An article in the August 7th & 14th Issue of The New Yorker by Nicholas Lemann - "Amateur Hour - Journalism Without Journalists", has managed to ignite a small-scale blogospheric storm on an old (in internet time) topic.
Mr. Lemann writes -
"Internet journalism is a huge tent that encompasses sites from traditional news organizations; Web-only magazines like Slate and Salon; sites like Daily Kos and NewsMax, which use some notional connection to the news to function as influential political actors; and aggregation sites (for instance, Arts & Letters Daily and Indy Media) that bring together an astonishingly wide range of disparate material in a particular category. The more ambitious blogs, taken together, function as a form of fast-moving, densely cross-referential pamphleteering—an open forum for every conceivable opinion that can’t make its way into the big media, or, in the case of the millions of purely personal blogs, simply an individual’s take on life."
The gist of the article is that Blogging isn't going to replace the New Yorker anytime soon.
Amen to that brother.
Blogs are what they are - highly variable in readibility, interestingness, accuracy, tone, intelligence; and they will never ever replace a good literary magazine like the New Yorker.
There might be some amateur journalists out there who could write for the New Yorker but they are few and far between. Personally I like to think of my blogging/writing skills as possibly qualifying me to write for a high school newspaper or maybe a newspaper in a very very small town - where the articles tend towards who had tea with whom, the local 4-H club meeting, and whose cow got out and had to be herded back home by the local constable.
In reference to a contest held by Backfence.com to pick the two best citizen-journalism stories Richard Lehman in the New Yorker article, writes -
"In other words, the content of most citizen journalism will be familiar to anybody who has ever read a church or community newsletter—it’s heartwarming and it probably adds to the store of good things in the world, but it does not mount the collective challenge to power which the traditional media are supposedly too timid to take up."
Besides the quality of the writing there are other reasons why blogs do not match up to print. The eye-strain factor is a biggie - most anyone I know who wants to read anything of any length prefers print. The jumpiness factor is also important - the web and hyperlinking is an invitation to jump all over the place - not exactly conducive to long term thought and assimilation of complex ideas. Blogs are set up to be short bursts of words - not long drawn out essays. In other words they follow the whole web "short attention span" mode of operation.
It's all okay though. Blogs are what they are - maybe a diary, maybe a bit of news or tech advice, maybe something funny or some pretty pictures. They may be developed for a micro-audience of one, or family and friends, or attempt to reach a larger crowd. They aren't the end of journalism as we know it today. They won't replace books, magazines or newspapers or news-gathering organizations. They won't replace learning by getting out and doing things. They are what they are - a new use of an existing medium that allows anyone to write/create web content.
Because of the democratic nature of blogging it opens up the world a bit where people who have the time and inclination can create their own, or peruse millions of other people's blogs and every so often - create or come across a little nugget of gold...that actually might be as good as something you'd find in The New Yorker.
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Another key point in the New Yorker article is the seemingly obvious point that blogging, in it's current form, will not replace for-pay journalism in the reporting of the news. In general bloggers, who have day jobs and are not paid for their blogging efforts, do not have the resources to independently research and report on general-interest news events. Bloggers end up being news aggregators, or repackagers, commentators - on what the mainstream news organizations are reporting. There are exceptions of course - onsite reporting of a natural disaster, niche reporting at tech conferences or very localized news reports.
The New Yorker article points to Yahoo's Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone as an example of where for-pay news reporting can be combined with blogging/internet media accessability and freedom to create something new, and goes so far as saying the internet may be the best reporting medium ever invented. The Hot Zone does something they call "Backpack Journalism for the New Millenium" explaining it as -
The New Yorker article points to Yahoo's Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone as an example of where for-pay news reporting can be combined with blogging/internet media accessability and freedom to create something new, and goes so far as saying the internet may be the best reporting medium ever invented. The Hot Zone does something they call "Backpack Journalism for the New Millenium" explaining it as -
"We will be aggressive in pursuing the stories that are not getting mainstream coverage and we will put a human face on them. We will not chase headlines nor adhere to pack journalism but vigorously pursue the stories in front of and behind the conflict, the small stories that when strung together illustrate a more complete picture."The New Yorker article's praises the Hot Zone and goes on to say, "To keep pushing in that direction, though, requires that we hold up original reporting as a virtue and use the Internet to find new ways of presenting fresh material—which, inescapably, will wind up being produced by people who do that full time, not “citizens” with day jobs."
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I'm not sure if the Yahoo! Hot Zone is new - I'd need to take a closer look, which may or may not happen since there's that pesky eye-strain to contend with, my short attention span exacerbated by the "click me" siren of the web, and a suspicion, as I wrote back in October of 2003, and Henry David Thoreau a couple of hundred years before me - that Reading One Newspaper is Enough and to extend that sentiment to today's world Reading One Internet News Site is Enough.
Not just reading the New York Times, the Washington Post, Everett Herald, Yahoo! or Google News - but rather just picking any newspaper or news site, from any date - reading it, and then calling it quits and move on to something of more lasting value. Something that doesn't involve trying to live vicariously through other people's misfortunes, criminal behaviour, political machinations or whatever else is exciting enough to be "in the news".
From "Walden Chapter 2" -
"And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter—we never need read of another. One is enough."
Thoreau continues on that theme in "Life Without Principle" -
"We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. I did not know why my news should be so trivial- considering what one's dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so paltry. The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition. You are often tempted to ask why such stress is laid on a particular experience which you have had- that, after twenty-five years, you should meet Hobbins, Registrar of Deeds, again on the sidewalk. Have you not budged an inch, then?News and current events can be exiting, fun and an interesting diversion if nothing else.
Such is the daily news. Its facts appear to float in the atmosphere, insignificant as the sporules of fungi, and impinge on some neglected thallus, or surface of our minds, which affords a basis for them, and hence a parasitic growth. We should wash ourselves clean of such news. Of what consequence, though our planet explode, if there is no character involved in the explosion? In health we have not the least curiosity about such events. We do not live for idle amusement. I would not run round a corner to see the world blow up."
It might be worth asking ourselves what we do differently as a result of knowing - that someone's house burned down, someone was murdered, a car crashed, a war is going on - political machinations are happening? If the answer is nothing, or limited to hand-wringing, maybe it's time to "take a news break" as Andrew Weill recommends.
Maybe in the spare time gained by weaning ourselves from the nightly news, morning newspaper, constant web updates - we can take some time to think, reflect, and figure out how we can go into the world to contribute, change things, make things better - rather than being passive observers.
