Blogging ain’t journalism
(This is a reconstruction of an earlier post lost when our server crashed in midweek. Idiot me didn’t save a backup.)
I’m a journalist. Been one all my life. It’s all I ever really wanted to do. I love getting to the truth behind spin, uncovering facts our elected officials would rather keep hidden, and writing about things that make a community, a state or a nation unique.
In today’s Internet-driven world, people too often confuse bloggers with journalists. Some bloggers consider themselves journalists. Most, even those who aspire to be journalists, are not. They confuse opinion with facts, perception with truth and bias with objectivity.
To their credit, most bloggers make no pretense at journalism. They write about things that affect or move them. Fred First at Fragments from Floyd is a good example. So is David St. Lawrence at Ripples. David also mixes in some journalism, reporting on what is or is not happening in and around the Floyd County area.
Philadelphia journalist Jonathan Last has some excellent thoughts on the subject:
It wasn’t until last year that I became convinced the Internet was the locus of all evil in the known universe.
You may find this statement odd. After all, the Internet pays my mortgage, so I have a vested interest in its continued success. I’ve been the online editor of the Weekly Standard (www.weeklystandard.com) since 2001, and I was dabbling on the InterWeb long before that. I launched a Web zine with two college friends in 1997, before Web zines were cool. In 2004, I started a little blog. I may be an idiot, but I’m not a Luddite.
But last year, a flack called me from one of America’s most prestigious think tanks and invited me to participate in a panel on “The Impact of the New Media.” The event, he explained, would work like this: Six distinguished panelists, three from the Old Media and three from the New Media, would argue on stage in a discussion moderated by another famous Old Media personage. I was invited to be one of five bloggers who would sit in the audience blogging about the panel discussion, with our comments to be projected on a screen above the stage, in real time!
This stunt struck me as a good bit of synecdoche. The New Media in general, and blogs in particular, are concerned primarily with the meta (that is, commenting on commentary), which makes the blogosphere occasionally useful, often harmful, and ultimately pointless.
I’ve met, interviewed, and worked with a lot of bloggers over the years, and for the most part, they’re swell folks. The defects I see are largely – maybe even exclusively – inherent in the medium, and not the result of individual failings. Whether the person blogging is a pajama-clad lawyer or a Pulitzer-winning journalist, the medium is the message, and the message of blogging is: More! FASTER!
Blogs can be a real force for good when they act as supra fact-checkers. They can add serious value when they quickly elevate experts in obscure topics to the fore of public discussion (see, for example, the Bush “National Guard memo“). And they have enormous potential to enable on-the-ground reporting when news happens suddenly or in remote locations. We’ve seen some of this potential realized, as in sites such as Iraq the Model, but not nearly so much as one might have hoped.
The month from hell
Just call this the week from hell. Actually, it was the month from hell. Server crashes plus configuration problems on a new server this week brought just about everything to a halt.
The trash bin in the back of our data center is littered with the remnants of servers that didn’t work as promised and hard drives corrupted by viruses and worms because a virus program also didn’t work as it should have.
Support your local author
Fragmented Fred First, dean of the Floyd County bloggers, is the county’s latest published author. His collection of essays is out in a new volume, Slow Road Home, a blue ridge book of days.
Longtime readers of Fred will recognize the chapters in the book, either from his blog or his column in The Floyd Press (the two usually overlap).
FUBAR
Over the weekend we moved to a new server.
Last night the new server crashed. It’s the third new server we’ve had crash in less than a month.
Not sure what’s going on here but they sure don’t make servers like they used to.
Posts for the last three days have been lost, along with the comments. When I get time to restore them from backup I will but right now I’m more concerned about fixing the hardware glitch.
Moving
We’re moving Blue Ridge Muse to a new server. During the move, comments have been disabled until we get relocated. Should be back on line by Sunday.
Postscript on Loki
One of the vets from Virginia-Maryland School of Veterinary Medicine called Wednesday to report on the result of Loki’s autopsy. Bottom line: They still don’t know what caused the kitten’s extensive brain damage but we did the right thing by bringing him in and having him put to sleep.
The masses in his brain had expanded to the point that the pressure caused pain and Loki would have died in another day or two but would have suffered much more had we not chosen to end his short life.
Time to run and cut
Enough rain fell this week to send grass shooting up in the South 40, also known at the front yard of Chateau Thompson. This means getting the John Deere out of mothballs, sharpening the three blades on the cutting deck, and tackling the three acres of yard before the National Forest Service declares it a wilderness area.
Gas pains
The many artists, craftsmen (and women) and creative types who occupy our community face a tough summer.
As gas prices head up the tourists that many in Floyd County depend on for survival stay home. With prices predicted to hit $3.00 a gallon soon, the arts and crafts community of Floyd may face a long, dry spell where tourists stay home.
It that happens, it will be the third straight year that high gas prices have driven down tourism traffic for the area. Traffic on the Blue Ridge Parkway declined by 20 percent in 2004 and 40 percent in 2005.
Anger
Anger and frustration have driven a lot of what I have written lately — spawned by a feeling of helplessness in trying to save our brain-damaged kitten, Loki.
Emotion can be an asset for a writer but emotion that turns to anger defeats logic and cohesive expression.
Tempus fugit
Somewhere, in one of the boxes that that lurk in a closet of Chateau Thompson, lies a brochure from an investment firm promoting the “joys and relaxation†of retirement.
If I had the energy I’d find that brochure and burn it.
At some point, in 2004, I remember saying we moved to Floyd County to “relax and retire.â€
I’m sure I said it.
At least I think I did.
My “to do†list Thursday contained 14 items. I got to five of them before collapsing on the couch and sleeping for the next seven hours.