Rise of the Blogsphere Decline of Professional Journalism
I was able to get up to the talk last Wednesday: Rise of the Blogsphere,
and the decline of professional journalism by Langdon Winner. He spoke
for about an hour and then threw it to the floor for questions. Which
is when I ducked out.
The main point of the talk was the romantized notion
Americans have for technology, specifically democratizing technologies.
Ways of communicating that will return us to a semblance of direct
democracy. The blogsphere as town hall meeting. Who blogs, then is the
next question. He pointed to Harvard Berkmann's center side project Global Voices which is a weblog which tracks what weblogs are talking about across the world In The US he pointed to the phenomenon of the political blog
-wikpedia, he is a Political Science professor, after all. He named
some of the usual suspects right and left. I always see these as
embedded in the broader field of socially aware blogs. It seemed that
he saw the distinction as between focused versus unfocused
weblogs. I recalled because he referred to Pew trust surveys on web
logs in the last election that there was a Pew Trust Data Memo out on
Weblogs earlier in the year The State of Blogging that indicated that they align
predominately male, broadband using, higher than average income and
education (see also Pew Internet & American Life Project Report: Digital Divisionsn). What you get in the web logging world are a bunch of guys
who are full of themselves. Which fits his next point: Does this extend
the Freedom of the Press? Web logs provide a free, easy voice without
gatekeepers. At the moment few would challenge the efficacy of blogs in
shaping, changing the national agenda. Blog "Bombshell" narratives of
dramatic undisclosed information that alter the landscape occur nearly
every week. But it all seems so needy. Certaintly bloggers demonstrate
a freedom from reluctance, reticence; a lack of it a least. It is this
that pits the Upstart Blogs v. the Professional Media. For the Media
there is widespread public skepticism of the product. Infotainment as
substitute for news. Press conference, press release rewrites rather
than any original reporting. Chronic failure to cover bigger long-term
stories. Blantant bias; however subjectively perceived. Problematic
close relations with source elites. Lastly a narrow bandwidth of
acceptable opinion, a observable herding together inside the boundaries
of which.
What has allowed this? One main cause: massive consolidation in
ownership of the media. Less information is presented to the public in
the marketplace of information, much of it self-serving. Nature abhors
a vacuum. Web logs glimmering with that most prized attribute; newness
are inhaled into that breech. A void extensive enough that blogs were
granted a suspension of disbelief for possessing little polish or
coherence (By all that is black and white and read all over; those
J-school types know where to put a comma).
The problems of blogging or internet directed news gathering are
outgrowths of what they replaced. Papers, big and small. Newspapers
were notable for their inherant social spread a slice across the
spectrum. The spatial facet, geography, dominated the newspaper world.
In social uses of the internet - Virtual Communities across social
class and geographical boundaries is the pattern that dominates.
Selective browsing behavior is different from scanning behavior of a
newspaper reader. Your reading, scanning, and noting behavior will
still present the contours of the whole community to you. Your
interests along with non interests. You unconsciously retain these as
you read a paper. Web Logs represent a manifestation of rampant
choice-directed comsumerism. You see only what responds to your
searches and RSS feeds.
Another problem is the degree this feeds re-enforcing Behavior:
In a course last fall he asked what web sites people were following for
the election. Conservative self identifiers followed recognizably
conservative online presences. Liberals did the same. Those who did not
strongly identify one way or another tended not to follow politics
online at all. In this Dr. Winner sees web loggers playing into the
design strategy of division. The tactic of the elites, the regime, to
control debate through artificial divisiveness. The logic of the gated
community.
Quality and reliability are perhaps the biggest blocks to
overcome if the amateur news sharing and analysis of weblogs is to gain
ground from the professional media. What are the standards of judgement
web loggers will choose to live by. There are two essentially.
Conventions of Science/ Acadamia. Conventions of Journalism. For
Academia It is summed up by rigor, what would get through peer review
processes, what isn't plagerism. Allegiance to the scientific method.
For Journalism it is fact-checking even under deadline, appreciating
the threat of libel, use of multiple sources for accusations. Marking
your reporting transparent. Living to these borrowed standards could
make web logging - and the technologies that follow it a free
democratic press that could claim significant permanent mindshare in
society.
There are breeches, loopholes in the blogsphere already; the
drudge effect, deliberately trading veracity for hitcounter ticks,
corporate blogs. Daisy chaining blogs where similarly aligned web logs
get hold of a stray fact and then endlessly echo it. All of this
illustrates the adage that bad money/information will drive out good.
Finally there is resurgent commercial media. I have been concerned at
the number of papers and television news sites that have created beats
that either cover web logs or cover the news as a web log - especially
when I read the parent company sell this a service: "why read all those
web logs - let our guy do it for you." Or "read x today - s/he's edgy
and takes sides." This is tempting, perhaps it is even flattering, but
it will kill whatever it is that web logging is if relied upon too
much, because it seeks to co-opt the voices and absorb the medium.
The traditions of free speech value the variety of voices and
experience. Against this the tendency leads to narrowing and
privileging only some experience. The true believer syndrome captures
some voices to a single monotone view which becomes it sole reason for
being. Additionally what has been called 80-20 power law or A list B
list rule (B links to A, but never A to B) steers the conversation to a
handful of opinion leaders. I recall this was hashed out at length a
few years ago the general feeling was that this is a natural process.
Only some people have something to say and can say it well, the rest
listen. I think what we are seeing here is the preexisting paths
- ruts rather - priviledged in society. Playing out repeatedly.
It is precisely this that unfettered free speech strives to break up.
This desire for Democratic renewal through technology pushes us
up against the paradox of innovation: that paradoxes follow innovation.
Greater equality and access feed dynamics that lead to fewer voices
than before. Increased power ability to distribute (publish) may lead
to reactions that effectively increase barriers.Early On-line optimism,
Ideas of citizens as netizens of virtual communities interest domains
are increasing replaced by nearly arbitrarily heightened
pseudo-political conflict that has disrupted the sense of community.
There is therefore constant need for better tools for self governance.
As I was reflecting on Winner's observations a Metafilter thread pointed to an article in the New York Review of Books: The End of News
which examines in some detail the manner in which the news industry has
been talked and chased out of their estate. That estate, an institution
which provides the public with critical information on corporate and
governmental power. And its transformation into one that essestially
guards the latter against the former. It also demonstrates the power
the news and entertainment industry have to shape the independant world
of the internet into a facsimile of itself. The last point to make here
is the example of Bob Woodward. There is perhaps no reporter in the
world with the reputation Woodward has.
Yet it is unlikely that he convinced anyone at all that he was serving
the public or his profession by choosing not to reveal what he knew
about a central Washington story several months running or allowing
that he knew anything deciding that for him "job number one" was
protecting his sources.
11:46:38 PM  ;;
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