MSM and its sycophants need to stop whining about blogs
By adamg - 5/10/09 - 4:56 pm
Recovering journalist Mike Ball has had enough of old-line media types and people like "The Wire" producer David Simon "defaming blogs and other online media."
... Saying that blogs don't do news anywhere near as well as newspapers is pitifully simplistic and quite naive. It's like damning a toddler who's learning to walk for not being able to perform ballet or tap dancing.
Newspapers have been failing and firing local reporters in clumps for decades. Local reportage has telescoped down pitifully. The spike is no longer the evil prop on the city editor's desk. There isn't enough local news for decent triage. There aren't enough reporters on the street and phones to provide the news. ...
Comments
Good or bad, I check
Good or bad, I check Universal Hub before I read any of the local Boston newspapers. There's a sense of immediacy that you get with UH news/info that you don't get with boston.com... if I want news/info, I don't want to have to wade through a bunch of crap first. So, thank you UH!
I check various news on UHub and even on other websites
prior to reading the Boston Globe, which, more and more, I've come to like if only for the Op-Ed section, and an interesting article here and there in the Magazine and "Parade" sections. So, in that respect, I 'd miss the Globe if it went under.
Journalists are pretty much
Journalists are pretty much acting like the entire paper is full of serious, hard-hitting journalism. Frankly, if it were, and it weren't the AP, then maybe they wouldn't be in the straits they're in.
But frankly, most of the paper is the AP wire or fluff, these days.
Oddly enough, for all the
Oddly enough, for all the whining from the MSM, it's blogs that are delivering more and more of the hard hitting journalism while the big newspapers spew out more and more celebrity gossip. Take a look in the mirror before blaming your readers (yes, many of the bloggers you diss are your biggest customers/consumers).
Amen to that!
Adam P has it on the nose.
Sadly the MSM has switched its focus from journalism to being a multi-pronged PR agency for businesses, celebrities and politicians. Good journalism invoves a lot of leg work and research, and sadly most of the editors are under pressure from their bosses to spike the really good, hard-hitting stories and play up the emotional, superficial stories for extra circulation and revenue.
If the MSM wants to bring back watchers and readers, it has to shed its high-powered PR agency image and go back to the fundamental basics of reporting a story - information is much more important than gossip. Otherwise, the bloggers will steal a fantastic story and inform the public faster than the traditional journalist can get to it.