Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

December 27, 2008 By Fausta

Paul’s almost right about bloggers

My latest post at the Star Ledger’s New Jersey Voices, Paul’s almost right about bloggers is up. Please go read it and comment on it.

Thanks!

UPDATE
Instapundit, in a rare extended post, lets it rip:

Anyway, it’s certainly true that bloggers as a class are more competition for careless pundits like Mulshine than for go-getter reporters who find out things that people don’t know, and report them truthfully. It’s also true that those go-getter reporters who put the truth first are pretty scarce in the world of Big Media reporting, and that management shows no sign of wanting more of them, and many signs of wanting attitude-mongers like, well, Mulshine. This is, as I’ve noted before, a dumb business strategy, which explains in part why newspapers are doing so badly. For more on that, see this thoughtful piece by Evan Coyne Maloney. Also, these thoughts from Jay Rosen.

Glenn also quotes JD Johannes, who was my podcast guest last February. We talked about his outstanding documentary series Outside the Wire. You can listen to it here.

UPDATE
Welcome, Instapundit and Ed Driscoll readers.

Jay Rosen, who commented below, refers to me in his tweet as Paul Mulshine’s colleague. Jay is misinformed, as I am not an employee of the Star Ledger and receive no pay for my posts there, which is why there are so few. Paul and I are among several people who post at the NJ Voices blog. I have known Paul for years, well before I started blogging.

UPDATE, Sunday 28 December
Jeff Jarvis asks in Facebook,

“Can anyone help me recall the earlier Mulshine-like anti-blog journalist-as-priest screeds the WSJ opinion page has run?”

I don’t recall I don’t recall a prior WSJ article, but back in June 2006 Paul ripped on bloggers in his Star Ledger Sunday column.
I don’t think the Star Ledger’s archives go back that far (they keep a rolling 18-month archive, and everything prior seems to evaporate), which is another source of frustration when blogging about NJ. FWIW, back then I posted 4 paragraphs of his screed in my June 12, 2006 post.

Was there a prior guest columnist at the WSJ ripping on bloggers?

Jules has more on Paul’s article.

Warner Todd Hudson looks at where Paul is right, and where he’s wrong.

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Filed Under: New Jersey, NJ Voices, Star Ledger Tagged With: Fausta's blog

Comments

  1. Jay Rosen says

    December 27, 2008 at 8:57 pm

    You are very very wrong to praise this column, which makes several cheap moves that ought to be beneath the standards of a professional writer.

    This highlights the real flaw in the thinking of those who herald the era of citizen journalism.

    Like who? Got a name? A link? A quote? Anything? Or just winging it?

    They assume newspapers are going out of business because we aren’t doing what we in fact do amazingly well, which is to quickly analyze and report on complex public issues.

    No, actually we don’t. We are quite well informed about why the newspaper business is collapsing. The immediate cause: readers are moving to the Net but for various reasons the advertising isn’t. Newspapers are stuck with huge capital structures they cannot easily jettison and revenues are falling. No one who writes seriously about new media and citizen journalism is unaware of this. No one in new media, citizen journalism or regular journalism knows what to do about it.

    The real reason they’re under pressure is much more mundane. The Internet can carry ads more cheaply, particularly help-wanted and automotive ads.

    What is the evidence Paul offers to show that the people he is skewering as newspaper idiots don’t grasp these basic facts? None. Zip. Not a word. Just a flat assertion that nameless people do not what they are talking about. In column writing, is there anything easier than that?

    One of Paul’s challenges is that, for the argument he wanted to make, he needs someone–a blogger, a citizen journalism advocate, a professor, someone somewhere–who believes that bloggers can “replace” the reporting staffs of our daily newspapers. He is very interested in saying they can’t replace, so he needs someone who thinks bloggers can replace the reporting staff. Problem: there aren’t any such people. So finding quotes from them is kinda tough.

    What does he do? He misuses and distorts a Glenn Reynolds quote about non-journalists realizing they can be pundits. Pundits, Fausta. That is a very different thing from the reporters at the city council meeting. You have nothing to say about this misuse? Then you are not a blogger, or a journalist but a cipher.

    You know how angry journalists get when readers mistake the NEWS pages for the OPINION pages. But when your NJ.com buddy does it, it’s okay? Is that your view? Pundits, Fausta. That’s who Reynolds was talking about.

    What’s worse, this particular misuse of a Glenn Reynolds quote has happened before–for the same reasons, a dearth of people to argue against–and it’s been criticized before by Reynolds. See:

    http://is.gd/dHtN

    It really is a quandary. Old media journalist wants to declare “citizen journalism advocates” clueless and wrong. But old media journalist doesn’t know much about what these people he’s denouncing actually believe, say, write, think, and he’s unwilling to read through the archives of Buzzmachine.com, or steveouting.com or Instapundit.com

    That’s how you get columns like this.

  2. Fausta says

    December 27, 2008 at 9:17 pm

    You know how angry journalists get when readers mistake the NEWS pages for the OPINION pages. But when your NJ.com buddy does it, it’s okay?
    No, it isn’t Jay. Notice how I say that Paul is ALMOST right.

    Maybe I should have been less tactful, but you can notice that after quoting Paul I stressed that not only blogger do reports and analysis, but that they do it in depth from their areas of expertise. The six blogs I linked to are particularly thorough on their reporting. Since he laid down the challenge for a blogger to come up with the viable business plan for media, I specifically referred him to BuzzMachine.

    You have nothing to say about this misuse? Then you are not a blogger, or a journalist but a cipher.
    I have said it in my NJ Voices post, and am saying it: A good blogger is no different from a freelance reporter. Unfortunately you seemed to have skipped that part.

  3. Fausta says

    December 27, 2008 at 9:33 pm

    Jay, I went back and read my post. The final sentence of my post was missing. I corrected the post, and it ends with “Paul is almost right, the way you’re almost there when your flight to Miami gets detoured and lands in Chicago.”

    My apologies for the omission.

  4. HatlessHessian says

    December 28, 2008 at 12:16 am

    There’s another aspect to blogs that’s missed by Paul: the lack of subject-matter expertise by journalists in today’s exceptionally specialized world has destroyed the value of their commentary when journalism chose to move from objective reporting to subjective analysis and commentary.

    We used to joke about the Omaha World Herald when they’d do a news piece on a business or associate we knew. They’d invariably get 4-5 fundamental facts wrong – much like how Hollywood has actors pretend to conduct an orchestra by flapping their arms around as if they were being assaulted by attacking bees. Increasingly, professionals learned that stories they had familiarity with the subject matter had critical flaws. It was uncomfortably amusing when the media was at least trying to report on the news, but when it moved into politically-aligned advocacy, it had no business being consumed by real professionals.

    In our Fortune 250 firm, none of the professionals in my world (governance, risk and compliance) would be caught dead socializing with a journalist. They’re regarded as uncurious, under-educated, unethical bottom feeders a step below ambulance chasing night-school attorneys. The only thing worse than learning your daughter is a prostitute is discovering she’s planning on attending J-school.

    I personally gave up advocating reform for the profession about a year ago. I had evangelized a professional accreditation model with my journalist associates, recommending a stringent self-regulation model where journalists would be required to subscribe to a strict ethical code (with revocation of their charter when conflicts of interest and subjective, advocacy journalism was practiced) as well as a professional certification that would require training and specialization for coverage of financial markets, business, technology and other practices that a J-school degree does not qualify one to report on.

    Lacking this reform, they’ve been replaced by the market advancing subject-matter experts from these fields through blogging. Consumers know quality product vs. subjective crap. As editors and publishers didn’t realize the cost of producing newspapers in the spirit of AMC’s Pacer, Gremlin and other firm-killing innovations, they now suffer the consequence.

  5. Chris Anderson says

    December 28, 2008 at 12:34 am

    I am actually curious about what this means– “a good blogger is no different from a freelance reporter”– especially if it is, as you say, one of the keys to your argument.

    No different in what way? In the type of work they do? In terms of what they need to know to do that work? In terms of their contractual relationship to the institution providing them with organizational support and renummeration to continue to do that work?

    I actually don’t think you mean that Glenn Reynolds or the Volokh Conspiracy are “like freelancers” in terms of the work they do, and if you do think that, I think you’re wrong. What I think you mean is that they are “like freelancers” in terms of their relationship to paying media institutions; that they work on a piece-rate, temporary, flexible basis. They they’re not staff.

    But this isn’t true either. For instance, major newspaper like the Times and the WSJ, on occasion, have barely begun even LINKING to people like Glenn Reynolds, much less paying them anything. So bloggers are like freelancers, yes, except they’re not getting paid by media institutions and their work is even more precarious than freelance work used to be.

    So what does THAT mean for the future of newspapers?

    See, the problem is that people have been talking for five years about how bloggers are or are not going to “replace” journalists, when a) no one knows what it is that journalists or bloggers actually do, or b) not many bloggers are actually saying that they want to “replace” anybody.

    On the other hand, the question, “how do you construct a new business model for an industry that relied on the regularized, routinized, (sometimes) paid production of news products out of an internet model which is (under / non)paid and irrational” is an interesting question … but its the question no one is asking, because they’re too hung up on blaming bloggers for putting journalists out of work … still.

  6. Fausta says

    December 28, 2008 at 2:50 am

    Chris,
    Bloggers have to consistently show to their readers, post by post, that they provide reliable content, information, and viewpoint.
    Freelancers used to have to show they are consistently reliable and that their information is verifiable or they would not be hired again. Of course, that’s what freelancers had to do before newspapers stopped publishing what doesn’t fit their narrative. The alDura case comes to mind; Enderlin still is a journalist for France2, while his stringer is the one supporting Enderlin’s narrative.

    As for being linked by the NYT, it’s nice when they do but when it comes to traffic their links bring very little, 100 visitors at the most. Compare that to the several hundred that have read this post in the couple of hours since Instapundit linked to it.

    As for publishing bloggers’ article, years ago the WSJ was publishing Arthur Chrenkoff’s excellent series of posts on Good News From Iraq. Fox News and others are hiring bloggers. It’s happening. But I’ve yet to comr across a blogger who’d want to replace a journalist at a newspaper’s desk.

    The issue of pay is an interesting one. Who funds Daily Kos or the Huffington Post, and why does it matter? How does that affect their credibility? What does that mean for a media business model?

    Hatless,
    Of the current news magazines, The Economist is probably the one who hires specialized writers in their area of expertise who can write in “the Economist style”. The rest of them read like people from journalism school who try to write about science, or the market, or whatever. Which, as you point out, is why the consumer is reading blogs.

  7. Texpat says

    December 28, 2008 at 9:57 am

    I have heard for years the demise of journalists means there will be no one to dig through the mayor’s garbage bin to find the real corruption or salacious scandal. I wish I or someone else had kept a library of stories over the last 10 years where bloggers have, in fact, reported and influenced events in both local and national arenas.

    The 20th century model created by the news industry of a “professional journalist” is dead, period. Debates about who is replacing whom are irrelevant. The internet is becoming the Public Square and those from whom we receive our news and information will not conveniently fit the journalist/blogger dichotomy. The debate itself is an act of desperation on the part of newpaper employees to appear to remain essential.

    When I write about a Supreme Court decision overturning a law passed by the US Congress, my readers will find links to the original bill, its amendments and the roll call vote. I will also include links to commentary, pro & con with a sequence of events leading to the legal challenge. Links to appellate and amicus briefs as well as the final SCOTUS decision will be there also. My audience is decidedly uneducated about fine edge of legal principles and constitutional law, but I can make it somewhat understandable for the layman with every possible original source available for them to make their decisions. Who does that in the traditional print media and, more importantly, why not ?

    The NYT or CNN report the same story without any real sourcing, lifting quotes sans context, providing no few or no links, laughably politicized analysis and their meme usually comes across as “Conservative Wing Overturns Harassment Law, Scalia and Alito Hate Women” or “Liberal Wing Saves America, Fascist Police Slapped Down Again”.

    People are so tired and weary of being treated like idiots. It’s over, Mulshine, and I don’t really care whether people like me and Fausta walk like a journalist or talk like a journalist. It all boils down to delivering the goods and that fact alone is so very threatening to a legion of people who see the sun setting on their asses.

  8. Chris Anderson says

    December 28, 2008 at 11:56 am

    Hi Fausta,

    OK, here is what I’m getting at in my remarks about pay. In fact, you kind of make the point yourself in your extended comments above:

    “I am not an employee of the Star Ledger and receive no pay for my posts there, which is why they are so few.”

    Modern, professional journalism was founded on the premise that one of the main functions of journalism was to monitor other social institutions; primarily the institutions of government and business. In its most aggressive form this became known as “investigative journalism” and was highly critical of government, business, whatever. Even in its more moderate form– referred to by some as “stenographic journalism”– this model had a use, as it basically translated the complicated things government and business were doing for ordinary people who hadn’t the time or knowledge to learn these things themselves (as a side note, one of the great things the blogosphere has done has been to subject journalism itself to the scrutiny of an outside group).

    Because government and business were bureaucratic institutions, though, journalism decided that it too had to be set up like a bureaucratic institution in order to keep an adequate eye on those they were supposed to keep an eye on. Which mean journalism invented a professional code, had a paid, full time staff, beats, and produced regular, standardized, daily content. The problem, though, is that the bureaucracy and institutions of journalism are breaking down, mostly because of economic and technological factors, which means less regularity and institutionalization because there is less pay (“I am not an employee of the Star Ledger and receive no pay for my posts there, which is why they are so few.”) And those of government and business, not so much. Their business models– despite the Wall St. collapse– are more or less fine.

    So for me, the million dollar question is: can journalism cover the bureaucracies they were designed to cover if they themselves can no longer operate as bureaucracies. If they are networks or pro-ams, or smart mobs, or wise crowds, or whatever.

  9. Fausta says

    December 28, 2008 at 12:04 pm

    Chris,
    So for me, the million dollar question is: can journalism cover the bureaucracies they were designed to cover if they themselves can no longer operate as bureaucracies. If they are networks or pro-ams, or smart mobs, or wise crowds, or whatever.
    That’s at the heart of the issue, and might explain why the de facto collusion with a third-party narrative when covering issues such as government funding.

    (OT, I changed “why they are so few” to “why there are so few”. Thought I should clarify in case Jay gets in a snit about it. He seemed bothered that I added the final sentence to my NJV post, which I had left out by mistake when I first posted it. As a blogger, I don’t have an editor and have to correct my own.)

  10. Ben says

    December 28, 2008 at 1:13 pm

    HatlessHessian,

    “We used to joke about the Omaha World Herald when they’d do a news piece on a business or associate we knew. They’d invariably get 4-5 fundamental facts wrong…”

    Yes, it’s easy to spot the mistakes when papers write about a subject you know well, and yet we then turn the page and assume the writers are more accurate about the next subject. It’s the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect:

    http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-whyspeculate.html

  11. Evil Pundit says

    December 28, 2008 at 3:02 pm

    “Newspapers are stuck with huge capital structures they cannot easily jettison and revenues are falling. No one who writes seriously about new media and citizen journalism is unaware of this. No one in new media, citizen journalism or regular journalism knows what to do about it.”

    I know what to do about it.

    Celebrate!

    Ding, dong, the wicked witch is dying!

  12. Jay Rosen says

    December 28, 2008 at 4:33 pm

    Fausta: what I’m in a snit about is a craptastic, low-standards, zero-research and generally ignorant column in the Wall Street Journal by your buddy, Paul, which you decided to promote and praise rather than examine and criticize. You could have said, “I’m a buddy of Paul’s, so I’m not going comment” and linked to his column, but you didn’t.

    I also think it’s amusing that you added a new backing-away conclusion to your post after getting some criticism, rather than writing a new post after thinking through the responses, which is what I normal blogger would do. And no, I don’t believe you accidentally forgot to include a final graph like Paul is almost right, the way you’re almost there when your flight to Miami gets detoured and lands in Chicago.. but then remembered it after taking heat.

    Your post at Nj.com calls Mulshine’s piece an “excellent article.” Did you read that part? You wrote it, so I hope so. But a flight to Miami that deposits you in Chicago (which is the butt-covering comparison you somehow “forgot” to include the first time) wouldn’t be an “excellent” flight, would it?

    So which is it? An excellent article? Or one that promises to take you here but winds up way over there?

    No, you intended to praise the article, you did praise it, with a few reservations, then you decided that you really didn’t mean it, but you weren’t clear enough about why you didn’t mean it to write a new post reflecting on what you learned. So instead it’s “the final sentence of my post was missing… My apologies for the omission.”

    Right.

    But you can make up for this hilariously transparent butt-concealing behavior by answering a few questions:

    You said “Paul is correct in saying that newspapers’ traditional business model is under pressure now.”

    Is Paul also correct in arguing that “those who herald the era of citizen journalism” (no names, of course) have no idea that there’s an economic crisis in traditional journalism and don’t know that it might have something to do with shifts in the advertising market? Is that an “excellent” argument? Fair to make without names, links, quotes? Professional quality polemics? What do you think, Fausta?

    Paul says at his blog that the important question–in fact, the only question we are permitted to discuss–is “just who will do reporting in the Internet era.” Given that, do you think it fair and wise of him to use a quote from Glenn Reynolds about how anyone can be a pundit to make the point that not just anyone can report on tedious council meetings? Is that good practice in your view? Glenn didn’t think so. What’s your view?

    “Just who will do reporting in the Internet era?” is Paul’s question. Who is primarily responsible for answering it, Fausta? From what I can tell Paul thinks bloggers, citizen journalism advocates and commenters at his blog should have to answer it, or… die, I guess. I think he should have a go at it, first, because he and his kind are the ones expiring. What do you think?

  13. Fausta says

    December 28, 2008 at 6:36 pm

    Jay,
    In polite company where I come from (Santurce PR to be exact) when someone tells you you’re ALMOST RIGHT means you’re mostly wrong.

    Yes, I believe Paul wrote an excellent article. Let me clarify why:
    I do not support his attack on Glenn; Paul is wrong to do that. Paul is also wrong to ignore people like JD Johannes, Michael Yon, et al, and by now he should know better than to not link to what he acuses.
    However, it is an excellent article because Paul raises many questions that we have since been discussing here, and in other blogs as to the nature of blogging and the future of journalism.
    The issues of
    -How and who will do the reporting
    -Who will be paying for that kind of work
    -What the internet revolution brings about, and does it contribute to the public discourse
    -How will the best reporting be found in the internet – what sort of institution will the internet become, or does it need be an institution at all
    These are questions that as responsible bloggers we are dealing with right now, every day.

    As much as you may hate Paul’s mistrust of bloggers, he’s not alone in that mistrust, but he is clearly wrong. He is as wrong as any blogger who believes that NO reporter is trustworthy. One outstanding reporter working for the NYTimes, Simon Romero, is doing a great job reporting from Venezuela.

    Unlike you, I don’t think these questions should be answered exclusively by either traditional journalists or bloggers. These issues involve both and should be answered by both.

    And now on a more personal note:
    To be frank with you I don’t give a damn whether you believe I added anything to my NJV post post facto because of your comment or not. I don’t need to cover my butt from you or from anyone. Since you insist on an explanation, I suggest you consider whether I could be telling the truth and had come up with the final statement which closed the point I opened in the title, or whether I’m sitting here waiting to please you or not.

    As to your statement,
    rather than writing a new post after thinking through the responses, which is what I normal blogger would do.
    Let me answer this in two parts,
    rather than writing a new post after thinking through the responses
    Why should I? Because YOU say so?
    which is what I normal blogger would do
    Ah – because YOU say so.
    Piss off.

  14. Jay Rosen says

    December 28, 2008 at 7:00 pm

    Paul wrote an excellent article that is mostly wrong. That clarifies it. Thanks!

  15. Fausta says

    December 28, 2008 at 7:04 pm

    Yes. Sometimes raising the issue is worth going about it the wrong way.
    And I appreciate that you managed to make one comment without resorting to personal issues.

  16. Mamacita says

    December 29, 2008 at 12:16 am

    I know Fausta, personally, to be a person of integrity and honor, and if she told me that the sky was falling, I wouldn’t even take the time to run and tell the king; I’d dive under cover as quickly as possible, for I would know for a fact that the sky was, indeed, falling.

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