it be from a blog or from a major news site. A recent example from Fox News includes a tidbit where the organization recorded Obama REPEATING a question/assertion from an audience member before he gave his answer/response. Fox News took that sound bite of him summarizing the person’s question and reported it as if it was OBAMA’S OWN VIEWPOINT. Here’s another example of how major news firms are shams.
Fox News = ‘Fair and Balanced’?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35eRxxZ-Ar0
So, to think that journalism had this golden age where everything was ‘more reliable’, to me, is wrong. I think our media was once a decentralized pluralistic competition between smaller news firms, and that sort of reinforced reliability because there was fierce competition involved. Now that we have 4 multi-national conglomerates that control EVERYTHING, where else is there to turn other than blogs? Why aren’t journalists from these firms reporting on problems that result from a centralized journalism industry? The potential for control of the populace, and the documented cases of just that?
We don’t see that because these massive media conglomerates have become the enemy. They spend millions of dollars on PR campaigns–which is anti-integrity right there, a campaign meant to deceive the public–trying to convince you they’re ‘fair and balanced’ when they’re some of the most ignorant and racist individuals on the planet. This is just one example.
In 2005, I think, the NY Times broke a massive story regarding wiretapping by the US government–shining light on the fact that the government could literally be listening in on every single citizen’s phone conversation. That seems like a reputable story, especially coming from the NY Times. What they didn’t tell you, however, is that they waited OVER A YEAR to even break the story. They only broke it when one of their competitors reportedly got a hold of the same one, and only then did it make national headlines. WHY IS THIS THE CASE?
It’s not because of blogs. If anything, blogs will force ‘reputable’–we should really say big business media firms instead of reputable–to become more attentive to their reporting in order to compete with the smaller news and blog sites that are starting to attract record views. This isn’t because bloggers are more or less reputable, it’s because they write about things that matter, whereas big media firms include self and government censorship.
Massive media firms are driven by profits generated from advertising. The vested interest in retaining these advertisers undermines any legitimacy they may have. Let’s face it, corporations are a way of life in the US, and they generate a lot of the news. But these same corporations are the sole profit-generators for major ‘legitimate’ news sites. That being the case, how can they be called more legitimate than the average blogger; after all, their business model INCLUDES–no, is based on–bias in favor of corporations over the little, average reader. This has gotten worse as subscriptions have diminished only to be replaced by websites and such–sites that once again rely solely on advertising revenue for their sustenance.
Given the current dominance of 3 media conglomerates over local AND national newspapers–Rupert Murdoch comes to mind–and ALL of the television news channels, how can any more legitimacy be claimed when their revenue model creates a fundamental bias that causes faulty-reporting to begin with?
Blogs don’t have that problem. Some do, and some are definitely biased–most perhaps–but I would rather take the news written by some proletariat like myself instead of some rich corporate fascist in NY sitting in his or her corner office.
That’s just my opinion though, cool blog!