| Thursday, January 27, 2005 |
| Blog Overkill |
Jack Shafer DOES get it. In an excellent review of last weekend's Blogging, Journalism, and Credibility conference at Harvard, Shafer makes the point that Bloggers might be getting a little too full of themselves in claiming the coming apocalypse of mainstream media. He sites the comparison of Shamberg's proclamation in Guerilla Television over thirty years ago that the advent of portable video devices would be the demise of network news. It never happened.
It never happened because a well defined business / economic model never evolved to support the new technology. This is precisely the point that was made repeatedly at the conference. Without a solid economic model to support blogging, it will enhance and create more "open journalism", but the NYT and Washington Post should not be shaking in their boots just yet.
He makes a good point, that today's journalists are in many ways, paid bloggers. Sure, they don't have the freedom of expression and opinion that us private citizens do, but as Shafer points out:
I think most practicing journalists today are as Webby as any blogger you care to name. Journalists have had access to broadband connections for longer than most civilians, and nearly every story they tackle begins with a Web dump of essential information from Google or a proprietary database such as Nexis or Factiva. They conduct interviews via e-mail, download official documents from .gov sites, check facts, and monitor the competition including blogs the whole while. A few even store as a "favorite" the URL from Technorati that takes them directly to what the blogs are saying about them (here's mine) and talk back. When every story starts on the Web, and every story can be stripped to its digital bits and pumped through wires and over the air, we're all Web journalists.
It may be that the internet has certainly changed society and the way in which we live for the better, and certainly blogging has advanced a new frontier for more voices to be heard, more opinions to be offered, and information travels even faster, but until a sold economic model is developed where those voices can be supported with revenues, they're just more water pressure from the firehose of information already deluging us.
I encourage you to read the entire piece, it's very good.
UPDATE: So is this this piece by Frank Bajak. He succinctly puts it: "[bloggers]are benefiting public discourse and making the journalism ``franchises'' more accountable." He warns media not to ignore them, but to embrace them in getting more information faster, more accurately and more thoroughly, but he cautions that big media is only in danger of becoming a dinosaur if they don't adapt to, and adopt this new media. Yeah - pretty much.
UPDATE#2: Clarification. When I say the economic model failed or was lacking for Shaumberg's video proliferation meltdown, I mean specifically that they had a product with no distribution channels. The networks owned all the bandwidth. Not so with the internet, anyone and everyone with a computer can publish, but now the economic model shifts to getting an audience to read you (hello to the couple of dozen or so that do regularly!), link to you, and make it worth your while from a cost /revenue perspective to do so.
That said, did Jay Rosen and I read the same Slate article today?? I like Jay Rosen a lot generally, and I think he also had a really worthwhile summary of the conference on his website, which I assign you to read as homework. In fact, the part that I thought was the most interesting bit of all at the conference was something Jill Abramson of the NYT noted:
Neither those of us from the mainstream media, especially print, nor you in blogworld, have figured out a business model on the Internet that could pay for and sustain the kind of deep, global news-gathering operation with highly experienced, trained reporters that is the lifeblood of the Times.
Let's face it, while journalists can learn a lot from bloggers, we're linkers, not thinkers - at least not neccessarily original ones for the most part. The political and media bloggers depend on linking to already published (almost exclusively on-line) stories, and then write pithy opinions about them or critique them (this site excluded from the pithy bits). Journalists edit and post, bloggers post and then edit and update.
OK, make your damn point Linda. My point is that in a response to Shafer's article in Slate, Jay slammed Shafer and attacked him on a personal level for lacking decency and making artificial characterizations. Me thinks he doth protest too much. Lighten up man! I for one, didn't read the Shafer article that way AT ALL - and perhaps it is just me, but I felt he simply took one look at a very broad range of issue and opinions presented, and I certainly don't think he mischaracterized anyone personally - least of all Jay Rosen. Jay's characterizations / interpretations of Shafer were equally overstated and unfounded if that's the case. Listen - I think they're both right and had a lot of good things to say. Let it go at that.
The passion of Jay's response reflects the passion that played out in the blogosphere from the moment this conference was announced. (Note to organizers: you can't have a public forum for discussion and then make it "invitation only"). But the level of vitriol and the fracas that this thing produced was amazing. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion at times.
I'm sorry if I've bored everyone to tears on this topic, but I find it absolutely fascinating.
Talk amongst yourselves.
UPDATE#3: In an email to Jeff Jarvis, a reader notes"
I must have read something different because the point I got from the Slate article was simply to not overhype a new medium and accept that change is often incorporated into woolly institutions like The Media. I also got that Dave Winer was being his usual self and perhaps Jeff got a wee bit excited at one point.
The transcripts Shafer points to in his article seem to back up his claims which, again I must say, didn't seem to be negative about blogs at all, just about the importance of seeing change as an inclusive process not necessarily as a revolutionary one.
The follow up from other people doesn't match what I would have expected from the article and the paraphrasing and accusations of dishonesty seem over the top. Is this oversensitivity and bias or some different reality being discussed? I'm not sure.
Yep - exactly.
|
posted by Broadsheet @ 5:54 PM   |
|
| 2 Editorial Opinions: |
-
As much as I'd like to think savvy, educated bloggers such as yourself could fundamentally change mainstream media, I predict a kind of watered-down co-existence, even if blogging is supported by viable economic model.
By way of example, when the "invention" of photography was announced, critic/artist Paul (Cassandra) Delaroche fearfully/optimistically declared "from today, painting is dead!" Now, those early daguerreotype studios did put a lot of third-rate portrait painters out of business but they hardly signalled the demise of the medium of painting--shifted its course into abstraction at best (no small feat, mind you). And the camera did change the shape of what constitutes an "historical" document but didn't put writers or journalists out of business either, as others feared. Not sure if this analogy is apt but it's the one that came to mind. You see this kind of buzz with most new technologies but it's rare that one will completely displace the other.
I will say that for the middle and upper classes, one undeniably powerful aspect of blogging is its fundamentally democratic accessibility, which was the primary significance of the camera too. Things change, however slowly, when citizens are allowed to represent themselves, speak for themselves. It matters, but the historical impact is usually slow to reveal itself.
I am also excited about the potential of the blogosphere but remain guarded about its ability to produce trickle-up change in the content and delivery of national news. Then again, it's late January in upstate New York when optimism is generally difficult to muster, so what do I know?
But hey, you gotta start somewhere so rock on, Linda.
The Sister
-
Great analogy to photography Sis - I agree with you. And thanks - I think you're probably the only one who took the time to read that whole post, but that's the nice thing about a blog. You can talk all you want and no-one has to listen unless they want too.
Good luck with your dinner party!
|
| |
| << Home |
| |
|
|
As much as I'd like to think savvy, educated bloggers such as yourself could fundamentally change mainstream media, I predict a kind of watered-down co-existence, even if blogging is supported by viable economic model.
By way of example, when the "invention" of photography was announced, critic/artist Paul (Cassandra) Delaroche fearfully/optimistically declared "from today, painting is dead!" Now, those early daguerreotype studios did put a lot of third-rate portrait painters out of business but they hardly signalled the demise of the medium of painting--shifted its course into abstraction at best (no small feat, mind you). And the camera did change the shape of what constitutes an "historical" document but didn't put writers or journalists out of business either, as others feared. Not sure if this analogy is apt but it's the one that came to mind. You see this kind of buzz with most new technologies but it's rare that one will completely displace the other.
I will say that for the middle and upper classes, one undeniably powerful aspect of blogging is its fundamentally democratic accessibility, which was the primary significance of the camera too. Things change, however slowly, when citizens are allowed to represent themselves, speak for themselves. It matters, but the historical impact is usually slow to reveal itself.
I am also excited about the potential of the blogosphere but remain guarded about its ability to produce trickle-up change in the content and delivery of national news. Then again, it's late January in upstate New York when optimism is generally difficult to muster, so what do I know?
But hey, you gotta start somewhere so rock on, Linda.
The Sister