Dan Froomkin: Anachronistic Voices
I disagree with Atrios’ take on this great Dan Froomkin piece. Here’s Dan:
But we’re hiding much of our newsrooms’ value behind a terribly anachronistic format: voiceless, incremental news stories that neither get much traffic nor make our sites compelling destinations. While the dispassionate, what-happened-yesterday, inverted-pyramid daily news story still has some marginal utility, it’s mostly a throwback at this point — a relic of a daily product delivered on paper to a geographically limited community. (For instance, it’s the daily delivery cycle of our print product that led us to focus on yesterday’s news. And it’s the focus on maximizing newspaper circulation that drove us to create the notion of “objectivity” — thereby removing opinion and voice from news stories — for fear of alienating any segment of potential subscribers.)
The Internet doesn’t work on a daily schedule. But even more importantly, it abhors the absence of voice. There’s a reason why opinion writing tends to dominate the most-read lists on our “news” sites. Indeed, what we’ve seen is that Internet communities tend to form around voices — informed, passionate, authoritative voices in particular. (No one wants to read a bored blogger, I always say.)
Atrios sez:
At this point I’m not sure how much stylistic tweaks matter relative to the structural/technology change and the recession, but it’s nice seeing someone acknowledge that much of what journalists perceive as the standards of their profession, the "objectivity," was a business choice. Journalists are still wedded to this model even if it doesn’t make financial sense anymore in part because they see it as The Way Things Should Be Done rather than something which was done to maximize circulation.
As someone who has done quite a bit of work on how newspapers responded to earlier structural and technological changes, I’d say voice and genre are a critical element of finding a new successful model–they amount to far more than just a stylistic "tweak." That’s true, first of all, because each new technological form has a literacy tied to it, and you can’t speak in a language addressed to one medium’s literacy in another medium and expect to be successful. Things like links, conversational style, and shorthand are all part of the literacy of the net, but newspapers thus far haven’t really tried to speak that language.
Also, people read stuff that sounds like the language they speak. And nobody speaks AP style, not even the whitest, most "typical" middle class college educated people I know (and of course, white and college educated may not be typical). The newspapers are basically speaking a foreign language to the people they want to speak to. They’re making people work harder just to get their news.
So while I agree, absolutely, that these decisions were made as part of a business decision, I think making the changes Dan suggests are a key part of finding a new successful model to structural change.
Good posts. Here are a few observations from experience.
The dichotomy between spoken language and journalistic style is mild in this country compared to what was to be found in Germany in the ’70s. (It may still be there, for all I know.) Trying to learn German, I attempted to read “Der Spiegel” and hit a wall. A friend said, “Oh, that’s the way newspapers and newsmagazines write. It’s a holdover from the old days, and it’s almost impossible to read. We even have trouble sometimes. And you should read the way they write in East Germany; it’s like the early 20th century and _nobody_, not even “Der Spiegel”, writes like that over here.”
A dichotomy between the two styles is not necessarily bad. Speech (except for actual pre-written “speeches”) is rarely as efficient and logical as written informational text. You do have a point about people being more likely to “read stuff that sounds like the language they speak”, though; even “Der Spiegel” has probably had to budge from their exalted style. However, I would not want to have to get information from text written the way I myself speak or in a man-on-the-street style. And after all, dialogue is dialogue, and narration and exposition are something else and probably ought to remain so.
In Germany at that time, with a tension between everyday speech even at the university level and newsmagazine text, still there was talk of Volkverdummung (did I remember the spelling?), meaning “dumbing down of the people”. There was a kind of pride in the difficulty of reading the news, because there was a feeling that it kept you smart, beyond the matter of the actual content and thought in the presentation of the news. We here have progressed (”regressed” is more like it) farther along the road of Volkverdummung than the Europeans could have conceived, and the very last thing that we need is to throw out reasoned thought when we (again for the sake of a business decision!) decide to write like people speak.
If the newspapers are going to be successful, they’re going to have to put together an online product that people are willing to pay for.
Why on earth would I PAY for anything Fox does? OTOH the WSJ, though conservative, puts together an excellent product that I do pay for.
You scooped the entire mainstream media. And you’re not the first blogger to do that. The papers need to figure out why that happened and get their newsrooms able to compete with part time, living in their mothers basement, DFH bloggers!
I think the day of the newspapers is done. The net has replaced papers for almost everybody who cares to read, certainly for everybody who wants prompt information. I spent every Sunday morning for 25 years reading the Sunday paper. Five years ago, I ended my subscription and I’ve never looked back. They’ve got a time disadvantage I don’t think they can overcome: Once the paper goes to bed, any news must wait until the next edition. A website just makes a flash update.
Boxturtle (Can’t live without my news, but can live without my paper)
I’m surprised that the NY Times credited Marcy when she SPANKED THEIR ASSES on the torture memos
that’s why newspapers in general can KISS MY ASS
the information was just laying out in the open, waiting to be read
and our “SO-CALLED” journalists were not even fucking reading the stuff
not even our esteemed Mr Froomkin was reading the stuff
somewhere along the line, their definition of journalism got tied to how many cocktail wienies they could eat
and I have a solution for that
how many cocktail wienies can you buy with an unemployment check, ASSHOLE
I sent money to Marcy, and I’m gonna send more
I sent a bag of shit to the wapoo, and I’m gonna send more
does anybody think the wapoop can figure out why I send Marcy money and I send the wapoop bags of shit ???
I probably should mention that I believe that the wapoop publishes outrageous editorial content just to generate discussion on their comment section
but when 90% of the responses are “FUCK OFF AND DIE”, you are not creating a constructive conversation
so keep printing dick, an kkkarl, and newt, and the whole pack of repuglitard liars
it’s what got you here
but you might want to consider for a minute, the “Here” you have arrived at is the Death House Door
I don’t think you want to keep following that path
you could save yourself with one headline
put that in 180 bold type. write a story about judy an dick, and their little kabuki back in 2003, and you MIGHT be on the road to redemption. the story is well known, but it’s never appeared in a newspaper (certainly not the wapoop
you’re gonna have to follow that up with a list, catagorizing the crimes of dick an george, but that’s what you have to do
Marcy’s doing it, and she’s raised almost $100,000 in a month
TAKE THAT, YOU LYING FUCKS
the answers ain’t OUT THERE
THE ANSWERS ARE RIGHT HERE
tell the fucking truth
no matter who is offended
the truth shall set you free
and people might want to give you money for doing it
It’s working for Marcy
Judy “I was fucking right” Miller did a great deal of damage to MSM print journalism along with those at the NYT who did not dig deep enough into her claims.
folks stormed to the internet for their news.
We still have Rachel, Chris Matthews, Olberman, Ed spending hour after hour turning into a week on Burris, etc. It’s as if there was no other news last week.
There is no going back
I think it’s important to write in an accessible way, while nevertheless providing factual, theoretical, and/or opinion pieces. It’s possible to write in a personal, even colloquial style, while also conveying valuable information. It’s also possible to write eloquently and passionately. And to vary that. The thing about the web is that you know your audience. Because you interact with your audience. Whereas newspapers have fewer ways for reporters and columnists to really know their audience.
The best people on the web, I think, are responsive to an audience. And maybe for that reason can adapt more quickly to changing circumstances.
The problem with newspapers and even TV is a kind of elitism that can take hold. Where news personalities (or the media’s need for ads) drive the story. Rather than actual events! In the end I think that gets stale or annoying. (Or maybe that’s just me.)
Just some thoughts on a Sunday morning.
Related to another story (Jeffrey Rosen), Gleen Greenwald’s words below seem to echo some of my thoughts above:
Interesting how people seem to be musing in similar ways, despite from from different stories or directions. When I see that kind of convergence, I sit up and take notice and begin to see a trend developing.
(Even Rosen’s reaction to the firestorm he set seems to echo my words above about how the net provides feedback the MSM doesn’t have to cope with.)
HONESTY AND CANDOR, mr froomkin
without that, all the “style” tweeks and “business models” ain’t gonna save you
tell me judy miller lied, cuz I know that, and your newspaper’s obstinate refusal to admit as much is a prime reason I want to see the wapoo DIE
I like mr Froomkin, but if I have to support a pack of liars to keep mr Froomkin in a job, he better start looking for new employment
waterboarding is TORTURE
no debate about that
and dick and george are war criminals
if the wapoo don’t want to say that, they lack HONESTY AND CANDOR
and the wapoo won’t even admit that any of that is possible
so you can see how far you are from getting any money out of my pocket
I think Froomkin is rearranging deck chairs when he should have been lookin for icebergs
now ya better fix that gaping hole below the waterline, or your neat deck chair arranging is useless
Then every once in a while there’s a pleasant surprise. Take this for instance, (from MSNBC…not a newspaper, but not a blog either) on how the Americans have influenced culture in Iraq.
Judy Miller worked for the Times, freep. *wink*
I certainly wasn’t going to tell freep that. He seems, ah, peckish this morning and he might not know the difference between a troll and a DFH.
Boxturtle (*snark*)
It’s a redundancy to label the inimitable freep “peckish”. What’s being noted is: amid one of his characteristic tumbles through the topical whitewater, he careened off an alligator and called it a crocodile. That’s worth noting [”Hey freep! The snout’s too broad!”], but really does nothing beyond cosmetic to his point — particularly since the mata hari of the msm has returned, albeit in surroundings where her mendacity is a feature [etc].
And his point is every bit as much about what emptywheel brings to reporting “on” news as it is about what judy judy judy does to reporting “of” news. That site fearless leader links to for the froomkin piece [a great natural blogger name: froomkin; might have been tough at times as a kid, but now: gold], I hadn’t seen it before — Nieman other stuff yes, but not this; looks like it might be better than cjr and adds a lot to the long but infrequent postings of jay rozen at pressthink.
But back to the point: isn’t this entire discussion right in the meat of ms ew’s education, inclination and talent? I wonder what if any extended thoughts she has on froomkin’s piece — because it seems to me a dialog between those two, or those two plus rozen, would really be something.
I know where she worked, or at least where she SAID she worked
she also worked as a PNAC puppet, and as Marcy so finely detailed, she worked as a “cut out” in a criminal scheme to lie our country into war
everybody knows it
so I assume the wapoop knows it too
but they would never say it
this richard clark article could have been published in 2003, none of the stuff is new info
judy miller was the source and wellspring of the crime, within the media
the media doesn’t want to address her role
because it would call into question ALL of the reporting about Iraq in 2001, 2002, an 2003
it’s all a pack of lies
and judyjudyjudy was the main player from the media
so let the wapoop explain THAT first
it puts the media’s role in the spotlight, and then all the crimes are exposed
force judy an dick’s kabuki into the light of day, and the whole house of lies falls apart
there is NO JUSTIFICATION FOR ANYTHING that is based upon lies
Iraq becomes a Crime Against the Military and the People of the United States
I still haven’t heard how colin powell could mistake a rocket body for a certrifuge part
colin powell has never seen a rocket before ???
pop one lie, and they all fall apart together
Not much in the MSM about what is going on in Iraq. Anyone surprised?
Embezzlement and Tainted Goods Threaten Iraq’s Food Supply
The Mother of All Corruption Scandals
By PATRICK COCKBURN
http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick05292009.html
Interesting one up on Powell by Ray McGovern
http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern05292009.html
“Sadly, Powell has a long record of placing the wounded and the vulnerable on his list of priorities far below his undying need to get promoted or to promote himself. Powell’s rhetoric, of course, would have us believe otherwise.
At the Memorial Day event, Powell hailed our “wounded warriors” from Iraq and Afghanistan as the cameras cut to several severely damaged veterans. Lauding the “love and care” they receive from their families, Powell noted in passing that some 10,000 parents are now full-time care providers for veterans not able to take care of themselves.
It was a moving ceremony, but only if you were able to keep your eye on the grand old flag and stay in denial about thousands of wasted American lives, not to mention tens and tens of thousands wasted Iraqi lives — as well as many thousands more incapacitated for life — and not ask WHY.”
ASK WHY?
I do not think it is a matter of voice. The are many blogs I read, not for voice but for actual, factual content done through hard research and pavement pounding to search down the facts.
Newspapers have, through the years, defined themselves through “communication competition” as opposed to figuring out “how” to get real news to the people.
People want to be informed, honestly and factually. There is no “voice” to “that” bottom line.
Newspapers went the “less grey” more graphics move in the 80’s and 90’s to compete with what the industry defined as their competition, television.
Now the competition is the web…No, the competition happens to be blogs that have a clue to do the “harder work of news, in-depth research for reality based analysis.
After eight years of newspapers piping Bush dreams and Cheney dreams with little accountability at the time in our country’s history when we so dearly needed a fourth estate, there was little to no effort by MSM newspapers. So, “thinking people” turned to the netroots.( Yes, there were exceptions, but they seem small ones in the bigger picture.)
Reality based analysis, which the netroots has provided, which John Stewart, KO and Rachel have provided is “what” readers want. The turning point was the Libby trial. When you read the live blog accounts and analysis against the newspaper coverage, the newspapers erred in promoting propaganda-like coverage. Then we were faced with the “generals for hire” propaganda irt the war in Iraq. Total breakdown of trust for readership in those journalist moments for newspapers.
Look, my children are the future newspaper readers. My kids read, as do their friends. I share with them what I am learning through the blogs I read and specific reality based analysis shows KO, Rachel, John Stewart, Frontline, Bill Moyers, Amy Goodman… Then we go to newspapers to compare, both local, national and international news.
I do not read the blogs I read or watch the shows I watch because of some need for intertainment value or due to “voice”. I go to them for the investigative and thoughtful content. Newspapers are missing “that”. After reading their coverage, I rate the content of newspapers as a “D+” with exception to McClatchy for the most part.
Most people just want the facts laid out clearly, without clutter and backed by trusted research efforts. “Voice” is not the foundation to this approach.
I too like FACTS. I like documentation. I like honesty in reporting. Hunches described as such. Anecdotal information described as such. Not propaganda disguised as some sort of “fact” or the gathering of outliers presented as if it’s part of a statistical center. Give me a willingness to defend a position as “one’s position” along with a willingness to discard ideas or assertions if the facts prove otherwise. But all of this presumes a feedback situation, I think, where a writer interacts with an honest audience.
And as I muse about this, I think it also relates to the previous post on Clark v cheney and condi. Because the problem cheney and condi are now encountering is that their previous ability to insulate themselves from public scrutiny is no longer operative. Suddenly their words and actions are coming back to haunt them! OMG – they’re having to face the music! Maybe only a tiny bit of music. But nevertheless, they hear the distant drums and pipes. And it must not be a comforting sound. Or they wouldn’t be running around making so many appearances. Thus, while I know we want them to face far greater scrutiny and consequences, I’m honestly enjoying all these chickens coming home to roost and the obvious squirming on the part of the “So, what?” folks who had such contempt for us. Still do, I’m sure. But feedback seems to be far more operative now. And little by little, it is having an effect.
I know I’m basically an optimistic person. Some of us need to be….
Should be: entertainment!
BTW, “voice” is journalistic “art speak”…(My advocation is that of illustrator, so I mean no insult to the artists reading.)
Tried to correct but my edit time “expired”. Need more coffee!
Yeah that W cowpoke saw the first plane hit the tower on TV before he went in to the classroom to read my pet goat. Whoops! he had a bad fear flash-
back. See what that terrorism does to your memory.
The kindle forray might be worthwhile for newsgathering organizations as a substrate upon which to develop new communications configurations, new chronicity of the newscycles. Yet, like a blog visit with astute historians, reading a well researched investigative journalism report, to my view, remains a prime offering which newspapers afford, and continues to be one of their fortes. ew and several other of the best writers and content creators have developed a ‘diary’ layout with a germane graphic element, plus the video livelinks which have a stillframe image which provide the blog article with much more than a newsphoto in a newspaper. I avoid video as a principal information source unless it is content rich, as text is colder and searchable whereas, like the audiostream in radio, video is linear. Video shows a lot but there is an editorial price the viewer pays for the delving into that epistemological experience. Framing the discussion of media with respect to the various evolving formats’ specificity for communities of interest is a valuable outlook, and a suggestion helpful for content analysis. I would add to the mix the quality of education of both authors and eparticipants.
EW:
Random question: do you (or anyone for that matter) happen to have any recommendations for good books or articles about the press around the time of WWII (particularly immediately thereafter, as I’m not really looking for something on the role of the press during the war so much as what was going on with the press generally around the time)?
… references on role of press:
Suggest read 1st-hand, insider accounts by George Seldes, who left the planet 10 yrs ago at age 104. E.g., “To Tell The Truth And Run”.
Not sure how helpful these recommendations would be to you, but a good overview of the development of news in the 20th century is James David Barber’s “The Pulse of Politics“. Read it years ago, but enlightening.
Also, at least 20 years ago, I read “Walter Lippmann and the American Century“, by Ronald Steele. Really enjoyed it; might be relevant for an overview…
Neither book is exactly what you ask about, but fairly tangential and both well-written.
I’m with Freep!
The NewsRags whored-out the integrity of their reportage – their ‘product’ – when they stayed ‘mum’ on the Truth of Bush’s Extra-Constitutional Activities at the expense of the Basic Civil Rights that Keep US Free.
That’s not what Newspapers – with their storied participation in the Success of Our Great Experiment in Freedom – are supposed to do.
Our Newspapers are supposed to be speaking Truth to Power – for All of US – because We all know that Power Corrupts, and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely – but instead, they’ve Broken the Trust of the medium and bankrupted the the Once-Great structure by Becoming the Tool of Power.
Thankfully, there is an emerging New Structure for the transmission of News and Information – one that is Faithful to the Original Principles and Traditions of the Free Press.
The Major Systemic Difference, as EW says, is that the New Structure is Factually Dynamic (accurate news now) and, imvho, Hard To Spin; whereas the Old Newspaper Model is Static (yesterday’s captioned freeze-frame news) and, imvho, has been proven to be all-too-susceptible to Spin through Access Journalism.
Structurally, the Print Newspaper Format can’t possibly compete with the ever-changing story-lines being tracked in real-time using the media aggregation and analysis capabilities of the Blogosphere. We’re watching it happen here at emptywheel, FDL and the HuffPo everyday right before Our eyes!
Imvho, Our very own Blog Goddess, Marcy, won the Hillman modelling the value of Dynamically Tracking Stories along Factual Time-Lines – Accurately and In Context – in clear, rich conversational language – the New Structure – while Remaining True to the Original Principles of the Free Press.
However, because People, in general, are habit-driven, We tend to be highly likely to ’stay’ with whatever ‘works’ for us in our routine daily lives. Potentially, the Newspapers could have retained a Significant Readership deep into the future for this reason alone…
…but they Sold-Out the value of their product…and hastened the Collapse of the Bush Statue…symbolic of the Old Structure…complete with Oz’s Bullhorn in hand.
R.I.P. NewsRags
Long Live the Blogosphere!
I hate to defend Powell, but a centrifuge tube and a rocket body tube or a solid fuel casing look almost exactly alike. The difference is what they’re made of. A rocket body tube will typically be aircraft grade aluminium, a solid fuel casing will typically be steel alloy and the centrifuge tube will be a very fancy mix of metals, mainly nickel.
Easy to tell apart with a simple test, but not so easy visually.
Boxturtle (This does not alter the fact that Powell lied and knew he lied)
yep
except for the anodizing
can’t refine uranium with anodized aluminum
did I mention that I’m a fast learner ???
and it was clear that these were anodized, from the beginning
anybody could see that
I didn’t see it. I just READ about it
McClatchy went to Oak Ridge about two weeks after the story broke, and powell’s refinement argument went POOF
4 months later, powell gave the speech
I figured out it was a lie
an I did it without the innertoobz, a lifetime in the military, a government provided staff, or any other resource that is not available to every American
so what is colin powell’s excuse ???
I read an article back in 2003 about powell’s preperation for his speach. it said that powell declined the oppertunity to display a tube in his presentation because he didn’t want to display “the least convincing part of the evidence”
and I knew they were rockets by then
colin powell had a duty to learn the truth, and four months to learn it (after I figured it out)
and he DID learn the truth
but he still stood there and told the lie
so colin powell has no defense
I gotta say. I have always wondered what they used to “turn” Powell. I think of the spying capacity. Something happened there. We may never know. But as an observer, at the time, it simply did not make sense – that he turned on a dime, so to speak – and went to bat for bush at the UN. Color me skeptical, right from the get-go!
there was no need to “turn” him
Mi Lai
nuff said
his momma did a poor job of raising a human being
Maybe you’re right, freep. But to me there had to be a “present-day catalyst” in addition to what came from the past. That’s what we lack knowledge of – or what keeps me puzzled. And I bet they had a catalyst to throw into his psyche in order to get him to dance to their tune – at that particular moment.
he believed kkkarl rove’s “permanent repuglitarded majority” crap
it’s off-topic, but I knew, back in 2002, what the repuglitarded are now saying about political cycles. And I knew kkkarl rove was blowing smoke up people’s asses
now I see the repuglitarded saying the same thing about political cycles, and how the repuglitarded will soon be back in power
I don’t recall the changing political cycles saving the Whigs or the Federalists
the repuglitarded have fucked up worse than the Whigs or the Fedralists (an the federalist party died as a result of charges of treason, something to think about)
If I was repuglitarded, and I wanted to have a political future, I would be apologizing, scrubbing the “R” off of my office door, stationary and business cards, and planing on doing about 20 years of penance for being STUPID ENOUGH TO DEFEND TORTURE, or for being stupid enough to belong tpo a political party that defends torture
and IF I WAS a christian. I would have left the repuglitarded party a LOOOOONG time ago …
some people mouth their values, and some people live them
I quit associating with those hypocritical fuckers in 1989
been doin penitence since then
(wink)
Well put. He didn’t need turning, his morals are non-existant.
i’m terribly sorry, but your analysis of the newspaper business is wrong. the correct model is the 6 blind men trying to describe an elephant, which is wrapped in a heavy canvas tarp, in a locked steamer trunk, suspended 100 feet up over times square, on a moonless night. and each of the blind men is a salesman, selling competing fantasies:
it’s a beautiful car that will get you lots of women!
no, it’s a fun-filled vacation on the baghdad riviera for your family!
no, it’s an army of killer gaybots, coming to destroy your home!
it’s a breath mint!
….shouting, shouting, shouting.
and we hope that the competition of voices will lead us to a better understanding of reality. the invisible hand of the marketplace! the marketplace of ideas! democracy!
wrong again. way in the back of the crowd, someone is scooping up a huge mound of excrement and sorting thru it. marcy turns to the mcclatchey team and declares “it’s an elephant, sh*tting on us again!”
one crowd sells fantasies, the other sells evidence-based information. doesn’t matter whether it arrives via wood pulp or electrons, if they aren’t carrying shovels and the stink, they’re just salesmen. (or saleswomen, in the case of judith miller.)
Oh, so true!!
FWIW, ‘objective tone’ didn’t necessarily come from the need for circulation, despite the fact that it is true the biz model was based on building audience by not pissing off the ‘left’ or the ‘right’ or any political factions. It arose during the 20th century when science was attempting to develop robust methods to test all kinds of things: the value of medicines, the behavior of atoms, the growth rates of cells, the behavior of plants. For an increasingly literate audience, this kind of ‘objectivist’ tone carried more credibility than other styles.
Then, like a kind of social retrovirus, it appears that people who sought to gain power by hiding behind ‘objectivity’ (which relied on ‘unnamed sources’) misused, abused, and violoated the trust implicit in that model that they destroyed it ‘from the inside out’. In other words, the parasites killed the host on which they relied for power and influence.
So as this model is weekly exposed as a sham — and a dangerous one! — the K-k-k-karl Roves, Scooter Libbys, Richard Cheneys, Judith Millers, and many others find themselves exposed.
Totally agree that the Internet prefers ‘voice’, but IMHO that’s all the more reason to be funnier, smarter, and more accurate than the flaming crazies.
Editors.
One of the biggest differences between bloggers as citizen journalists and journalists working for traditional media is the editorial layer.
More accurately, the editorial filter. The very first consumers of journalistic product are editors, and they push back and make demands for clarification to answer their questions, rather than questions the public may have in reading the same unedited content. Editors also may weed out a lot of context in the interest of improving what they believe is the readability of a piece; unfortunately, the extra context may be the bits and pieces which hook readers and encourage dialog and exploration.
The next layer is the copy editor, which sanitizes and encourages uniformity of product. Granted, copy editors can make some truly crappy writing sparkle, but sometimes the copy editing layer can remove the authentic, personal tone from writing.
Not to mention above all of this the diktats of owners and management on tone and mission, which in turn shape all contributors’ output in the journalistic process.
There needs to be greater examination of how editors can help ensure strong news product, without eliminating the other humanizing and engaging factors we find more often in blogging than in traditional media journalism.
Well, yeah, I’m hoping Froomkin gets to that in his next installment.
um … all four instalments are up at the same nieman site.
Inspect the first-page of any major daily newspaper. Note who gets author credits of every article on first-page. The names are mostly “[name],Staff Writer” Not the “Reporter”. Filtered! All of it.
A “Staff Writer”, by design, works directly under the lead editor, whose position represents the Big Boss. Deliberately, a “Staff Writer” is used to re-write a reporter’s submission.
A “Reporter” is often merely used to gather details for a story that is actually written with the house-slant…which in-turn governs all viewpoints…expressed or censored.
Froomkin is one guy with mostly truthful things to say in a Newspaper that is 95 percent misdirection and fascist propaganda. One guy’s truthfulness can’t redeem the rest of the paper’s truthiness.
(my bold)
Objectivity in print journalism? “That” model died a long time ago. It would have been nice to have had the “objectivity” model around the last eight years. Fairness, nonpartisan and factuality (based on research and digging) based news reporting would have made a difference in my newspaper subscription rate.
I don’t read broder, will, kristol, or any other lying fool any more
but I LOVE reading the comments attached to the articles
I see about 60 to 90 percent of the comments PLEADING with the media to TELL THE FUCKING TRUTH
and it seems that the editors just care that they are getting a lot of responses
I don’t think they READ the responses
pretty soon, those people are gonna STOP RESPONDING
they ain’t even gonna bother to tell the media to FUCK OFF AN DIE
they’ve been doing it for years and the media just gets worse, and fucking worse, and FUCKING WORSER
why do they think Marcy has an audience ???
when you said all that needs to be said, the readers don’t feel compelled to respond (a lot of times I just digest the info without comment, but I read everythingg here)
I hate to the the news media this, because I’ll bet they’re gonna wronfly interpret our coming silence as a sign of success
it’s because we’re ignoring you, not cuz you’re doing your job
Froomkin:
Maybe Froomkin is merely spouting a Post-Modern article of faith, but I get nervous when we approvingly quote anyone who trashes objectivity. Yes, voice and genre are important, but one of the things that I was struck with, and liked least about FDL when I first came here, was the foul-mouthed “voice” that FDL wore like a badge of pride. I am pleased not to see much of that any more. Other aspects of voice are more important.
Objectivity doesn’t work when it grants equal status to things of unequal merit. What does matter is that news on the Internet be based on clearly sourced evidence. What voice and genre add to clearly sourced evidence is clarity about the significance of the information, and how to evaluate it.
The MSM frequently denigrate bloggers as pajama-wearing opinionators, entirely missing the kind of research that we are accustomed to seeing here, and which is EW’s stock in trade. But they miss the fact that what is presented on TV news by the talking heads is mostly opinion (I only need to mention Pat Buchanan as exemplifying the legion). Their “research” consists of going to Washington cocktail parties and chatting up famous people. The only thing that makes them different from the stereotypical blogger is what they wear (but of course, what you wear is culturally significant, and identifies whether you are an Important Person or not.)
News on the Internet, TV, radio, and newsprint is better when it digs up the news, presents it to us, and helps us understand its significance. Details of which medium it is are mere details of technology. All of those media, Internet, TV, radio, and newsprint, need to focus on being good at collecting, reporting, and analyzing news. I’m with TheraP in her comments above.
I can put up with different voices, as long as I see that interpretation and analysis is based on evidence, rather than purely on ideology, or personal opinion.
Bob in HI
Note he puts “objectivity” in scare quotes. It is, within the press, really a question of voice and content, not an approach to the truth.
What is “objectivity” in journalism?
Very few journalists know the answer to this question, so it’s worth revisiting.
The term is borrowed from the older phrase “scientific objectivity,” which relies on the method of presenting reproducible results. In other words, any reader ought to be able to test the accuracy, reliability and conclusions of a journalist by checking the sources cited in the report. That’s all it means. University-trained Journalists turned to “objectivity” in the early 1920s as a reaction to several noxious influences: the intrusions of publishers dictated news coverage, the rise of “public relations” and of “propaganda” as a serious instrument of state policy. (No accident that the last term was invented by Italian fascists and entered the language in 1922).
Note the word “conclusions” above. Originally, the idea of introducing a (quasi-) scientific method into journalism meant that the reporter spent enough time researching a subject that he or she would become something of a tempirary expert on the matter at hand, mostly by talking to the real experts and checking their claims against published sources. This would put them in a position where they could draw authoritative conclusions and report them to the reader. For example: “The evidence strongly suggests that claims that all of the Western intelligence agencies agreed that Saddam Hussein possessed method of mass destruction were misleading at best or outright propaganda. Aall of the intelligence agencies were using the same falsified information from the same source.”
But no one ever read a sentence like that in the US press. Why not? Well, the publishers were enthusiastic about the new zeal for objectivity–until it came to the moment of drawing conclusions in the manner of the scientist or expert. That gave the journalist too much authority. The practice was banned, thus muzzling the only people in a position to second-guess directly both government and editorial policy-makers.
The final nail in the process was driven home by the editors and the reporters themselves, who yielded to the temptation of hiding their sources from the readers. For a time it was argued that anonymous, and thus uncheckable sources sources were required for competitive reasons and to protect them from retaliation. But as the Judith Miller case showed, by her time the practice had returned the reader full circle to the pre-objective days when official propaganda saturated the newspaper columns (as in WWI.) Dick Cheney et al. had learned how to manipulate the protection of sources to plant their own stories, luring friendly journalists to exploit the practice by turning lies into scoops, as in the Curveball “revelations” about WMD in Iraq.
The process has reached such a level of corruption from its original model that all that remains of “objectivity” is a literary style that faintly emulates a tone of fairness. It’s a disembodied voice of the expert without conviction. In other words, of a news bureaucrat, a newsroom shadow embarrassed by his work and afraid for his job.
Brilliant.
Thank you.
the truth is in the comments, not the fucking paper
that’s the fucking problem
this is from the comments attached to Richard Clarke’s article
I’ve never seen a wapoop article that fucking says that
the READERS have to tell the fucking truth, because the “Journalists” REFUSE TO SAY IT
that’s where your business model is fucked up, you assholes
the newspaper is supposed to inform people that:
not the fucking readers
does anybody else understand that ???
or is it just me ???
tell me an I’ll shut up about it
I’m guessing that the corporate attorneys said, “You can’t flat out say that they did this to link Iraq to AQ, b/c that would allow Cheney to come after us with a law suit and we don’t want to hand that asshole our financial ass on a silver platter. But you can say ‘kind of that thing’ and then hope the readers connect the dots.
I don’t know this for a fact, but it’s a pretty strong hunch.
And I can also say that if you do speak out and put your name to a quote or an article, there is political hell to pay from the gutless, politicizing swine who want their nice big paychecks, their retirement, and their perks — provided they can keep playing ‘inside baseball’ that keeps them safely in their jobs without actually having to put their name or reputation to a policy or any government action.
This whole ‘unnamed sources’ bullshit has made a few otherwise decent bureaucrats into buttcovering, lazy, conniving jackasses if you ask me.
I’ve watched some good, smart electeds and the ones who make a difference are generally those who are willing to speak out or be quoted ‘on the record’. It’s the vipers, the snakes in the grass, and the ‘players’ who are in cahoots with reporters to hide their secret agendas.
Makes some people very, very powerful but it is insidiously corrupting and it’s a system that is ideal for people who know how to cover their butts and blame others.
Sorry, off my soapbox now–
No, NYT v Sullivan protects the media from those types of suits.
Exactly right. there is not a chance in hell that Cheney sues. First off, as you noted, he will lose; secondly he opens himself up to discovery and waives any privilege and right to silence for his statements made in the process. Not. One. Chance. In. Hell. None. Any lawyer that said that ought to be fired for incompetence. For this reason, I don’t think it was that at all, I think they just don’t want to ruffle the neocon feathers.
let cheney sue somebody over the torture
then call the victims of torture and let THEM explain what dick did
dick would never get out of the fucking courthouse
if he was lucky, the Marshals would arrest him, and protect him from the lynch mob
dick don’t wanna go into a courtroom with a torture story
most of the victims are still alive
they have a right to testify
and why hasn’t the wapoop INTERVIEWED ANY OF THE FUCKING VICTIMS
as you can see, this arguement isn’t going very well for the media
I’ve heard dick say that torture worked
lets hear from some first hand sources
but I’m just some crazy fucking idiot, right …
how many of the victims can still speak?
Got it. Thx to both you and oldgold.
I misunderestimated ;-))
And thus, did I blame attys rather than more accurately sussing out the roots of the problem. Newly corrected, I will read the rest of this exceedingly engaging thread.
One more point: I always feel nervous about disagreeing with EW, who is almost always right, but I think she over-values voice and genre. For example, voice and genre is all Pat Buchanan has. Take away his v & g, and he’s got nothin’.
What I want is substance, and here is where I usually find it.
Bob in HI
Hey Pat Buchanan was against the invasion of Iraq, beat up on those who lied the nation into a war based on a “pack of lies” and has been talking about how Israel should stop with the expansion of settlements and building new ones for quite a long time. Pat Buchanan is not always a bad guy.
In fact out at the Dem Convention while I was in front of the MSNBC live coverage I yelled “Buchanan I know you are a closet Democrat” folks were busting a gut on this one. Buchanan turned around to the crowd and peered out at the crowd with a smirk. I yelled again “know you are a closet Dem” he started laughing.
The Israeli firsters worked hard at labeling him an “anti-semite” years ago when he started speaking out on the Israeli Palestinian conflict
Buchanan definitely has a sense of humor. He’s always chuckling his ass off on McLaughlin Group. And, he agrees with Eleanor Clift half the time….
“the newspaper is supposed to inform people that:
They authorized torture to obtain false testimony linking Iraq with Al Queda to justify the invasion that they were determined to carry out. They are traitors and fascists and should be tried for their crimes
not the fucking readers
does anybody else understand that ???
or is it just me ???”
******************
I understand and agree. And we often get pablum instead of good reporting. The above statements, IMO, should have some sources behind them as well and might be best placed in the opinion area of the paper. OTOH, I rather like an outspoken paper. Can you imagine Keith or Rachel saying that? Ås it is, they seem to be muzzled oh so slowly these days.
Brief, but pertinent, take-down of Meet the Press. The meat being this:
New to TPM Cafe, but this is a voice of reason and passion! A good media critic!
Rich on failures of the press and tee vee, and of Congress and how ill-prepared we are for the next attack.
Who Is to Blame for the Next Attack?
By FRANK RICH
Published: May 30, 2009
‘The Beltway antics that greeted the great Cheney-Obama torture debate were an unsettling return to the post-9/11 dynamic that landed America in Iraq. . . . Once again Democrats in Congress were cowed. And once again too much of the so-called liberal news media parroted the right’s scare tactics, putting America’s real security interests at risk by failing to challenge any Washington politician carrying a big stick.
. . .
“Pakistan is the time bomb. But with a push from Cheney, abetted by too many Democrats and too many compliant journalists, we have been distracted into drawing the wrong lessons, embracing the wrong answers. We are even wasting time worrying that detainees might escape from tomb-sized concrete cells in Colorado.
. . .
“The Bush administration did not make us safer either before or after 9/11. Obama is not making us less safe. If there’s another terrorist attack, it will be because the mess the Bush administration ignored in Pakistan and Afghanistan spun beyond anyone’s control well before Americans could throw the bums out.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05……html?_r=1
Here’s my take on Froomkin above and why the MSM is losing readers. It is about passion, as Dan says. But I don’t really believe journalists are hiding behind some veil of objectivity where, if they let the veil drop, their passions would burst forth. I think most journalists don’t have any passion to begin with. They don’t care. They don’t care about the issues they’re writing about. I don’t think most political reporters even care which candidate they’re covering wins and which loses. Political reporters only care about the horse race. Reporters in general don’t care about the truth – they care about getting a story. They care about small-bore details, which is why they lose the forest for the trees. Most of them would prefer to traffic in the gossipy garbage (Nancy Pelosi directly contradicted Porter Goss, how long will Nancy last? Is Rahm pushing to get her out of there so he can be Speaker? Nancy sputtered at the podium, then moved her hands as if she were conducting an orchestra!) than actually try to figure out what happened, what the truth is. Most of them are also lazy – as Marcy shows, finding out the truth can be hard work, a long, hard slog. You have to read documents! A lot of documents! You have to be tireless. This is not a tireless group of people, most MSM reporters. This is a lazy, bored group of people who want more than anything else to be titillated.
At some point the teevee and multiple media exposure made the bigger reporters and outlets, whether video or print, entities of their own right and perceived significance in the play. Instead of being people who simply reported they slowly came to pull more and more punches to protect their own reputation and standing. At one point, reporters made their bones busting power, now they seem to make them by not disturbing power too much at any given time. sad.
liked this one by Bill Moyers a while back. This is a great interview with Moyers
Bill Moyers on the State of American Journalism
“Americans seem so indifferent to the carnage in Iraq”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4rYLC-8YPs
Bill Moyers and the State of American Journalism
http://www.rollingstone.com/ro…..ournalism/
And how many of them are paid off by power or at least pampered by power?
Slightly off-topic, but from another DU thread i got link link to a ADL timeline from 1997.
Because it is the earliest example of the literary genre I have ever happened to run across on the internet, I examined it for style.
Present tense. Boldface month headings. Use of the future “he will later …” construction. Dates are not bolded, and include the city of action, then a colon.
Pretty far towards a dry and objective tone, but not at the pole.
It clearly wants the reader to be reading close enough to make their own connections, rather than pointing them out.
And readership relied on that “busting power”.
And a reminder to the publishers:
Ben Franklin wrote, “…When truth and error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.”
I read the New York Times article on the shooting death of Dr. George Tiller.
It was about as interesting as three press releases.
One from the police, one from Operation Rescue, and one from the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Here’s some follow-up, if you’re interested:
http://www.democraticundergrou…..15;5755550
The argument you’ve made above sounds a lot like the reverse of your argument with respect to the U.S. auto industry.
Happy Sunday
Question, ‘We know the Patriot Act is 600 pages long (?). We know they ‘pulled it together’ in just a couple of weeks. We know that a different version (or changes) were slipped in at 3.45am(?) the morning it was voted on. We know nobody read it.’
Has anyone read it all since? Is it available anywhere? And if not, ‘WHY NOT?’
We need to know what the whole bloody thing said. It could/will lead to the truth of just what BushCo planned for the people/direction of this Country and how/by whom it would be done. It will lead to the companies and people who made this mess happen.
Sorry Marcy, I know that was completely OT, but that whole Act and the speed in which it became the ‘bible’, made no sense to me, except as a way to stop us (the people) from ever being able to confront those ‘people’ in control. People who seemed to be using the horror of of Sept 11 to silence/contain the American people and to change the very soul of this Country.
Clay Shirkey: Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for.
I think that the idea that objectivity’s only virtue is not to alienate some of the audience is horseshit, on two levels. First of all, plenty of people are alienated by objectivity when the feel strongly on one side or the other, they just do. Secondly, real objectivity, where you don’t side either way, EXCEPT AS THE FACTS PUSH YOU, has real value to the reader. The real purpose of a News media, AS NEWS, is to tell you what really happened in the world, and, as long as a news organization does real, due dilligence in ferreting out news stories, they’ve got no reason to apologize for reporting the real facts.
The crap they do now, under the guise of objectivity, isn’t objectivity at all, it’s just gossip due to the passivity of the press, caused by a paucity of investigative reporting for purposes of verifying the facts. Due to the lack of a valued service, they don’t have the value of a encyclopedia-of-the-very-near-past, they’re just “People” magazine, done boringly.
Or maybe it started becoming so pendantic that folks stopped reading the daily news…you know, when it started giving “both sides of the issue” no matter how ludicrous doing so would seem to a reasonable person. Of course, there are those who fervently argue against my line of reasoning…