May 15, 2004
The Blogosphere needs a Bar Mitzvah
The Young Pioneer turns thirteen this year and spend most weekends attending his Jewish friends' bar mitzvahs. We attended one this morning and The Commissar even put the yamulka on straight. When this year is over, I'm going to know Hebrew.
The past month of down coverage of Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and Nick Berg has prompted diverse coverage by the blogosphere. Many pointed out that the mainstream media had avoided the N.B. decapitat10n vide0, but that the blogosphere had made it available to the people. "The blogosphere had done the job. It had answered the public's demand for news." Like a teenager who has just beaten his old man at one-on-one basketball in the driveway, the blogosphere pumped its collective fist, and gave itself a high-fives. (If you thing I'm going down the "bad taste" track, you're mistaken, keep reading.)
Score one for the blogosphere? But has it grown up?
I saw Jim Lehrer interviewed by Wolf Blitzer last week. Jim was depressed; he said that in forty years of journalism, he had never before been so unhappy to cover the story. Journalists cover tragedies; that's their business, and they get a thrill out of the scoop, now matter how awful the story. But Lehrer noted that the stories of mutiliations, abuse, death, body parts, and beheadings have just been too dismal. Neither he, nor any of his colleagues, liked covering these stories.
What struck me was how PBS and the other professional (Jayson Blair notwithstanding) media have processes in place to mask their collective dismay. There are editors, 6:30 broadcast deadlines, scripts etc. Every day Lehrer does the "Newshour," with whatever degree of Lefite partisanship that we VRWC bloggers decry. The point is, they get the job done, and except for a brief, off-topic interview on CNN, I never would have known Lehrer's deep personal dismay.
Some bloggers, like this one (me, The Commissar), have revelled in our depression and low energy state. Others have ranted wildly. (No need for links here, folks.) Where was The Commissar's editor? His copywriter? His make-up man? Can you imagine, "This is Jim Lehrer and I am F*ing depressed tonight folks; the news just sucks. Bush is up 20 points in the polls; he's gonna mop up the floor with John Kerry in November, and I wanna slit my wrists."
Other bloggers middle-schoolishly pile on their opponents in the blogosphere, and that action frequently causes "outrage about the outrage," and a pile-on on the antagonistic blogger who started the original pile-on. And perversely, such feuds drives up ratings, aka "traffic."
CBS and PBS don't do that. They are grown-ups. Biased, Lefty, annoyingly agenda-driven grown-ups, to be sure, but at least they do not run around constantly nattering and dissing their journalistic foes.
Back to the N.B. vid. Some bloggers ran it. Some didn't. Some documented their traffic, which may have seemed ghoulish. And, suddenly, poof! Another blogosphere dust-up.
Some bloggers might react with, "it's my blog and I'll rant if I want to." That's fine. But, then we cannot, as many have, brag about being "the peoples newspaper." If bloggers want to rant endlessly, by analogy, if they want to remain immature forever, that is clearly their privilege. But we cannot have it both ways. If we are the big guys, the grown-ups, the people's newspaper, then our readers will expect that we act like such.1
The blogosphere's penchant for unrestrained whinining, for endless petty disputes, for public grudge-holding, for giving in to the passing emotions are what separates us (and I am guilty.) from the growups in the mainstream media. Maybe juvenile glee in ghoulish traffic is part of it. But I have a multi-point indictment here. I'll leave that one off the list.
To prepare for a bar mitzvah, the kids learn another language, learn to venerate a book of life-guiding principles, and learn to give a decent public presentation. Not bad ideas for us bloggers.
The blogosphere IS growing up. It DID score a coup with the N.B. vide0. It did just beat the old man. But it has a long way to go.
1Jeff Jarvis, linked, does not indulge in the juvenile stuff noted.
Posted by Commissar at May 15, 2004 07:02 PM
lololololololololol
yuo == suxxors
If i see any more grownups i'm going to cook and eat them.
News does not need to be "dignified". ALL news is retarded raving propoganda by mental midgets. ALL news.
Real people run their own companies, not "cover [up] news".
I watched ABC news last night and they led with the prison abuse story again. The next story was the Nick Berg murder. Ostensibly it was about shock jocks on radio who played it for ghoulish kicks. But reading between the pixels I could tell that "Peetah" & crew were smarting over how talk radio and the blogosphere were keeping the story alive, against the liberal media's wishes. The segment was worth it just to see Jennings once again forced to acknowledge the existence of people like Sean Hannity.
Extracted from: The Sanity Inspector at May 16, 2004 12:04 AMOh, and btw congratulations to the Young Pioneer, future vanguard of the masses!
Extracted from: The Sanity Inspector at May 16, 2004 12:06 AMAlso, most of them get paid and most of us don't.
Extracted from: Flea at May 16, 2004 01:26 AM...don't get paid for it, and don't have to curb there behaviour for an employer.
Increased traffic could be considered "pay", but cheap tabloid journalism gets as excited by increased sales over a scandle as bloggers do over their site meters.
It will probably mature, but in different ways to other news media, because although newspaper columnists, radio j's and even tv hosts do sometimes indulge in subversive inhouse exchanges, they do not interact with their consumers to the extent that webloggers do.
oh, and then there is escapism. Weblogging brings out the "inner child" in a way that newspapers, tv & radio never could. Do webloggers really want to grow up all over again when they've done it once already in the real world and, as bad commie says, "it sux"?
Extracted from: emigre at May 16, 2004 02:48 AMOh, I don't know. I think one of the draws of the Blogosphere is the way different personalities handle things. Some are immature. Some are downright annoying. Some are very "professional." But in the end, we're all a bunch of guys (and gals) having fun on the internet. I like variety, and heaven knows that we don't get enough of that in traditional media. Cookie cutter journalism gets under my skin.
Extracted from: Chad at May 16, 2004 06:44 AMI have an alternate view, which is that in the good old days, before there was any such thing as journalism school, before conglomerate ownership, before trained "objectivity" that simply masked an obvious bias, newspapers weren't all that different from what the blogosphere is now: snarky, shallow, sometimes inaccurate, sometimes wild, sometimes petty, sometimes unfair, often undignified.
The difference now is there are a lot more of us.
Mind you, there's nothing wrong with a call for maturity, and to stop high-fiving yourself and patting yourself on the back too much. I'm just saying, part of the new media's charm is its quirkiness, its warm, vibrant, annoying, and messy humanity.
Extracted from: Dean Esmay at May 16, 2004 10:50 PMsiman tov u'mazal tov, mazal tov u'siman tov ...
Good observations, Commissar. I've argued elsewhere that blogging is a meritocracy, and in general I stand by that. Given that our standards are self-imposed and (collectively) self-enforced, I think bloggers deserve a certain amount of credit for the maturity they do show.
Also, blogging is something you grow into. I've been at it less than a month, and I've got a lot to learn. What appeals to me about blogging is that it's so back-to-basics ... just the opposite of the way the internet appeared to be headed (let me rephrase that: appeared bo be going) just ten years ago. Remember the talk of "post-literate culture"? Literacy is now more fun and relevant than ever. For this jaded 41-year-old, that's very exciting news.
I'm not suggesting we all start pelting each other with hard candies. But I do think that if bloggers keep growing and maturing as they have been, the blogosphere could be a very positive force indeed.
... y'hey lanu ...
Extracted from: asher abrams at May 17, 2004 12:33 AMA brilliant essay. The blogsphere functions as an alternate media, an alternate university and an alternate society.
Extracted from: commrad jane at May 17, 2004 10:55 AMThere's no reason in theory -- none -- that a person can't write a brilliant, provocative, newsworthy entry one moment, then turn around and describe his child's decision to eat a spider in the next. And there's no reason s/he couldn't find an audience for such a weird confluence of posts. And I'm glad the internet and the free market are taking us in that direction vis-a-vis information dissemination.
Extracted from: Jeff G at May 17, 2004 05:35 PMMine Comissar: It was such a brilliant post, it took me a while to come up with a valid response.
Blogistan is the answer to Al-Jazeera. We must unleash this creative talent into the wider War of Ideas. I know how to get published in the ME and I can document it on my blog. That would be a relevant contibution and a great tactic in my personal war against in Laden et al.
Extracted from: commrad jane at May 17, 2004 10:53 PMI'm with Dean on this one. Reading old papers (especially big city broadsheets of the 17th/18th century) can be a hoot.
The blogs of their day.
Extracted from: John of Argghhh! at May 18, 2004 01:25 PM
