Posted on 12/31/2005 6:38:42 AM PST by Loyal Buckeye
Of all the stories leading Americas 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 dont mean al-Qaida or Osama bin Laden, but the less visible, insidious enemies of decency, humanity and civility: the angry offspring of narcissisms quickie marriage to instant gratification.
Theres 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 Ive 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," Im 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 ("Ill say youre important if youll say Im 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, Im reminded of the savage children stranded on an island in William Goldings 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 were witnessing as the blogospheres 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 Goldings 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 cant silence them, but for civilizations sake and the integrity of information by which we all live or die, we can and should ignore them.
**Newspapers are filled with carpal-tunneled wretches, overworked and underpaid, who suffer near-pathological allegiance to getting it right.**
Poor dears, maybe we need to give them easier jobs like ditch digging.
Honestly Miss Parker if you are reading this from everything I have ever seen Reporters is lazy. From College when journalism students was at the bars every night when the rest of us had projects and homework to do. In Iraq your reporters won't leave the hotels because they are lazy worthless people. I don't know how many reporters has been caught plagerising. Someone working fast food or driving an 18 wheeler can't copy and paste their work. I recall on CSPAN there was a tour of the Statin Island landfill where they was searching through rubble from the World Trade Center. The guide wanted to show more stuff but other than CSPAN camerman the reporters never left the tour bus.
"Parker has been around a while. She actually makes sense, sometimes. :-"
Not here!:
"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."
This is one of the biggest pieces of BS I've ever seen! I count a minimum of 7 lies in this paragraph alone!! "allegiance to getting it right"!???!!! - Unbelievable! "getting it right" means pushing their lies down our throats while suppressing the truth. "overworked and underpaid"??!? - If they strived for the truth and did a little research, maybe they be overworked, but as it is most of the MSMers are overpayed, lazy, partisan hacks applying communist propaganda techniques to their 'pieces'. I've had it with the MSM's BS!
Hey, good for you.
And how much BS did you count in the second article that brought me to post the statement that got you all bent out of shape?
Cry me a river.
A Professional Engineer underdesigns a building, or a bridge span and then they collapse? You are damned right that they are held responsible for 100% perfection.
Does anyone expect to live forever? Do people really hold doctors responsible for this fact of life...
Does any reporter think they can never make a grammatical or spelling error in their entire career, much less an occasional factual error? Do any of their reader really hold them to this level of performance?
However, how often do you enter a building or cross a bridge and think to yourself "Will this thing collapse?" The general public expects that "100% perfection", nor does it consider the bar being set as "idealistic and unattainable" in any way...
dvwjr
Someone has just realized that paid jobs as columinsts is a career dead-end with so much 'free' talent out there...
The eyeballs go where the quality exists, not just because someone pays an 'author'...
So, as in any 'buggy-whip' industry - prevent any competition by 'talking-down' the other guy. Or if push comes to shove, talk up 'licensing'. Perhaps a Federal 'shield law' only for 'real' journalists/columnists who are of course only employed by the electronic/print divisions of the MSM...
dvwjr
Sounds like sour grapes from one who is seeing the end of her monopoly on information dissemination.
A building collapse due to design failure would be comparable to the rathergate scandal in journalism. That is not something that you expect or accept from a professional in their field. But what I'm focusing on is the 'gotcha-game' that's played out. An engieer can design a stable, enduring building, but put in an underperforming ventilation system, or make the entry door more in a poorly planned location, or but in bathrooms that are too small. Little things that are annoying, but not catastrophic for the use of the structure. In that sense, nothing ever engineered is 100% perfect.
A very incoherent article by a usually very coherent Parker. So many bloggers are not professional journalists. So what? The net (no pun intended) good of bloggers far outweighs any so-called harm people like Parker see in them. Would she seriously like to see the days before the bloggers re-emerge? The gist of her "argument" is risable. So what if some bloggers are irresponsible. They have caused professional journalists to stay on their toes. Parker must have just had a fight with her significant other just before she wrote this tripe.
A small correction.
Your statement didn't get me 'all bent out of shape', her article did.
Happy New Year! :-)
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