New Media

I'm not all that good on writing to order, but the Carnival of Liberals wants thematic posts this time around - "New Media" is the topic. (Of course, with my luck, this won't get in, it's so late... blame my work schedule. 7 hours a day in class is tiring.)

On page 194 of Helen Thomas's Watchdogs of Democracy? The waning Washington press corps and how it has failed the public she writes:

And from what I've read, trained journalists who blog love the freedom of unedited opinions. Opinion it is - unfettered stream of consciousness, a marketplace of rumors, instantaneous feedback and discussion, a bully pulpit for all. Journalism it's not.

The horse is out of the barn. Blogs are the new opinion poll. Blogs, therefore, affect how the news is covered. Blogs and bloggers can lead credentialed journalists to news stories. Bloggers are not journalists and should not undermine the mainstream press. Bloggers are not deserving of reporter's privileges - to think so is ludicrous.

Last January 10, Mark Liberman quoted Tim Jackson observing on the BBC's World Service,

The only time that a- that a journalist, whether it's television or radio or newspaper uh tends to actually be subjected to really detailed scrutiny of what he or she is doing is if there's a court case. But I believe in a growing trend this ultimate nightmare is actually going to become an everyday reality for journalists around the world. The oddity is, and what I think what the newspapers fail to grasp, is that something has changed in the world of journalism.

And Liberman then added:

Indeed. Thanks to the democratization of media by the internet, a much larger fraction of journalistic bullshit is effectively challenged in the court of public opinion.

In other words: it's not that there's more bullshit, there's just more bullshit detection.

That's us: that's the blogosphere. We're the bullshit detectors. And that's the main reason why the "New Media" is valuable and irreplaceable. Helen Thomas's argument was made - bizarrely - in a book whose thesis was that the mainstream media (the "Old Media") had failed completely. To call foul on those who were doing the job smacked a bit of defensiveness - and failed entirely to convince.

Especially with this: on February 20, 2008, that which would have seemed inconceivable even just a year ago took place: a George Polk award (think of it as a Golden Globe for journalism) was given to a blogger.

Not just any blogger, of course - to Josh Marshall and Talking Points Memo. Will Bunch put it like this:

Here's how and why Marshall and Talking Points Memo won a Polk Award today:

"His site, www.talkingpointsmemo.com, led the news media coverage of the politically motivated dismissals of United States attorneys across the country. Noting a similarity between firings in Arkansas and California, Marshall (with staff reporter-bloggers Paul Kiel and Justin Rood) connected the dots and found a pattern of federal prosecutors being forced from office for failing to do the Bush Administration's bidding."

Hopefully, this acknowledgment of what one savvy blogger and his team have accomplished is a milestone that will speed the day when mainstream journalists realize that the best kind of blogger like Marshall is truly one of our own kind, using new tools and a new way of thinking to break a news story that otherwise might have not been discovered.

Did TPM merely "lead credentialed journalists to news stories", as Helen Thomas put it? Or did they actually break and cover one of the biggest scandals actually covered by anybody?

Did Salon "lead credentialed journalists to news stories" in the Walter Reed story? They led, but how long did it take the Washington Post to follow?

In fact, right now Josh is mobilizing his readers on the "Bob Schaffer cites the Marianas as a model of immigration" story (yet to be seen by me at any rate in the MSM. Even the interview):

In any case, we're really curious to hear about when Schaffer comes up for air, whether he gets asked about his Marianas immigration policy proposal and what his answers are. So if you're in Colorado, keep an eye out on the news and in the local papers to see what if anything he says. And then shoot us an email to let us know what you see and hear. We need you to be our eyes and ears on the ground. Dick Wadhams has him under wraps at the moment. But he's got to come up for air eventually. He is running for senate after all.

Have you seen this in the "Old Media"? I haven't - and I just searched the archives of the Washington Post and New York Times. Even the Denver Post, which carried the original interview, only has a couple of follow-ups linking Schaffer to Abramov, and nothing in the original story indicates any curiosity at all about the substance of Schaffer's claim. It just blandly cites the quote:

He pointed to the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. protectorate that imports tens of thousands of foreign textile workers, as a successful model for a guest-worker program that could be adapted nationally.

"The concept of prequalifying foreign workers in their home country under private- sector management is a system that works very well in one place in America," he said of the islands' program. "I think members of Congress ought to be looking at that model and be considering it as a possible basis for a nationwide program."

Not even a hint that the Marianas program might not be such a "successful model", what with the beatings, sex-slavery, forced abortions, and all. Not a hint that the reporter fact-checked Schaffer one bit.

The deeper the "Old Media" sinks into the can't-analyze, he-said-she-said, scare-the-pants-off-'em mode of journalism (just check out fev's coverage of Fox over at headsup pretty much any day), the more we need the bullshit detectors.

It really is that simple.