Monday, November 12, 2007
Snotty journalists
There's a radio show on one of the NPR stations in my reception area that's hosted by a political science professor at a local community college. The weekly panelists are editors and writers on local papers in wildly sophisticated places like Albany, New York and Schenectady. With these sterling credentials, I suppose it's no wonder that they are condescending about blogs and their writers. This week, for example, one of the women panelists threw out a comment about how "completely uneducated" and "stupid" blog writers are and therefore how appalling and horrifying it is that so many people are getting their news from blogs. The others murmured their agreement and tsk tsks in the same tone that they might use if a two hundred year old man started giving opinions on macroeconomics.
Obviously not all of anything is going to be top notch. And it's equally obvious that not all mainstream media is well thought of, let alone tolerable these days, let alone smart or written by well educated writers (to use the same two criteria they were using). And the comments were wildly broad generalizations which almost inevitably are going to be false simply because they're so broad. Much more alarming, however, is that mainstream media editors and writers can be so blind to the enormous energy and creative ideas that many blog writers exude. And that everyone loses when the information highway has so many front-end collisions littering its roadbed.
Obviously not all of anything is going to be top notch. And it's equally obvious that not all mainstream media is well thought of, let alone tolerable these days, let alone smart or written by well educated writers (to use the same two criteria they were using). And the comments were wildly broad generalizations which almost inevitably are going to be false simply because they're so broad. Much more alarming, however, is that mainstream media editors and writers can be so blind to the enormous energy and creative ideas that many blog writers exude. And that everyone loses when the information highway has so many front-end collisions littering its roadbed.
Labels: blogs (mine), blogs (others'), headlines, writing
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| posted by jau at 9:48 PM
jau — at 3:29 PM, November 13, 2007:
DADvocate — at 11:43 PM, November 13, 2007:
| posted by jau at 9:48 PM
3 more:
jau — at 3:29 PM, November 13, 2007:
I agree that they hate it, which I guess is fine since they see it as untrained people moving into their territory. What bugs me and angers me, though, is their assumption that bloggers are uneducated and stupid and so unintelligent as to be unworthy of even a moment's interest. In my own experience, it's almost the opposite! In the last few years, I've seen well-reasoned and carefully worded ideas expressed far more by bloggers than by MSM writers. Far more.
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DADvocate — at 11:43 PM, November 13, 2007:
assumption that bloggers are uneducated and stupid and so unintelligent as to be unworthy of even a moment's interest
I think it's less of an assumption and more of a desire to descredit their new competition.
Funny, but after I wrote the early comment, I remembered one of my paternal uncles was a life long journalist. He started working for a medium size newspaper in high school and never attended college. He was one of the elite according to these people but myself with and M.S. degree and many others, plus plain ole smart people who may not have even finished high school, don't meet their standards.
It's just a bunch of fragile egos trying to hoist themselves up by putting others down.
I think it's less of an assumption and more of a desire to descredit their new competition.
Funny, but after I wrote the early comment, I remembered one of my paternal uncles was a life long journalist. He started working for a medium size newspaper in high school and never attended college. He was one of the elite according to these people but myself with and M.S. degree and many others, plus plain ole smart people who may not have even finished high school, don't meet their standards.
It's just a bunch of fragile egos trying to hoist themselves up by putting others down.
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Of course they ignore bloggers like us :-) and like Glenn Reynolds, who are university professors and professionals themselves. I took a class or two from Glenn Reynolds father, a religiious studies professor, in college. A quite intelligent fellow as Glenn appears to be.
I think the traditional MSM people hate it that members of the lowly masses are intruding into their territory.
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