It doesn’t take Freud, Jung or Adler to tell you that when people start flailing around, making dumb statements and stamping their feet, they’re usually feeling cornered (or even terrified, as the title indicates). Call it the Kruschev-bangs-his-shoe-syndrome. Lately a number of members of the mainstream media are “acting out” in this manner with regards to the blogosphere. The latest shoe-banger is a fellow named Steven Levy (likeHugh Hewitt I had never heard of him) who takes off after bloggers as “ankle biters” (please, no pajama jokes – that’s so September 15). He also misquotes Glenn Reynolds – not too bright, Steven. People like Levy seem pathetic and desperate in their attempts to denigrate the blogosphere. Also they seem illiterate, because even a cursory tour of the players would reveal that many bloggers stand up very well, thank you, in terms of credits and CVs to their supposedly superior mainstream colleagues. But we’ve been over all that before. [Maybe Levy was just attacking bloggers to cash in on the blogger craze-ed. I wouldn't blame him.]
Roger, thanks for the link. My post, though, was only on lawyer-bloggers who were chasing Rather. Hugh Hewitt’s original post on September 12th (I’m not sure Hugh’s permalinks are working, unfortunately) on the subject of blogger credentials wasn’t so limited, and properly included many nonlawyers — I remember you and Charles Johnson being prominently among them — with a broad range of credentials from many other fields that make them well-qualified to comment on Rathergate and zillions of other topics.
I’ve heard of Steven Levy. He was rather well-known for his technology coverage back in the ’90′s; he’s author of the book “Hackers”. Odd to see him getting so put off by bloggers.
How do you misquote the Puppy-Blender? He ever say anything besides “Heh”, “Indeed”, or “Read the whole thing”? ;-D
Last week I saw another guy on Fox give the obligatory backhand “anonymous guys in bathrobes” remark. It was Ellis Henchman, or something like that; I don’t know if he’s a journalist, or a party strategist, or just the house liberal (for the “balanced” part), but he was completely weak in his whole approach to the CBS/blogs/media thing.
I think it’s odd that blogs were cool back when the Deaniacs were exploiting new media, but now they’re just carefully orchestrated hacks of the White House.
ìOdd to see him getting so put off by bloggers.î
Nope, it actually makes perfect sense. Itís called economic self preservation. Steven Levy and other ìprofessionalî journalists rightfully sense that their way of earning a living is undergoing a dramatic revolution. Jobs will be lost. A number of established journalists will be compelled to find another occupation. The days of implied job security are over. Wouldnít you be scared?
The National Enquirer broke the Monicagate story.
A ragman can get the best table at Elaines if he pays with gold. The same applies for information; facts will out regardless of who bears the message.
Quoting Levy: “Name-calling and intolerance of opposing points of view have reached epidemic levels on Web logs.”
If we think for one minute that MSM wouldn’t reach their own pinnacle of name calling and intolerance were they not choked by “political correctness” we are sadly mistaken.
Levy is a moron. And that picture!! He’s ugly too. How’s that for name calling?
This is unfortunately the nature of sine wave journalism. Something new arises (it can be anything from blogs to a sports star to a pop singer) and for awhile the coverage is glowing, even adulatory. But inevitably the journalists are just setting the stage for the next phase where they are shocked–shocked I tell you, to discover that the next great thing has warts.
The problem with the MSM is that blogs have leapfrogged the traditional trajectory of new media, where for a time it imitates the old.
Gutenberg’s typeface looked like calligraphy. The first movies were filmed stage plays. The first radio broadcasts were concerts or announcers reading the news. The first TV news broadcasts were guys reading the news with a microphone on-camera.
It took the emergence of visionaries such as Orson Welles, Hitchcock, Eisenstein, etc. to take the then-new media to new levels, and it generally took a couple of decades for the new medium to move out of the gee-whiz lookit-this-trick stage. (FWIW, I presented on this topic to the National Association of Broadcasters back in 2000.)
The blogosphere has accelerated that path by an order of magnitude. Consider that in 1994 only a few people had even heard of the World Wide Web, much less were using it as a daily source of hard news and opinion.
It’s not change that’s scary as much as the rate of change.
corrie ó Wells. Fah. He was carried by his cinematographers…