Weymouth Obscures and Jarvis Judges
July 6th, 2009 | Published in Grant’s Angle | 4 Comments
Over the past few days, it was easy to get depressed about the future of journalism between reading Katharine Weymouth’s disingenuous letter to Washington Post readers and Jeff Jarvis’ latest screed against the mainstream media.
First, Weymouth. She apologizes for the proposed “new venture,” the walled-off sponsored conferences, that so embarrassed the Post. But Weymouth still points the finger at her marketing department for sending out an unauthorized flier. Enough already with the flier. If I were a Washington Post shareholder, what would disturb me is not just the bad idea of the conference proposal but the shockingly bad judgement of Weymouth that it reflects. This shouldn’t have been a close call at all.
Meanwhile, Post standards seem to be eroding in other respects. For example, its page one article on the Sarah Palin news conference didn’t really tell the full story. It left out a fundamental element. It said nothing about what the New York Times called - and many others reported- was a “rambling” and “jittery” performance. Not only that, somehow editors approved an opening line saying that Palin “captivated the nation with a combative brand of folksy politics.” “Captivated” is not the right word in describing a polarizing figure who turned off as many or more people than she captivated.
Regarding Jarvis, I was in Boston last week and spent a few hours in the wonderful Museum of Science. As I was browsing in the gift shop, I was a little disappointed to see Jarvis’s book, “What Would Google Do?” for sale. Though it apparently deals with technology and the future, the book seemed out of place in a science museum. Why? Because Jarvis’s writings in general are not remotely scientific or reasoned analyses of what’s happening with the news media these days. They are polemics. Now, to be fair, I haven’t actually read Jarvis’s book - so little time and so much exposure to Jarvis’s views in every nook and cranny of the blogosphere.
Jarvis’s recent posts include tired attacks on mainstream media: “They decide what is important. Because we can’t… That’s what they believe.” Jarvis even poses the following questions, his answers self-evident: “whether news needs newsmen and whether journalists and news organizations deserve to be paid.”
Don’t get me wrong, the mainstream media are guilty of hubris, arrogance and hypocrisy (eg the Washington Post conference fiasco). But I’m getting fatigued by Jarvis’s blithe daily dismissals of the serious work of professional journalists in trying to sift through the daily deluge of disconnected events and data, and yes, in trying to determine what their users need to know or would be interested in that day. Jarvis, a zealous convert to new media, sees the media world as divided into evil traditionalists and worthy bloggers. If you’re like me, neither a Luddite nor a Utopian, it’s hard to watch what’s happened at the Post and its hard to swallow Jeff Jarvis’s particular brand of hubris.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:18 pm (#)
When I ran Entertainment Weekly, I would have fired a critic who reviewed a book without reading it - much less wished it banned from a store. So, yes, you might want to read it. You may not like it. But then you’d know. You may read it for free here: http://browseinside.harpercollins.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780061709715
And I’m not dismissing the work of journalists. I’m teaching journalism at a university where I am also working on the New Business Models for News Project in an attempt to find more ways to support journalism. With money.
July 6th, 2009 at 2:33 pm (#)
Jeff,
I wasn’t reviewing your book, but making a point about polemics versus discussion. In any case, I will read your book and will do so with an open mind. I just think your rhetoric is overheated at times and that you’re too dismissive of many professionals - including editors and publishers - who are in good faith trying to navigate through these uncertain times and who manifestly are not stupid or arrogant. I personally know a large number of journalists working for big, old media who understand much of what you say and are the first to acknowledge the shortcomings of their employers. At the same time, they still believe in some roles that traditional media has filled. That doesn’t mean they believe that citizen journalism and alternative media don’t have important roles to play and haven’t fundamentally changed the game. And I don’t think their views warrant complete disdain and dismissal.
BTW, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the Washington Post framing the “Nixon Resigns” type in its conference room and hoping that it inspires good journalism. If it also inspired arrogance, that sometimes happens with success, whether its big media breaking a story or a Web start up succeeding virtually overnight.
Don’t you wonder, at least a little bit, whether or not the Watergate story would have been broken today?
I have my doubts. Today’s corporatized Washington Post wouldn’t have the guts and the patience, and the bloggers probably wouldn’t be able to get to or develop the sources.
July 7th, 2009 at 5:27 am (#)
I am glad you will read it and will be interested in your reaction. I remain shocked, though, at your public dismissal of a book and its ideas without having read it. This is especially strange to see coming from an academic. Is this what you tell young students to do: ignore work and what it say; worse, criticize it publicly without even knowing what it say? Isn’t that what bloggers are supposed to do? Why do you?
I do not give journalists “completely disdain and dismissal.” Find the link where I do that, please. After many years trying to get people inside the industry to wake up and change before it was too late - and now I think it just about is - I sometimes despair of that happening, especially as I see the response to change continuing to be resistance rather than innovation. Look at the post you link to and actually read it and you’ll see that I talk about the value journalists can and must add to communities’ information.
At the Aspen Ideas Festival, there was indeed discussion of Watergate and various of the attendees thought it would have broken faster because blogs would have pushed for answers, which is the value bloggers give (imagine Josh Marshall with his teeth in that leg).
July 7th, 2009 at 8:13 am (#)
Ok, Jeff, perhaps putting into words my gut reaction when I unexpectedly saw your book among the science tomes at the museum was ill-considered. At least I qualified my comment with the admission that I hadn’t read the book! And no, of course I don’t tell young (or indeed older) students to do anything but be rational, analytical,open-minded and fair when it comes to criticism. Anyway, I take your point and will read the book.
Taking just your most recent post, it seemed to me that you were lumping a huge crowd of journalists working for MSM together as being narcissistic because they still believe in the quaint notion that part of their job is to determine what their readers might need to know about developments in their communities and around the world. One can agree with David Weinberger that without the paper, newspapers become networks and grant at the same time that it’s not necessarily narcissistic that they still might view their mission in part as a process of prioritization and selection. Even if one takes a limited view of a “network newspaper” editor as a moderator of a user community, there is still an element of prioritization and selection. Yes, ‘who needs a moderator?’ is the question that arises. But is it really simply “mythology” or “narcissistic” or “hubris” to believe that some busy readers and users want to trust you, the newspaper, to sift through global events? Or that the “cloud,” as powerful as it is, won’t always produce the best result?
With respect to Watergate, I hope you’re right. I respect Josh Marshall enormously. But his solid original reporting is more the exception than the rule when it comes to the blogosphere.