a non-ordinary evening in New Haven
On Pressthink, Paul Bass talks about leaving industrial journalism for something like publicly funded web reporting:
Independent guest columnist Debbie Galant reports:
The readers have definitely become part of the process. Trained journalists still play a crucial but altered role. We’re more fact-gatherers, linkers, fact-checkers, conveners and referees than pundits or editorialists telling people what to think.Bass's not-for-profit site, The New Haven Independent, notes the fate of Joe Lieberman.
Independent guest columnist Debbie Galant reports:
a friend of Lieberman for 35 years, was horrified when he discovered I was a blogger. Bloggers, he maintained, had ruined the election for his candidate. linkFiredoglake on Lieberman's vow to win as an Independent in November:
"This is like watching your old uncle soil himself!"Bass is working to build a bridge between the discourse of staid institutional journalism and the inspired, beer-drenched keyboards of blogging. His web paper feels close to the community, close to readers. Close to the impact of what it reports on. We're almost in the world of journalists and private eyes who had the bottle in the desk, to cope with the reality they confronted. This is not a slight on Bass. If there were more bottles in more desks, perhaps the realm of bloggers would have less work to do to beat some sense back into reporting.
posted by Tom Matrullo at Wednesday, August 09, 2006
8 Comments:
I like Ehrenreich on labor, but surely there's a need for more. Good questions, about which I am not qualified to pon- or pun-tificate. My thought/hope with blogs is: they raise, by virus or other mode of infection, the level of discourse of the broadcast mode. But so far I don't see evidence. Rather, things like Murdochworld appear to be regressing into a reduced set of cliches/formulae for channelling stupidity, hate, anxiety, etc.
Jon, Studs T. is a national treasure. Or should be. How he happens not to be, at least as far as the mainstream, such as it is, is concerned, is something to think about. How does a guy like that, a spellbinding storyteller, who knew everyone, get to be someone whose name would never come up on Family Feud?
But in terms of his being central to the national imagination: different time, different social reality. He was active in a day when there was still a pretty fair simulation of national mind - look at films in pre-production-era Hollywood, and you find something like an actual culture, e.g. He's from that, and had that to work with.
We have something else going on. In addition to social and economic alienation, I think we have a form of cognitive alienation. The megillah is beyond our ken. Anyone's ken. There is no kenning of it. E.g.: we have more "coverage" of what is allegedly going on than at any time in history. But I defy anyone to tell us what's going on. The people who cover what's going on only know that what they allege is will meet the requirements of the deliverables of their job description. Has that got anything to do with what's going on?
I did have another point, but can't think of it. I'll add if and when it returns.
Of course I remembered it as soon as I hit "publish." The shifting variables of the mass, the media, the economy, the social net, etc., make it difficult to track real change as opposed to fictive notions. We sense things are moving in nonlinear ways more often. And more quickly. Requiring a new metrics, without which there is no media worth bothering with.
If you agree with that (for argument's sake), then what begins to look very old and staid is any sort of -ism. Social, commun, journal, anarch, e.g., these ideological forms that came from a more stable time, and that today look more and more like Isadora Duncan.
Jon - thanks - if you don't know it, you might find this thoughtful book goes well with Barsolo's excellent image:
We sense things are moving in nonlinear ways more often. And more quickly. Requiring a new metrics, without which there is no media worth bothering with..
Humbly, (humbly, always with the humbly, when am I gonna be down with the Proud??) this. Real stories/conversations/encounters I don't believe would/could have occurred ten years ago -- at least where I live.
-a.mole
Mr. a.mole: I'm guessing you don't live in New York? The talk of the street, the building - reminds me of it, but not of it, because it's new. More like a place becoming more like it. Whatever. more like this, please.
Thanks, Tom. I come from a town they used to call 'Little Iowa'. Definitely not in Kansas anymore.
-a.mole
Apologies.
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