Remove the Blog from Thine Eye

In a letter to the media news site Romenesko, Rob Walsh pops the hype balloon of weblogs, describing them as "nothing more than the Web's version of talk radio."

If weblogs are talk radio, as Walsh derides, they are talk radio in which every caller has his own show. The global reach and lack of barriers set them apart.

Unlike every other mass medium, the Web doesn't let giant corporations hog the mike. A former CBS gift shop employee who never went to college has a bigger online audience than CBS News. An obscure reporter from Wisconsin is now a media institution.

Journalists should be paying attention to weblogs, if for no other reason than enlightened self-interest. A cloud of webloggers can descend upon questionable reporting like locusts, leaving nothing but devastation and droppings behind in their wake.

Last March, Tim Blair, a weblogger in Sydney, Australia, read a quote in a Chicago Tribune piece he thought was too good to be true:

"These people always complain," said Graham Thorn, a psychiatrist. "They want it both ways: their way and our way. They want to live in our society and be respected, yet they won't work. They steal, they rob and they get drunk. And they don't respect the laws."

As the Tribune later admitted, reporter Uli Schmetzer fabricated the name and occupation of the source. They ended his nearly 20-year association with the paper.

In announcing Schmetzer's fabrication, Tribune Public Editor Don Wycliff noted wryly that Blair "seems to have set himself up as a kind of independent monitor of the press."

The experience with Schmetzer convinced Wycliff that weblogs represent a new check on the media: "In the past, national and foreign correspondents could roam the country or the world writing stories about people who would never see their work. In the Internet age, there are fewer and fewer places where the Chicago Tribune -- or the Waxahachie Daily Light, for that matter -- cannot be accessed and read critically by people about whom we write."

Could "Tim in Sydney" call a talk radio show in Australia and get a reporter fired in Chicago?

Journalism · 2005/01/11 · 6 COMMENTS · Link

Comments

Blogging compared to talk radio? Hal-le-effing-leuliah.
Many credit talk radio with the Gingrich revolution and continued domination of policy. Bill Moyers said Rush Limbaugh was the most important media infuence in the country. www.washingtonpost.com
If bloggers can get mojo that compares, fabulous.

#1 · leolabeth · 2005/01/11

It's the "old priesthood" issue. The big guys did their time, took the lumps, and are reaping the benefits. Now that some new little sect moved into town and started getting actual results, they're busy looking into their archives, trying to find precedent on how to deal with the new guys.

The media are right in the middle of their own private Reformation, and they're trying to look the other way.

#2 · Chad Irby · 2005/01/12

Funny. Anyone who at this late date is still willing to dismiss talk radio as insignificant has lost credibility before he opens his mouth.

Talk radio anticipated the rise of Fox News, among other things. Fox News, talk radio, and blogs--while very different from one another--together represent elements of a shift in the way people produce and consume information that continues to evolve. That shift is enormously important.

#3 · Salutor · 2005/01/12

Perfectly well said, Chad Irby.

I've read several of these blog derogatory comments from Media Mavens and they have denial written all over them.

#4 · What Network News? · 2005/01/12

Before Fox News, I wanted mainstream journalism to drop the flawed belief in the possibility of objectivity and return to its 19th century roots, back when it was routine for newspapers to be baldly partisan, even by adopting parties as part of their names.

I think the idea had more appeal to me before the filthy rich right-wing media machine cranked up and started beating Democrats like a drum.

#5 · Rogers Cadenhead · 2005/01/14

I think many entrenched media entities are shocked when some unknown prick appears out of nowheresville and pops their favorite balloon. That's part of the excitement of bloggery, isn't it?

Nobody's baby is sacred anymore, and that's a good thing.

#6 · Beat Down Babylon · 2006/05/28