Fraidy Cat
Daniel Terdiman, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, disses blogs. A few choice lines:
Everyone seems to be writing a web log these days, and those without day jobs have a decided advantage.
And:
It seems that blogs are still new enough that scepticism about their authenticity has not yet set in.
And:
But even experienced readers let their guard down when they follow a trusted friend’s referral, he says. If a friend passed you the web address, “then you definitely think it’s true”, Rubel says, “because you’re talking about word of mouth”.
And:
Blogs are also often taken seriously these days because of their status as the platform for a new kind of journalism, and the way that many of them imitate the format of news sites.
But a well-designed look and feel do not prove that a site is what it claims to be, Rubel says. “If you think about it,” he says, “there are sites that are blogs that look like professional news outlets that you would never know that they’re written by amateurs.”
One reason that many people put faith in such blogs may be a desire to escape a mundane daily existence.
The only blog actually mentioned by Terdiman is Bill Clinton’s Daily Diary — an obvious hoax. No mention of InstaPundit (whose blog is so untrustworthy that was hired to write for MSNBC), of Andrew Sullivan (who has been in Big Media his entire professional life), or of the fact that many Big Media outlets now have their own in-house blogs.
If blogs are so bad, then why did Terdiman do nothing but take cheap shots at them?
Instapundit has become the laughing stock of the blogosphere.
Maybe because blogs have a tendency to force some accountability on the media by highlighting the bias, mistakes and flat out lies.
Columnists are probably more susceptible since bloggers have the power to fisk them to death. The Maureen Dowds of the print media can’t be comfortable with the fact that critical feedback of some of their illogical rants are no longer shielded by the the editorial staff who get to decide who of the unwashed readership get to have their letters to the editor printed. When popular bloggers can reach a wide segment of people and essentially discredit the Dowds of the world, that is a scary concept for them.
While he main question the authenticity and accuracy of bloggers, I think a lot of people have the same feelings about more than a few ‘legitimate’ media outlets as well.
Terdiman…the name says it all.
Maybe he took cheap shots at blogs to escape a mundane daily existence.
Why does Mr Terdiman disparage blogs? Because he’s threatened, of course.
There’s an old saying that you don’t start an argument with people that buy their ink by the gallon.
The Mainstream Media will soon learn the corollary: You don’t start an argument with people whose ink is free.
-S
Oh yeah, and the mainstream press is such a bastion of reliability, objectivity, and honesty…
I think one of the main reasons that journalists hate bloggers is that it reflects very poorly on journalism as a profession. Bloggers can take a paid professional’s work, fisk it to death, and post the results for the entire world to see.
Journalism is supposed to be a big, important, Constitutionally-protected profession, not a shooting gallery for a bunch of *nobodys* who don’t have their name in the paper and don’t run in the proper circles. Their arrogance and inflated sense of self importance are just more factors contributing to the mainstream media’s slide into self-parody and irrelevance.
Slim, if you think Instapundit has become a laughing stock, then you must have also thought that all of Kerry’s jokes last night were hilarious!
Anytime you hear sniffs about “professionalism” from someone at the SMH, give a hearty laugh and turn to the rest of the funny papers.
The SMH is a joke. Imagine a whole newspaper full of Maureen Dowds, and you have some of idea of their quality. Oh, that’s something of an exaggeration, but they are terribly biased, and routinely mix up analysis with their hard news stories. They never met an anti-American story they didn’t like, either.
It reads like a newspaper produced by a high school debate team from one of the cow-intensive states. They come to DC for the national debate championships, and know they are hopelessly outclassed by the New Yorkers and Californians.
So they try desperately for some sort of parity by being Deep, which is to say, by being outrageous. But not too outrageous; that might make someone mad. So they spend the time vogueing and nervously looking over their shoulders to gauge reactions.
Sneering at bloggers, on the other hand, shows the fear that they’re about to be trounced by the team from another cow-intensive state.
And the horrible thing is, the SMH (arguably on a par with its sister publication, the Age of Melbourne), is the most serious newspaper in Australia.
blogging rules!!!!!
I like some professional blogs and some amateur blogs. I often don’t know which is which. The cool thing about blogs is that the depth of knowledge and quality of argumentation are usually superior to the porridge produced by “real journalists.” Apparently Mr. Terdiman believes that people can’t think for themselves.
Notorious professional journalists Tom Paine and Benjamin Franklin would certainly have been proud of Terdiman.
What does he mean those who have a day job have an advantage? Is that some backhanded way of saying ‘don’t quit your day job?’
Nope. Just discrimination against those bloggers, such as Dean Esmay, who work night shift.
One thing that slips past people like Terdiman is that some bloggers ARE professionals — in the subjects on which they’re blogging. I trust someone who is a for-real Middle East scholar more than I trust someone with a journalism degree and a pad of scribbled notes from an interview.
Apparently Mr. Daniel Terdiman did see what short work the professional journalist of the blogsphere made of Mr. Alex S. Jones, of Harvard’s Kennedy School, a former reporter for the New York Times, and a biographer of newspaper families. If he had he wouldn’t have dared write such dribble.
For a scathing report on blogging verses news reporting see here .
For a fascinating juxtaposition of press verses bloggers read Convention Coverage is a Failed Regime and Bloggers Have Their Credentials .
And of course Instapundit and his usual plethora of supporting links.
Actually I think that blogging is the greatest blessing of the Internet. I wouldn’t say that this is the killer app, that was the email and the http protocol, but blogging is close to them.
By reading blogs, I can be far more knowledgable about practically anything than just by reading printed media or by listening to radio/tv. Let’s call them, for the sake this post, the “mainstream media”. The problem with radio/tv is that I can listen only to those which are broadcasted in my area. The problem with printed media is that I can only read those which are available in my local newspaper store or bookstore or are delivered locally. Another problem with the mainstream media is that while there are numerous newspapers/stations, they are owned only by a few companies, therefore despite reading two different newspapers, I still read the same source.
Blogging lets us free. There are no physical barriers. I, sitting on my ass in Western Canada, can as easily read a local blog as I can read Vodkapundit which is located in Colorado Springs. Or BigPharaoh which is written from Egypt. Can the mainstream media match this flexibility?
By reading blogs, I can have as many sources of information as I want or can afford timewise. Most of the blogs are independent from each other. Therefore, I have a much richer source of information. I would say that the print and broadcast media cannot match the richness of the blogs.
Of course, I have to take many things read in blogs with a grain of salt. But hey, this is also true for the mainstream media.Jayson Blair?
By reading blogs, I can read the raw news and not something filtered through faceless censors and massaged to be acceptable for the “mainstream readership”. How many of you have seen the gruesome pictures of Paul Johnson’s head? Did anybody see them in the mainstream media? I bet noone. I could see them on the Internet through blogs. I could see the *REAL NEWS*, the severed head, instead of a “sanitized” news.Seeing Paul Johnson’s sad end, in its rawness, taught me far more about the enemy we face than reading a million articles about his death in the mainstream media.
Blogging also allows me to spend my time reading news I am interested. Whenever I read my newspaper, I ignore 80% of it. I am simply not interested in fashion or cars. I am interested in the political news which is covered in 16-20 pages a day. And those pages have many advertisements, pictures, and news I am not interested in. By reading blogs, I can read the news I am interested in. Lots. No limit.
Also, by reading blogs, I can be far more knowledagble about specific topics. Can the mainstream media match the richness of Little Green Footballs when it comes to RoP/terrorism issues? No way. There are aggregate blogs, like LGF, which thrive by reader’s contribution. LGF has readers all over the world, and they contribute the news they read in their local mainstream media. Therefore, by reading LGF, I can have a far wider knowledge about the dangers the West is facing than by following the mainstream media. Also, aggregate sites like LGF allow me to save tremendous time. I don’t have to comb through CNN’s website to read a news. If somebody read the news, and LGF posted it, then it is just a click away. I just have to go to LGF and everything is there.
By reading blogs, I have access not only to a mind boggling amount of news I am interested in, but also to their analysis. Even down to the smallest news. Also, the millions of eyeballs will dissect every news and find the dishonest parts. Can, or will, the mainstream media match it? Will the mainstream media be its own watchdog?
By reading blogs, I can read about people’s feelings in far away places. By reading Healing Iraq, or Hammorabi, or The Religious Policeman, etc., I have a better understanding about life in the Middle East than by following the mainstream media. By reading those blogs, I can see that whatever I read in the mainstream media is severely distorted. Blogs provide me with a correctional lens so I can see clearly what’s going on in the world.
Having said all of this, I don’t think that the mainstream media has no place. The blogging world has to recognize that they are not the news source. That is still the mainstream media with its reporters. The bloggers’ part, and big part, is the distribution of news, their analysis, separating the gems from the bullshit, and aggregation.
I read the whole article, and I think the quoted bits are only insulting when taken out of context.
For example, it is simply true that people who can blog during the day are at an advantate. The “day job” bit was a shot at Bill Clinton — if you look at the next sentence.
This wasn’t an article about blogs; it was about a blog hoax — and the fact that this medium is susceptible to such hoaxes because (1) blogs seem more personal even than they are, (2) you tend to trust what your friends tell you and (3) there have been blog stories gain great attention only to be disproven, but there hasn’t been a Quiz Show scandal type event to serve as a warning.
This is all true.
As Mr. Crawford and Mr. Everett point out, what escapes Terdiman is that many bloggers are what professional reporters USED to be: experts in one or more fields before they start blathering about that field. Now we have professional ‘journalists,’ which in my experience (as a journalism degree holder) means amateurs who have been trained to write passably. Not exactly expert analysis.
Bloggers are more likely to get a particular story right because they read each other’s stuff and modify it until it’s right. Journalism could only wish for such self-correction.
Mr Terdiman should talk to his esteemed ex-colleague Margot Kingston. As a journo for the SMH (until recently), she was the “drivelling” force behind Web Diary, which the Fairfax press (owners if the Silly Moaning Herald) produced.
I would recommend that US readers go to Tim Blairs site, go back a few weeks, and watch the dissemmination (dissection) of the SMH.
Angie Schultz is so right.
“(3) there have been blog stories gain great attention only to be disproven,”
This is the big advantage with traditional media. When they tell us that more women are victims of domestic violence on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year, we know that this is ture. When they tell us that Al Gore has won the State of Florida early on election night, we know this is true as well. When they say for the 10,000th time that Jackie Robinson was the first black Major League Baseball player, we absolutely know this is true especially considering how often they’ve said it.
Of course none of those things actually were true, but of course blogs are the only unreliable source of news.
It is obvious to anybody who reads blogs that they vary in quality. We learn to trust one more than another for a variety of reasons, including the quality of writing, the coherence of thought, and the attachment to facts corroborated elsewhere.
The notion of bias, and the question of whether it is necessarily a bad thing, come into this. A distinction which is missing from the discourse is this: On one hand, we have people claiming to be balanced, whose bias is deliberate, and who hope to manipulate public opinion and behavior–and succeeding. On the other, we have people who don’t claim to be balanced, but do claim to state as clearly as they can what they consider to be so–and failing, and trying again, and again, and again, etc. It is strange that we let the same word, “bias,” stand for both of these efforts, for the first is cynical and triumphant, while the second is not trying to manipulate and has little to gain by doing so. He, wiser, is just trying to get it right; he has his failures, exposes them to the light of day, and gains trust by doing so. The first is the project of Big Media; the second is the project of bloggers. I’ll take the latter any day.
Isn’t the Sydney Morning Herald the rag that broke the world-wide scoop that the new Prime Minister of Iraq had summarily shot and executed some arrested terrorist prisoners a few weeks ago? Instant headlines around the world, denials from the participants involved, no backup information or testimony, and the story instantly sank. *This* is what’s lecturing the Blogosphere on truth, justice and honesty???
NahnCee:
Yep, the Sydney Morning Herald is that rag. They also run their own blogs, featuring the execrable Margo Kingston.
Hell, being written entirely by a bunch of Maureen Dowds would be an improvement for today’s SMH.
This is a sample of what the SMH brings to blogging:
Not surprisingly, that provoked what can be euphemistically described as a shit-storm, to which Margo responded with:
As I said, a legion of MoDos would be an improvement.
Translation: “We like populism in theory, not in practice”
The fact that the man sounds so calm when his entire professional and even mental universe is disintegrating in front of his face tells us something. Either he is good at keeping a brave face on, unlikely, or he does not understand that the day of people like him controlling the information, thoughts, and mental categories of the masses is coming to a permanent end. Maybe the humane thing to do is let him persist in his delusion. He is plunging toward a final resting place on the ash heap of history and doesn’t realize it yet.
Hegel said history is a butcher shop. The history of the media is being written now. The bloggers are the butchers and people like him are the hogs.
Be sure to wash your hands at the end of your shift.
Margo Said: “I am not anti-semitic, and I thought what I wrote was a statement of fact. Is there a language problem here?”
No Margo, there is a factual problem here. Your “thought” is not a “statement of fact” until you provide clear and convincing “evidence”.
The fact you made your statement without facts, defaming a whole people, makes it anti-semitic until you do.
As a newbie to the blogosphere, I’m amazed at the variety of sources that bloggers draw on for their information and the number of sites that put out quality, thoughtful analysis. This is what makes me hesitant to start a blog of my own: it’s intimidating to see the insight that so many have in this “parallel universe”. Vilmos (above) nailed it when he posted:
“The bloggers’ part, and big part, is the distribution of news, their analysis, separating the gems from the bullshit, and aggregation.”
There is just plain a lot of non-professional talent out there. And I for one am much richer for it.
I see some analogy between blogging and the right to keep and bear arms: they serve to reinforce the rights – and responsibilities – of the individual in the face of potential tyranny (or at least unbearable arrogance).
Long live the digital minutemen!
Denise is the only person on this thread who understood the article.
Followers of the Aussie press (and SMH in particular) would also recognise this as an attempt to milk yet another article out of the alleged Khouri hoax (bearing in mind, Australia’s great tradition of literary hoaxes.
We are larrikins after all, and don’t like people who take themselves too seriously.
Guess you guys got sucked in.
junkie,
I’m not sure who you’re saying takes themselves too seriously – bloggers or Daniel Terdiman? Personally, I’d vote for Terdiman. In the main, bloggers cite and link to articles and reports, then provide commentary and opinion. I’m not sure who in their right mind would have believed the Bill Clinton blog to be real – although he is rather attention-hungry, and I think believes everyone deserves to know what he thinks and does – but Mr. Terdiman dismisses seriously good amateur journalism in the same vein as these easily made-up “web diaries”. I will read seven or eight good newsy blogs, check out linked articles (from NRO, WSJ or other “real” media outlets), double-check facts with other web sources (funny how some “real” outlets can’t figure out how to do that), and come up with my own interpretation of events rather than support “big media” outlets who pass opinion as fact and hide behind “professional journalism” as a cover for their obvious biases. At least the amateurs admit their world view.
Which brings me to point two: the article and Denise both say that if a “friend” refers you to a blog, you’re going to “definitely believe” or trust the source. Maybe others have better friends than I do, but when it comes to internet anything, I trust no one. One or two visits to any chatroom or comment board proves how easy it is to drop a load of BS, and for others to spot it. On the web, BS alerts, like bad news, spread like wildfire. I just can’t buy the “baa, baa, I’m a sheep and I believe everything I read” argument.
Please don’t take this personally. I’m sure you’re right about the article’s intent – milking another article out of yesterday’s news – but isn’t it great that we all can sit around and jaw about it, stimulate each other (keep it clean, guys), and feel more enlightened afterward? The interactivity in this kind of forum is what mainstream journalism can’t capitalize on because of its impersonal nature, and for that reason I believe the reports of blogging’s demise are greatly exaggerated. And in that way, through this blog and comment board, Mr. Terdiman’s article has served a cause far higher than he intended.
Member for life of the Digital Militia.
mediajunkie – Guess we didn’t bother to read the article. Us-a culpa
But you’d have to be pretty dim to believe that billclintondailydiary.blogspot.com was real. Either that, or a journalist.
ohio dave – I don’t buy newspapers. ‘mediajunkie’ is a common handle used by many bloggers to log on to lots of online newspaper sites. Don’t take this personally but I think blogging will be around for a long time yet and will gradually get absorbed into ‘mainstream media’ as it is already showing signs of happenning.
pixy misa – some do and whether they are dim or not is a matter of opinion. Sometimes there’s a fine line between parody and intentional deceit.
I just think stephen’s original comments (which indicated perhaps a not very close reading of the article) and most of the responses on this thread were funny – it made me wonder who really was the ‘fraidy cat’ and taking a cheap shot.
mediajunkie
If you think blogging will be absorbed into mainstream media, you’re nuts.
It’s the internet, stupid. The internet makes everyone a publisher. It’s only going to get worse for the mainstream media from hereon in.
Blogging isn’t what’s special. A blog is just a particular way to organise a website. It’s the internet that’s special, and it spells death to the mainstream media. To the mainstream just-about-everything, in fact.
The funny thing about the dot-com bubble is that it under-hyped the effect the internet is having; it just over-hyped the amount of money to be made from it.
Oh, and the line between parody and intentional deceit is about as narrow as the Atlantic. Again, you’d have to be pretty dim to believe that was really Clinton. Or a journalist looking for an easy target.
I agree with Pixy. The blogosphere is like a combination of the corner coffee house and the local college: intimate enough to feel like you’re in on the conversation, but with resources that can provide crediblity and authority to the jawboning. Mainstream media has lost the intimacy, and in the eyes of many the credibility, to appeal in the ways that the bloggers do. Mainstream media will try to incorporate the approach of the bloggers, and some bloggers will become more like mainstream outlets, but I for one like the feisty independence of the pure blogger. The herd instinct of the major media outlets has become so obvious (try flipping from ABC to NBC to CBS without hearing the same stories in the same order in nearly the same wording) and their world view so singleminded that I’ve become desparate for alternative channels. The merging of mainstream media with blogging will produce more mainstram media, and pure bloggers will continue to provide alternatives. Since everyone can be a publisher, with a potential audience of everyone else, creativity and flexibility will continue to give the independents an appeal that mainstream will always be chasing.
By the way, I cancelled my local newspaper and my subscription to USN&WR months ago for their editorial and reporting biases. They have the right to publish any opinion they want, and I have the right not to pay them when they offend me. I think in mainstream media the line between reporting and journalism has become about as wide as the gap between parody and intentional deceit – and it’s similarly up to the individual to discern how wide that gap may be.