As newspapers cut 1,000 jobs last week, Americans are getting their sense of the world less and less through human eyes and ears than from TV cameras abetted by well-groomed mannequins gushing over an endless flow of images.
Talking heads on cable and bloggers online parse and pick away at what the cameras see but there are fewer and fewer reporters to find out what's hidden by using such old-fashioned skills as observation, questioning and legwork.
Where is the tipping point at which "news" becomes all opinion all the time about "facts" supplied by self-interested sources?
Newspapers are drowning in red ink even as Americans depend more heavily on what they do but don't pay for the information they get from them digitally and advertisers don't cover the costs of allowing them to continue providing it.
The challenge, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, is to "reinvent their profession and their business model at the same time they are cutting back on their reporting and resources." A top news executive is quoted as saying, "It’s like changing the oil in your car while you’re driving down the freeway."
Meanwhile, Timothy Egan argues on his New York Times blog, "there’s plenty of gossip, political spin and original insight on sites like the Drudge Report or The Huffington Post--even though they are built on the backs of the wire services and other factories of honest fact-gathering. One day soon these Web info-slingers will find that you can’t produce journalism without journalists, and a search engine is no replacement for a curious reporter."
Meanwhile Rush Limbaugh gets a new $400 million contract for spouting off on one medium, while Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann (bless his splenetic soul) dominate another with their points of view.
The pay and job security are nowhere near as good in the mills that provide their raw material.
Showing posts with label bloggers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bloggers. Show all posts
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Thursday, June 19, 2008
The Truth as Private Property
Hostilities between the Associated Press and bloggers are escalating to the point that some are now vowing to stop linking to the wire service. Regardless of the merits, such conflict is unhealthy for the free flow of information in a society that depends on it.
As a part of traditional media, AP regards its output as property without distinguishing between form and substance. The arrangement of words and sentences in its reports belongs to the agency, but the news conveyed does not. The facts and public statements therein, once published, belong to everyone. "Published" literally means "making public"
Bloggers, regardless of where their information comes from, have the right to analyze and comment on news without restriction. What they may not have the right to do is cut and paste large chunks of AP stories, as some do, and add their reactions which, in some cases, amount to no more than "Oh, wow!" in either a positive or negative sense.
Even before the Internet, on-the-spot reporting was only a fraction of what MSM did. TV news often piggybacked on newspaper reporting, and magazines got most of their ideas and leads from daily news. In the future, with news bureaus being cut back for economic reasons, that will be truer than ever.
Those of us who spent a working lifetime dealing with copyrighted material have no formula for where "fair use" ends and theft begins. But context is important. If a blog post is using AP material as a taking-off point for commentary or to illustrate a point, that's "fair use," and a word count formula can't be the only criterion.
For example, if this post were legally copyrighted, fair use would be characterizing it, quoting from it and expressing views but not just lifting most of it without creating some new piece of writing. But the exhilarating thing about blogging is that such property considerations are beside the point.
Beyond that, the real puzzlement in this debate is defining what damage AP believes results from having bloggers quote from its output by linking to the media that are legally using it. In what way does it devalue the product or damage those legal users? In fact, don’t they benefit from getting more traffic to their web sites?
But, all that aside, the larger issue is that, in a free society, it's not a good idea to start treating the truth as private property.
As a part of traditional media, AP regards its output as property without distinguishing between form and substance. The arrangement of words and sentences in its reports belongs to the agency, but the news conveyed does not. The facts and public statements therein, once published, belong to everyone. "Published" literally means "making public"
Bloggers, regardless of where their information comes from, have the right to analyze and comment on news without restriction. What they may not have the right to do is cut and paste large chunks of AP stories, as some do, and add their reactions which, in some cases, amount to no more than "Oh, wow!" in either a positive or negative sense.
Even before the Internet, on-the-spot reporting was only a fraction of what MSM did. TV news often piggybacked on newspaper reporting, and magazines got most of their ideas and leads from daily news. In the future, with news bureaus being cut back for economic reasons, that will be truer than ever.
Those of us who spent a working lifetime dealing with copyrighted material have no formula for where "fair use" ends and theft begins. But context is important. If a blog post is using AP material as a taking-off point for commentary or to illustrate a point, that's "fair use," and a word count formula can't be the only criterion.
For example, if this post were legally copyrighted, fair use would be characterizing it, quoting from it and expressing views but not just lifting most of it without creating some new piece of writing. But the exhilarating thing about blogging is that such property considerations are beside the point.
Beyond that, the real puzzlement in this debate is defining what damage AP believes results from having bloggers quote from its output by linking to the media that are legally using it. In what way does it devalue the product or damage those legal users? In fact, don’t they benefit from getting more traffic to their web sites?
But, all that aside, the larger issue is that, in a free society, it's not a good idea to start treating the truth as private property.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Withdrawal Symptoms
The pundits will have to go into rehab--the TV talking heads, newspaper columnists, the bloggers who have been overdosing on Obama-Clinton for more than a year and just can't quit cold turkey.
Maureen Dowd ransacks pop culture to describe Hillary as "less Blanche than Scarlett. 'Heaven help the Yankees if they capture you,' Rhett told the willful belle at the start of her rugged odyssey.
"And heaven help the Democrats as they try to shake off Hillary. On top of her inane vows to obliterate Iran, OPEC and the summer gas tax, she plans 'a nuclear option' during her Shermanesque march to Denver...get the Florida and Michigan delegates seated."
"Is Hillary Done?" Howard Kurtz asks in the Washington Post but scrounges for evidence that she isn't after citing the New York Post headline "TOAST" and Andrew Sullivan confesses that Obama's "patriotic message tonight...moved me to my core" while noting that "African-American voters killed the Clinton candidacy."
The reluctance to let go brings back memories of what the politicians said after Eisenhower had a heart attack before his reelection in 1956: If he dies, they'll run him posthumously.
The Clinton campaign is now entering its life-after-death phase.
Maureen Dowd ransacks pop culture to describe Hillary as "less Blanche than Scarlett. 'Heaven help the Yankees if they capture you,' Rhett told the willful belle at the start of her rugged odyssey.
"And heaven help the Democrats as they try to shake off Hillary. On top of her inane vows to obliterate Iran, OPEC and the summer gas tax, she plans 'a nuclear option' during her Shermanesque march to Denver...get the Florida and Michigan delegates seated."
"Is Hillary Done?" Howard Kurtz asks in the Washington Post but scrounges for evidence that she isn't after citing the New York Post headline "TOAST" and Andrew Sullivan confesses that Obama's "patriotic message tonight...moved me to my core" while noting that "African-American voters killed the Clinton candidacy."
The reluctance to let go brings back memories of what the politicians said after Eisenhower had a heart attack before his reelection in 1956: If he dies, they'll run him posthumously.
The Clinton campaign is now entering its life-after-death phase.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Death by Blogging
"In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop" reads the headline in today's New York Times for a report on "digital sweatshops" that evoke images of a century ago that led to the rise of unions to protect exploited factory workers.
The documentation is scant, but the idea will nonetheless appeal to a population of writers with a congenital need to see and expose hidden evil forces in society:
"A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.
"Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly..."
The piece is a throwback to the Vance Packard school of journalism of half a century ago, when excitable writers strung together a few anecdotes and statistics to agitate readers with best-sellers such as "The Hidden Persuaders," "The Status Seekers" and "The Waste Makers."
The net effect, one publisher noted back then, was to alarm the public at the discovery that society is organized.
It would be heartless to minimize the stress that some full-time bloggers feel, but there is something odd about finding a dark side to what is a labor of love and a form of self-expression that was not available to previous generations.
Better pay and working hours for piecework bloggers, by all means, but MSM like the Times may want to concentrate on recognizing and honoring their efforts rather than drumming up sob stories about them.
The documentation is scant, but the idea will nonetheless appeal to a population of writers with a congenital need to see and expose hidden evil forces in society:
"A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.
"Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly..."
The piece is a throwback to the Vance Packard school of journalism of half a century ago, when excitable writers strung together a few anecdotes and statistics to agitate readers with best-sellers such as "The Hidden Persuaders," "The Status Seekers" and "The Waste Makers."
The net effect, one publisher noted back then, was to alarm the public at the discovery that society is organized.
It would be heartless to minimize the stress that some full-time bloggers feel, but there is something odd about finding a dark side to what is a labor of love and a form of self-expression that was not available to previous generations.
Better pay and working hours for piecework bloggers, by all means, but MSM like the Times may want to concentrate on recognizing and honoring their efforts rather than drumming up sob stories about them.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Spitzer and Sex Education
In one of those telling front page-back page juxtapositions, the headline news about Eliot Spitzer overwhelms a government study showing that one out of every four American teenage girls is infected with a sexually transmitted disease.
After seven years of a federal government promoting abstinence only, both stories are reminders that the gap between what Americans say in public and do in private has morphed into a chasm of hypocrisy.
As righteous Republicans enjoy the spectacle of a Democratic governor joining the ranks of Larry Craig, David Vitter et al, little attention is being paid to the alarming news about teenagers who don't know or don't care enough to protect themselves from infections that can lead to serious disease.
The MSM media and bloggers are all atwitter with how much Spitzer spent for how long for whose favors, but what is happening to a generation of our children is treated as dry, statistical stuff.
As officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention note that the findings underscore the need for more screening, vaccination and other prevention measures, 19 million new sexually transmitted infections occur each year. They emphasize that "we must continue developing ways to reach those most at risk.”
Maybe reading about the woes of a careless governor will be a start.
After seven years of a federal government promoting abstinence only, both stories are reminders that the gap between what Americans say in public and do in private has morphed into a chasm of hypocrisy.
As righteous Republicans enjoy the spectacle of a Democratic governor joining the ranks of Larry Craig, David Vitter et al, little attention is being paid to the alarming news about teenagers who don't know or don't care enough to protect themselves from infections that can lead to serious disease.
The MSM media and bloggers are all atwitter with how much Spitzer spent for how long for whose favors, but what is happening to a generation of our children is treated as dry, statistical stuff.
As officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention note that the findings underscore the need for more screening, vaccination and other prevention measures, 19 million new sexually transmitted infections occur each year. They emphasize that "we must continue developing ways to reach those most at risk.”
Maybe reading about the woes of a careless governor will be a start.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Bloggers Digest
Karl Rove and his gang refuse to "go gentle into that good night." The Master himself is pontificating away in Newsweek and now one of his gnomes, Dan Bartlett, pops up in a Texas Monthly interview to pay tribute to conservative bloggers with Rovian eloquence:
"I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on."
Regurgitating is hard enough, but regurgitating exactly is an art that requires mastery of computer cut-and-pasting. So kudos to Bartlett for having cultivated such a high level of obedience and, on behalf of bloggers of all persuasions, let me simply say that Rove and Bartlett have always made me want to throw up.
"I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on."
Regurgitating is hard enough, but regurgitating exactly is an art that requires mastery of computer cut-and-pasting. So kudos to Bartlett for having cultivated such a high level of obedience and, on behalf of bloggers of all persuasions, let me simply say that Rove and Bartlett have always made me want to throw up.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Huckabee: Move Over, Paris and Britney
Two months ago, the former Arkansas Governor, suffering from media neglect, was musing about “accompanying Paris Hilton to jail” to get some attention.
"One of the frustrations,” he said, “is that there is more attention on Britney Spears getting out of a car without underwear than there is about who is going to be the next president."
He can stop complaining. After his surprise second-place showing in Ames yesterday, Huckabee is going to be the flavor of the month. The fellow townsman of Bill Clinton from Hope, Ark. will be the talk of MSM and bloggers.
USA Today is reporting that Huckabee spent only $58 a vote in the Iowa straw poll against Brownback’s $148 and Romney’s who-knows, possibly over $1000. The Washington Post calls his showing “a win.” The preacher-musician is on his way to becoming the Republican rock star.
Fred Thompson may want to think twice about waiting for Labor Day to announce
"One of the frustrations,” he said, “is that there is more attention on Britney Spears getting out of a car without underwear than there is about who is going to be the next president."
He can stop complaining. After his surprise second-place showing in Ames yesterday, Huckabee is going to be the flavor of the month. The fellow townsman of Bill Clinton from Hope, Ark. will be the talk of MSM and bloggers.
USA Today is reporting that Huckabee spent only $58 a vote in the Iowa straw poll against Brownback’s $148 and Romney’s who-knows, possibly over $1000. The Washington Post calls his showing “a win.” The preacher-musician is on his way to becoming the Republican rock star.
Fred Thompson may want to think twice about waiting for Labor Day to announce
Sunday, July 08, 2007
What's Wrong With America's Newspapers?
If we had been fighting in Iraq 50 years ago, we might have never left. Back then, the morning printfest was the only game in town and, from the performance of American dailies today, there would have been no clamor to get out.
Today, some 51 months, 3600 military deaths and $441 billion after it started, a New York Times editorial finally says, “Enough.” Titled “The Road Home,” it begins: “It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.”
The Times took its time deciding that, yet even so it is in the vanguard.
According to Editor & Publisher, “very few newspapers in the U.S. have endorsed a withdrawal from Iraq or even a timetable for that, despite the overwhelming shift in public opinion on that question. Momentum has started to shift in that direction, however, with a handful of papers --from the Los Angeles Times to, just this week, The Olympian in Washington--backing a pullout.”
Why has it taken so long? Have newspapers under corporate ownership lost touch with their communities and the pain this war has been inflicting on readers? Back when A.J. Liebling famously said, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed to those who own one,” were benevolent publishers more empathic or more responsive?
Not in my long experience. Daily newspapers back then were just as out of touch with public sentiment, routinely endorsing Republican Presidential candidates in the overwhelmingly Democratic era of Roosevelt and Truman.
If there is an answer, it may be in the newspaper tradition of never getting too far ahead of, or in many cases, even abreast of its readers on controversial issues.
During the days of McCarthyism, Vietnam and even Watergate (with only Woodward and Bernstein the dazzling exception), magazines, book publishers and even network TV took the lead in delivering the bad news just as cable and bloggers have been doing about Iraq.
Marshall McLuhan said, “People don’t actually read newspapers. They get into them every morning like a hot bath.”
Finally the New York Times at least has decided it’s time for a cold shower.
Today, some 51 months, 3600 military deaths and $441 billion after it started, a New York Times editorial finally says, “Enough.” Titled “The Road Home,” it begins: “It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.”
The Times took its time deciding that, yet even so it is in the vanguard.
According to Editor & Publisher, “very few newspapers in the U.S. have endorsed a withdrawal from Iraq or even a timetable for that, despite the overwhelming shift in public opinion on that question. Momentum has started to shift in that direction, however, with a handful of papers --from the Los Angeles Times to, just this week, The Olympian in Washington--backing a pullout.”
Why has it taken so long? Have newspapers under corporate ownership lost touch with their communities and the pain this war has been inflicting on readers? Back when A.J. Liebling famously said, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed to those who own one,” were benevolent publishers more empathic or more responsive?
Not in my long experience. Daily newspapers back then were just as out of touch with public sentiment, routinely endorsing Republican Presidential candidates in the overwhelmingly Democratic era of Roosevelt and Truman.
If there is an answer, it may be in the newspaper tradition of never getting too far ahead of, or in many cases, even abreast of its readers on controversial issues.
During the days of McCarthyism, Vietnam and even Watergate (with only Woodward and Bernstein the dazzling exception), magazines, book publishers and even network TV took the lead in delivering the bad news just as cable and bloggers have been doing about Iraq.
Marshall McLuhan said, “People don’t actually read newspapers. They get into them every morning like a hot bath.”
Finally the New York Times at least has decided it’s time for a cold shower.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
The Summer of Our Discontent
New polls show Americans unhappy with just about everything. “A very sour mood” is the Gallup conclusion.
Only 24 percent say they are satisfied “with the way things are going,” a figure that hasn’t been this low since 1992. At that time, Bill Clinton’s advisers saw a reason (“It’s the economy, stupid”) and used it to get to the White House.
According to Gallup, Americans now worry about the economy, their jobs, high gasoline prices and, since politicians started yapping about it, immigration. Yet, by most measures, the economy is doing well enough, and so is the stock market.
It’s easy to see how the war in Iraq is causing so much frustration, with voters giving the President low marks and the Congress they elected to fix things even worse approval ratings, an all-time low of 14 percent.
What’s harder to measure is the free-floating anxiety behind the numbers. How much is due to the Republican drumbeat of “If we don’t fight them there, they’ll follow us here?” How much to Democratic impotence and in-fighting over how to get us out of Iraq? How much to the noisy distrust and disgust over everything in our public life, fueled by caustic cable-news anchors and bilious bloggers competing to be heard?
Our national mood disorder isn’t helped by the endless Presidential campaign, which is getting more negative as candidates feel the pressure mounting. But somewhere in all this, there may be an opportunity for one of them to do what Ronald Reagan did in the wake of Vietnam and rampant inflation with a “Morning in America” vision.
If Gallup is right, the country could be ready for it.
Only 24 percent say they are satisfied “with the way things are going,” a figure that hasn’t been this low since 1992. At that time, Bill Clinton’s advisers saw a reason (“It’s the economy, stupid”) and used it to get to the White House.
According to Gallup, Americans now worry about the economy, their jobs, high gasoline prices and, since politicians started yapping about it, immigration. Yet, by most measures, the economy is doing well enough, and so is the stock market.
It’s easy to see how the war in Iraq is causing so much frustration, with voters giving the President low marks and the Congress they elected to fix things even worse approval ratings, an all-time low of 14 percent.
What’s harder to measure is the free-floating anxiety behind the numbers. How much is due to the Republican drumbeat of “If we don’t fight them there, they’ll follow us here?” How much to Democratic impotence and in-fighting over how to get us out of Iraq? How much to the noisy distrust and disgust over everything in our public life, fueled by caustic cable-news anchors and bilious bloggers competing to be heard?
Our national mood disorder isn’t helped by the endless Presidential campaign, which is getting more negative as candidates feel the pressure mounting. But somewhere in all this, there may be an opportunity for one of them to do what Ronald Reagan did in the wake of Vietnam and rampant inflation with a “Morning in America” vision.
If Gallup is right, the country could be ready for it.
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