THOUGHTS: Preston Merchant on what makes the MSM uncomfortable
A note from Preston Merchant, photojournalist, after he attended my May 2006 "Blogging for Journalists" workshop.
Hi, Sree. Thanks for letting me attend your blog workshop. It was enlightening and entertaining. I’ve been pondering why the MSM is so uncomfortable with the blogosphere, beyond the usual, stated reasons. Never have I seen in any discussion these points–but you touched on a few:
- Print journalism (which blogs are) used to be a young man’s game. James Agee was in his early 20s when we wrote for Time and Fortune and 26 when he traveled with Walker Evans to Alabama to write "Now Let Us Praise Famous Men." Newspapermen, too, used to be in their 20s. Blogs, by and large, are written by youngish people, often a generation younger than many MSM journalists–if not by age then at least because of the digital divide (look at your audience last night). Journalism used to be about legal pads, pasteboards, and exacto knives. Now it’s about RSS. Blogs are young and hip, like an iPod commercial. Lou Dobbs is old and stodgy.
- Most bloggers didn’t go to J-school. They have no need for whatever imprimatur or advantage Columbia and other schools seek to provide. And the kicker is that their product doesn’t suffer for it.
- The public doesn’t trust the MSM anymore (Jayson Blair, Judith Miller, etc.) — and why should they? The Times saying it’s so doesn’t make it so, despite the fact that the Times still asserts that it’s so.
- Bloggers usually wear their political or cultural affiliations as a badge of honor, not shame. God forbid a Times writer be outed as a Democrat! Rush Limbaugh would have a field day.
- And, perhaps most importantly, few people understand that the whole blogging phenomenon is simply the next step in the development of the Internet. Before Blogger, Movable Type and all the blogging service providers, individual websites were expensive and cumbersome and not conducive to repeated updates. Look at Drudge, the pioneer, who still maintains a no-frills HTML site. People want to connect, to share ideas and opinions, criticize, harangue, and much else. It’s only now that the Internet makes this possible technologically. How soon until the blogosphere simply IS the internet?
Reax? sree@sree.net
