Journalism's fear and loathing of blogs

Christian Science Monitor ^ | 8/8/05 | Dante Chinni

[Brad from Tennessee]

The time may come when blogs and other independent news websites pool their financial resources and establish world-wide independent news services with print and broadcast journalists and other paid full-time professionals reporting 24 hours a day. If and when blogs evolve to this level the so-called mainstream media will truly be a dinosaur.

[LibSnubber]

"...blogs are a dangerous direct competitor to mainstream journalism - a way for individuals and interest groups to reach around the gatekeeper function that newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio have traditionally held."

Yeah, the media's function as gatekeeper was to hold back the truth. Now we can get at the truth by going around them. Fine by me.

[ozzymandus]

Blogs are dangerous to the MSM only because they expose the truth the RAT media lapdogs hide.

[Billthedrill]

Color me unsympathetic. Forums and blogs present no challenge whatever to the MSM's ability to report the news. None. Nada. Zilch. What they threaten is the exclusivity that allowed the MSM to shape the news in the past and that conferred on its proprietors a power they have abused. They aren't bleating about content, they're bleating about the loss of power that their control of that content brought to them. Tough.

[Military family member]

Wrong.. at that time, your new news services becomes the Mainstream Media. This is all a self-perpetuating cycle.

I've been a journalist for 25 years, and I edit and publish a business month, with a circulation of 11,000. It's not much but 18 months ago, I was at 5,000, which may just make my paper the fastest growing in the United States.

I don't really fear blogs, although I read dozens each day. I really don't consider them a threat, if I consider them at all. To the best of my knowledge, the journalists I know feel the same way.

I am not trying to arrogant here. There has always been a huge group of people who knew certain stories long before the media printed or spoke the story. In fact, these are the people I usually turn to for story information.

The major difference between journalists and bloggers is that bloggers tend to have the freedom of anonymity. When I publish something, my name is there in the byline and on the masthead. I take credit for it. People know where I work, can find out where I live, talk to my children, etc. When I'm on a blog site--or a site such as FreeRepublic, whhich I consider several levels above--I print under a pseudonym, as does pretty much everyone else except Jim Robinson. That's part of the appeal.

Don't get me wrong...I do love the appeal of blogs, but I don't look that them as competition.

As for the writing, it does matter. Granted, it doesn't have to Shakespeare, but I do want people to read what I wrote. That's the whole point of writing anything.

[speedy]

Yes, it's a self-eliminating demographic. And if the MSM really wasn't afraid of bloggers or the web in general, they would not be writing articles like this in the first place. These turkeys are just trying to reassure each other.

[Finny]

I think CTP is right in that many bloggers aren't disciplined as to economy of words. One blogger recently wrote a piece with great ideas ... that was 3800 words long! Brilliant though the concept of the piece was, precious few will read more than 20 percent of what he wrote. You've got to have respect for your readers, and a 3800 word piece doesn't cut that mustard! A skilled editor would go through and cut the superfluous, keep the core, and the resulting piece would be about four times shorter, but ten times more powerful.

Coulter, Sowell, Walter Williams, etc., generally keep their pieces about 600 to 800 words, if only for reasons of column length requirements. It takes a lot of discipline, focus, and squelching of the ego to write short. But it reveals the better writer.

My prediction: those bloggers who act as their own editors and master the art of writing short, will have more readers.

[MagnoliaB]

"Mainstream journalism is running scared. It's watching its audience numbers decline and its public trust numbers drop. Newspapers, magazines, and network television news have been shaken by major scandals. The media have seen the future and it is blogging. "

Of course they are running scared. Speaking for myself, before the internet, WHO ever heard the voices of anyone that disagreed with them?

The alphabet news could come into you living room and say whatever they wanted. Newspapers and magazines could print whatever they wanted. If you disagreed with them, what was your alternative? Write them a letter? Then what? They would throw it in the trash and pretend they never heard from you.

BUT now, with the internet and Bloggers, they are being overrun. They are finally being held accountable. I'm sure they are still in shock and probably in denial about what's happening.

[Jenny Hatch]

"What they threaten is the exclusivity that allowed the MSM to shape the news in the past and that conferred on its proprietors a power they have abused. They aren't bleating about content, they're bleating about the loss of power that their control of that content brought to them."

You are exactly right. The threat is in not being able to shove the marxist/socialist agenda on the masses anymore. And those of us who are blogging can go ahead and point out the communistic idealologies whenever they appear.

Bummer for them. With total control of the media, the universities, and the book publishing industry, the marxists were feeling SO confident. They were able to re-write history with no accountability and shove it on our children in school - (This is still happening BTW, I was just reading through my daughters AP US History text book last week, and it is frightful)

But then parents started homeschooling, Reagan called evil...well, EVIL, the internet appeared, and Matt Drudge posted a story about a blue dress, and the rest as they say, is HISTORY....

Jenny Hatch
Blogger

[MagnoliaB]

I think this post is directed at the 'mainstream media' that gets right in your face. The 'mainstream media' that I have witnessed over my lifetime , abuses it position and uses it to, shall we say 'brainwash' people.

You are right however, it takes a lot of guts to publish something and put your real name to it. Don't worry. When you get that big, you will have the money to protect yourself and your family.

[Military family member]

Much of what I see on blogs, howwwever, is stuff posted from the MSM. What established the mainstream media for what it is today is the free market society in which we live. If it sells then the MSM will continue to provide that kind of information. One network does reality based TV, makes moeny, then another does the same thing to compete.

I am both journalist and publisher, but I'm a small operation,and when I receive word of a press conference, I decide whether or not to attend and devote my time to covering something thatthe other media will also carry. If I skip a story, then I risk looking foolish or lazy in my coverage. If I write similar stories to what others have put out, then I risk being seen as being part of the MSM.

It's a huge risk to be the one hanging out there with a story no one else has. You gamble that the story you have is truly the one everyone wants to read. Here's where good writing comes into play. If it's not entertaining enough, then you risk losing the readers from the beginning.

[Tom_Busch]

Most blogs I read aren't anonymous at all. Hewitt, Malkin, Coulter, Reynolds, etc.

[Froufrou]

"That makes the message more dependable...it increases competition. And it requires the blogger and the reader of the blog to seek the self-evident truth...the truth that stands on its own two feet.

The real truth."

Well said, Dark Skies!