Posted on 12/31/2005 6:38:42 AM PST by Loyal Buckeye
Of all the stories leading America’s annual greatest-hits list, the one that subsumes the rest is the evolution of information in the Age of Blogging.
Not since the birth of the printing press have our lives been so dramatically affected by the way we create and consume information.
What is wonderful and miraculous about the Internet needs little elaboration. We all marvel at the ease with which we can access information, whether reading government documents previously available only to a few, or tracking down old friends and new enemies.
It is this latter – our new enemies – that interests me most. I don’t mean al-Qaida or Osama bin Laden, but the less visible, insidious enemies of decency, humanity and civility: the angry offspring of narcissism’s quickie marriage to instant gratification.
There’s something frankly creepy about the explosion we now call the blogosphere – the "electroniverse" where recently wired squatters set up new camps each day. As I write, the number of blogs (Web logs) and bloggers (those who blog) is estimated in the tens of millions worldwide.
Although I’ve been a blog fan since the beginning, and have written favorably about the value added to journalism and public knowledge thanks to the new "citizen journalist," I’m also wary of power untempered by restraint and accountability.
Say what you will about the mainstream media, but no industry agonizes more about how to improve its product, police its members and better serve its communities. Newspapers are filled with carpal-tunneled wretches, overworked and underpaid, who suffer near-pathological allegiance to getting it right.
That a Jayson Blair of The New York Times surfaces now and then as a plagiarist or a fabricator ultimately is testament to the high standards tens of thousands of others strive to uphold each day without recognition. Blair is infamous, but also gone.
Bloggers persist no matter their contributions or quality, though most would have little to occupy their time were the mainstream media to disappear tomorrow. Some bloggers do their own reporting, but most rely on mainstream reporters to do the heavy lifting. Some bloggers also offer superb commentary, but most buzz and blurt like caffeinated adolescents.
Even so, they hold the same megaphone as the adults and enjoy perceived credibility owing to membership in the larger world of blog grown-ups. These effete and often clever baby "bloggies" are rich in time and toys, but bereft of adult supervision.
Spoiled and undisciplined, they have seized the stage, a privilege granted not by years in the trenches, but by virtue of a three-pronged plug and the miracle of WiFi. They play tag team with hyperlinks ("I’ll say you’re important if you’ll say I’m important") and shriek "Gotcha!" when they catch some weary wage earner in a mistake or oversight. Plenty smart but lacking in wisdom, they possess the power of a forum, but neither the maturity nor humility that years of experience impose.
Each time I wander into blogdom, I’m reminded of the savage children stranded on an island in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Without adult supervision, they organize themselves into rival tribes, learn to hunt and kill, and eventually become murderous barbarians in the absence of a civilizing structure.
What Golding demonstrated and what we’re witnessing as the blogosphere’s offspring multiply is that people tend to abuse power when it is unearned and will bring down others to enhance themselves. Likewise, many bloggers seek the destruction of others for their own self-aggrandizement. When a mainstream journalist stumbles, they pile on like so many savages, hoisting his or her head on a bloody stick as Golding’s children did the fly-covered head of a butchered sow.
Schadenfreude – pleasure in others’ misfortunes – has become the new barbarity on an island called Blog. When someone trips, whether Dan Rather or Judith Miller, bloggers are slavering for a public flogging. Incivility is their weapon and humanity their victim.
I mean no disrespect to the many brilliant people out there – professors, lawyers, doctors, philosophers, scientists and journalists who also happen to blog. But we should beware and resist the rest of the egogratifying rabble who contribute only snark, sass and destruction.
We can’t silence them, but for civilization’s sake and the integrity of information by which we all live or die, we can and should ignore them.
Say what you will about the mainstream media, but no industry agonizes more about how to improve its product, police its members and better serve its communities. Newspapers are filled with carpal-tunneled wretches, overworked and underpaid, who suffer near-pathological allegiance to getting it right.
We can’t silence them [bloggers], but for civilization’s sake and the integrity of information by which we all live or die, we can and should ignore them.
Have at it.
April Fool's Day isn't until April.
More babbling by people who babble for a living. I'd suggest that she get some people on the record to support her wishes.
Another frustrated 'J' School graduate.
"I mean no disrespect to the many brilliant people out there – professors, lawyers, doctors, philosophers, scientists and journalists who also happen to blog."
Good. We have all of those here ar FR.
"I mean no disrespect to the many brilliant people out there – professors, lawyers, doctors, philosophers, scientists and journalists who also happen to blog."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
We truly do mean disrespect to the many average intellects, schooled for 4 long years in the challenging liberal j-school environment, who can't get simple facts right.
I guess Kathleen Parker does not like competition.
But loves people like DanRather and MaryApes.
And look where it got em.
" I’m reminded of the savage children stranded on an island in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Without adult supervision, they organize themselves into rival tribes, learn to hunt and kill, and eventually become murderous barbarians in the absence of a civilizing structure. "
Sounds like she's been to DU
How about THIS Ms Parker, if you GD journalists are so GOOD at what you do, why do us "amatuer" bloggers SCARE YOU TO DEATH?
If you do the work a jounalist is SUPPOSED to do, ie present us the facts, well researched, we'll have nothing to pick apart now will we. ;) Have a good day!
There's no place for them to run or hide. They know their time is short. Their credibility is in flames and the new media is like a host of ants picking away at a rotten piece of fruit.
The new media is freedom as our founders envisioned it. A million voices speaking their own truth, not corporate media conglomerates driven by their particular agendas, monopolizing the voice of the people into a neatly packaged product.
Say what you will about the new media. It is the future, unless the forces of evil can extinguish the flame of freedom that drives it.
Better put some ice on that, Kathleen.
Beware the babbling Kathleen Parker
I think she meant "left".
Author can be reached at:
kparker@kparker.com
she's worried because bloggers are making traditional columnists more irrelevant every day. She actually makes me want to start my own blog, thanks Ms. Parker ;-)
Kathleen Parker has sure changed her tune from a year ago. Sounds like Hitlery's goons paid Ms. Parker a visit...
http://www.michnews.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/114/5124
All of which brings me to my premise that the blogosphere isn't just a challenge to journalism in its currently stagnant state, but a potential boon to problem-solving of a higher order. The beauty of the blogosphere is that it is self-igniting, self-propelling and self-selecting, a sort of intellectual ecosystem wherein the best specimens from various disciplines descend from the ethers, converge on an issue and apply their unique talents.
Though virtually newborn, the blogosphere has blossomed exponentially in a matter of Earth-time seconds, from a few random voices to a mighty and diverse chorus of sometimes spectacular talent. Bloggers are the Big Bang of the Information Age.
Parker is usually pretty good. Maybe she got hit in the head.
*Every* news story I've ever had intimate knowledge of had some fact wrong. Be it dates, names, actions, etc., something in the article was wrong.
I guess he's talking about those alternative-universe newspapers. You know, not the kind we have here in this universe.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.