Can't leave it alone
· 09/29/2004 11:26 AM by Steve Gigl
I thought I was content to leave it at the previous entry, and I’m sure the MOB has already torn Coleman several new rhetorical orifices by now, but I just can’t. As Bill Hicks once said about watching the TV show “Cops,” it’s like a sore tooth; you just can’t leave it alone.
First, a word from the inner demon:
Pssss! Hey, Nick! Look, I’m writing an opinion piece!! NAHH NAHH NAHHH! I’m not getting paid, but I didn’t go to J-school or report on school board meetings for 20 years to “earn” the chance to write this either. Doesn’t that just kill you?! NAHH NAHH NAHH!
[cough] OK, back to the outer demon… I haven’t fisked anything in ages, and he’s just so wrong and/or nonsensical on so many counts (probably even worse than our favorite clueless MSM schmuck Alex Beam) that I can’t resist:
But a lot of the attack against the mainstream media is coming from bloggers, which is like astronomers being assaulted by people who swear that aliens force them to have sex with Martians.
Creative nonsense, but nonsense nonetheless. Do you honestly think journalists have the same credibility as astronomers, Nick? From this perspective it seems like all it takes to be a journalist is persistence, which is the same thing it takes to make sure my dog takes a crap in the yard after she eats. Not exactly science, buddy.
I say: If you think Dan Rather is kooky, read some blogs and you, too, will be found in a daze, muttering, “Kenneth, what is the frequency?”
But put on haz-mat gloves before you touch the mouse.
Well, if you would stop reading Atrios and Kos, that wouldn’t be a problem, Nick.
OK, yes, a lot of blogs have no journalistic intent nor ability, mine included; however, they don’t claim to, and they don’t have a reputation for it if they don’t deserve it. It’s interesting that you think that “kooky” blogs bring down the rest of them; we don’t blame the Strib for the Weekly World News, do we? (Although I wouldn’t be surprised if their writing reflects reality better than yours, Nick.)
But one of the shams we’re chasing is the supposed threat of the blogs, who are to journalism what ticks are to elephants. Ticks may make the elephants nuts, but that doesn’t mean they will replace them. You can’t ride a tick.
Ticks?
Did anyone else notice the remora-like way that media outlets and PR firms either tried to claim credit for outing the faked memos, or just plain ignored the Freepers’ and bloggers’ contributions?
And we’re the metaphorical parasites?
But that’s my defense: I show my face in public. I have been a reporter longer than most bloggers have been alive, which makes me, at 54, ready for the ash heap. But here’s what really makes bloggers mad: I know stuff.
Oooh. He knows stuff. I’m sure, as an old news guy, Nick knows much more about typesetting than the Powerline guys did. And yet, did HE bring such an important story—and forging documents to affect a presidential election is important, regardless of your party orientation—to national attention? No? Well, I guess he must have been too busy “show[ing] his face in public.”
Do you suppose he knows that two of the Powerline guys are on the radio every week, and that ANYBODY can call in to talk to them? I guess that’s not public enough…
I covered Minneapolis City Hall, back when Republicans controlled the City Council. I have reported from almost every county in the state, I have covered murders, floods, tornadoes, World Series and six governors.
In other words, I didn’t just blog this stuff up at midnight.
Some free advice, Nick? You probably shouldn’t admit that.
And as for being a political stooge, unlike the bloggies, I don’t give money to politicians, I don’t put campaign signs on my lawn, I don’t attend political events as anything other than a reporter, I don’t drink with pols and I have an ear trained to detect baloney.
Aha! Baloney detection! I knew they taught something in journalism school! “Smells like Oscar Meyer to me…”
You and your Strib buddies don’t have to give money to the Dems, you’ve given them years and years of free rides. And I’ve never seen a blogger claim to be perfectly objective, as the MSM often tries to do. So how does that reflect badly on us?
Do bloggers have the credentials of real journalists? No. Bloggers are hobby hacks, the Internet version of the sad loners who used to listen to police radios in their bachelor apartments and think they were involved in the world.
Wow. Somebody must have touched a nerve with this guy. I blame the Fraters.
OK, seriously: credentials? CREDENTIALS? How the hell you you need credentials to write hack crap like yours and Jim Boyd’s? You guys don’t even have to do any research, as this column shows. At least lawyers like Hinderaker and Johnson know how to do basic research, unlike CBS news; and at least they show some effort to get things right, unlike you, Nick.
Nick, we’re all experts about something, and combined, bloggers can kick your ass at fact-checking just about any subject. And that’s not hyperbole; if you think you know more about electrical engineering than I do, or more about economics than King, or more about the law than PowerLine you are free to challenge us.
READ THE SCREED, Nick.
Onward:
Bloggers don’t know about anything that happened before they sat down to share their every thought with the moon. Like graffiti artists, they tag the public square—without editors, correction policies or community standards. And so their tripe is often as vicious as it is vacuous.
Apparently, we’re all the main character of Memento, because we don’t “know about anything” before we start typing. Kind of makes you wonder how we find anything to write about, doesn’t it?
And no editors? That’s unpossible! Doesn’t the world end if a written piece goes unedited?
Actually, bloggers have more editors than any major newspaper: they’re called readers, Nick, and they fact-check OUR asses every time. That’s why we LIKE getting comments, instead of handpicking them and burying them like the Strib does; they help make us better than you.
Our correction policies? We make corrections IN THE SAME PLACE THE ERROR WAS FOUND. And to a fault we broadcast our apologies for making the mistakes, because we don’t want to lose our readership. (See, we don’t have monopolies like your employer does, Nick. Yet another reason we’re better.)
Community standards? Nothing sets standards like the promise of having thousands of other bloggers—many of them with more traffic than you have—mocking you if you do something phenomenally stupid or mean. Trust me, I know more about this than you do, Nick.
Did you like how Scott Johnson (never named, of course, because Nick never misses a chance to be a spiteful prick) was described as “fashionable?” Apparently, 3 authors averaging 82,000 readers per day only makes you “fashionable.” So what would you call hundreds of journalists averaging 379,000 daily readers? Oh yeah, I remember: a hack rag not fit to be burned in my fireplace (although I’ll do that with the last few pre-cancellation issues anyway).
And speaking of pretending to be objective:
The left wing, too, has bad bloggers, including one who has made a practice of speculating on the president’s penis size.
I’m SHOCKED that Nick’s editor didn’t correct his mistake: the left wing has almost no GOOD high-traffic bloggers.
We are not dealing with journalism, people. We are dealing with Internet chat rooms: sleazy and unreliable, with no accountability. Most bloggers are not fit to carry a reporter’s notebook.
Proof, Nick, we need proof! Just because your newspaper never has to provide it doesn’t excuse you; if you’re going to challenge bloggers, you have to live up to our HIGHER standards of proof.
Yet again with the “no accountability” crap. Blogs are more accountable than any newspaper in the country, because we get corrected by our readers and then fix the problem. If we don’t we lose readers. You wait a week and issue a hidden correction, leaving the original impression in your readers’ minds, and you very rarely lose readers because they want their comics and ads. (Of course, we can replace that, too!)
But now we get to the single most important statement in the column, which of course Nick completely flubbed:
That’s the job of journalism—to scrutinize the actions of those in power.
Wrong. The job of journalism is to tell us what the hell happened everywhere that we weren’t. Period. End of job description.
Saying that journalism is meant to scrutinize the actions of those in power is like saying my job is to sell my project ideas to my boss, and neglecting that I actually have to go off and do the work on those projects. If journalists are going to question those in power, they had better damn well do a more careful job of finding actual facts (their actual job), so that they are questioning them when they deserve it. [UPDATE: Via Chuck’s comment, I have partially rethought this section. It probably should be part of the definition of journalism to challenge those in power, but only when the facts lead that way (and not the other way around, as in the CBS case).]
That, folks, is exactly what has Nick foaming at the mouth. Bloggers have shown that the MSeMperor is naked: mainstream journalism is biased, lazy, and really sucks at doing a job that isn’t all that complex. So much so that bankers, lawyers, economists, soldiers, programmers, and pretty much everyone else are doing better at it right now.
But in the interests of fairness, I’ll give Nick one last point:
If you think bankers will [scrutinize the actions of those in power], your brain is blog mush.
OK, fine. Mush it is. But it’s more well-informed mush than those of any of your readers, Nick!
Trust me, Nick. I know stuff.
UPDATE: Some more responses:
- Doug at Bogus Gold has a more, er, reasoned post on Coleman’s column. (Via the Fraters, whose fault this all surely must be.)
- Mitch also has a lengthy response to Coleman.
- The Ombudsgod is in a similar mood, but is much more concise (via SCSU Scholars).
Oh good God, here he goes again with the UPDATEs: King comments. After rereading my screed I think maybe he should have recommended that *I* stay away from sharp objects…
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Quote of the day
R.I.P Dean Barnett
— swiftee Sep 29, 02:42 PM #
— Chuck Sep 29, 07:05 PM #
— Steve Gigl Sep 29, 08:30 PM #