Roger L. Simon: Remember the Maine(stream)

A gentleman named Joseph Rago, an assistant editorial features editor at The Wall Street Journal and a reader of Henry James (from his text), has at the blogosphere today for not reporting news. [That again?-ed. You read me correctly, sir. He writes: "The bloggers, for their part, produce minimal reportage. Instead, they ride along with the MSM like remora fish on the bellies of sharks, picking at the scraps."] Now I'm not going to get personal with the WSJ, a fine paper I read every day, just because they used original reporting from this blog on the Oil-for-Food scandal without attribution or because it is evident that Mr. Rago has not been paying much attention to Pajamas Media where we have broken many stories in the last couple of months (several of which have been linked by Drudge - how many have been linked from the WSJ, I wonder).

To be honest, I don't blame the WSJ or any other paper for railing against blogs. And, yes, they are right the vast majority do not report news. But many are starting to do so, not just Pajamas, but the Huff Post as well. A fair number of individual blogs are also going out and reporting. It's not rocket science, I have to say. Reporting is the obvious next step for news and opinion oriented blogs and Rago and his confrères better get used to it. (I suspect deep down they already know.) I was surprised a newspaper as well-edited as the WSJ was still running this tired material. [Christmas filler.-ed. Could be. We have the same problem at Pajamas.]

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He says "The bloggers, for their part, produce minimal reportage.".
And the MSM reportage is so good, that as soon as I hear or read a news story on the MSM that interest me, I run to the blogs to make sure the MSM got it right. After all, I don't trust thier police informats (if they exist) nor thier photoshopping, or retypeing.

Organizations and people that are successful at one stage of a technology are rarely successful at the next stage, even if the technologies are seemingly very similar (like words on paper--words on a screen.) As a general rule, they just can't *see* what they need to in order to properly assess the impact of the new stuff.

Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor have analyzed this phenomenon very well in the book I review here.

Most blogs don't do original reporting. PJ Media does some, Michael Totten does lots... others are hit or miss. However, even here, most of the posts at this blog are about a subject discussed in the MSM. I counted, I think, 8 stories on the front page here that are commentary on MSM stories.

Blogs seem like a great replacement for some aspects of the MSM. They appear to have value as a check and corrections system for mainstream news. However, I don't think we're anywhere near replacing the MSM and I doubt we ever will.

I do have to admit that the blogsphere does seem to foster an environment where like-minded people reinforce perceptions that may not be valid, or mentally healthy. I think any non-partisan who reads LGF, Daily Kos, Huff or even the comments in this blog have noted the tendency. Blogs have made it somewhat easy to create a virtual 'tribe' and tribes sometimes provide support when they should provide criticism.

So, some valid comments from the article and some BS. All in all, not much different from any other media outlet, even blogs.

dclydew, that's hardly unique to blogs. Everyone seeks the company of the like-minded, the liberal domination of TV and newspapers make it difficult for anyone else to be too insular, though.

The point that reporting isn't rocket science bears repeating. I think much of the hauteur and arrogance that journalism pros put on when challenged by bloggers and blog readers comes from the fact that journalism is widely taught as an academic discipline. This creates the false impression that you need some kind of special qualification to practice it.

Journalism is not a subject for study; it's a trade, and like all trades it can be learned on the job if you have a moderate knack for it and competent mentors. I was heavily involved in student journalism back in the day, and even then this was readily apparent to me. I spent my classroom time on real academic subjects.

So the notion that bloggers can practice perfectly sound journalism even if they have no J-school or newspaper background makes perfect sense to me.

Did Mr. Rago trot down the virtual hallway and talk to James Taranto before firing off this ill-considered screed?

My first thought upon reading this was when was this written? There is nothing timely about it, and it has all the marks of a slow news, pre-holiday space filler.

dclydew, I don't recall your being around when I was doing a fair amount of reporting on this blog. I thought it would be obvious that, since I am now running Pajamas, the reporting would be over there. I only use this blog for my personal views. Its reporting days are over.

As for PJ, we have only begun to report and expect to be doing a lot more in 07. At the risk of beating a dead horse, or sounding rude, I would ratify the remarks of Doug S. above. Having spent decades as a professional screenwriter, I think I have a right to say that's a helluva more difficult (and higher paying!). The trick with reporting is developing sources. We're after that. The writing is, I think most would agree, relatively pro forma.

As for whether blogs can do it, why not? Blogs are, at base, no more than a free publishing platform. They are as good or as bad their content. Like computers.

"I do have to admit that the blogsphere does seem to foster an environment where like-minded people reinforce perceptions that may not be valid, or mentally healthy."

This potential danger is negligible compared to the value the interchange provides. Blogs are a new specie (meme) evolving to survive.

"Proponents of memes suggest that memes evolve via natural selection - in a way very similar to Charles Darwin's ideas concerning biological evolution - on the premise that variation, mutation, competition, and "inheritance" influence their replicative success. For example, while one idea may become extinct, other ideas will survive, spread and mutate - for better or for worse - through modification."

For every rushed lousy post of mine there are dosens that more than make up for them.

I agree, except for, "relatively pro forma." I suppose that puts me in the least category. I could get carried away here, but will just say, good writing on facts will outweigh bad writing on facts. Word smith's do have a place. And a damned important one.

What's humorous about this is that most news papers don't do much original reporting either. Take your typical paper, now cut out all the stories that are merely wire reports or rewordings of wire reports, then cut out all the op-eds and the human interest stories and the recipes and whatnot. What you're left with is generally not very much, except in the case of the very largest, big city/national news papers, and is typically just local news reporting. The truth is that the state of blogs and news papers today (or even 2 years ago) is not that terribly different. Blogs have always done a fair bit of local reporting (though often more informally than papers) and have a roughly equivalent quality in terms of op-eds, humor, and human interest stuff. The only real difference is that the unique material in blogs tends to be isolated on its own, whereas news papers take many contributors plus external sources like wire services and mash everything together so that it looks like one coherent whole, which makes the papers look a lot more substantive than they really are.

If you were to take, say, 10 of the top bloggers and put all their work together and produced a conventional paper (including all the wire reporting filler) I think you'd end up with something that was very competitive with any news paper out there today.

"Did Mr. Rago trot down the virtual hallway and talk to James Taranto before firing off this ill-considered screed?"

I was thinking that Mr. Rago had trotted down the hall to put in for a particular day off, same day that Mr. Taranto had reserved ahead of him... :-)

That said, having followed links (and seen a photo!) at Powerline, I'm not really taking this brouhaha too seriously.

My apologies, I seem to have imagined the post at PowerLine, or saw it somewhere else.

"Blogs have made it somewhat easy to create a virtual 'tribe' and tribes sometimes provide support when they should provide criticism."

Yeah, it used to be harder. You had to buy a newspaper to get that situation. Plus, the newspaper had to go through that tiresome business of providing sports and community coverage while pretending that the editorial staff weren't walking in lockstep.

As Lewis Grizzard used to tell readers complaining about this column, "the whole paper only costs a quarter. You get what you pay for." Well, now it's more like twice or thrice that, but if I want to know what is happening in the world, I don't have to buy the Huntsville Times so that I can read the same exact drivel they were writing 40 years ago.

James Madison talked about the virtues of multiple, small factions in the Federalists Papers. Lots of little blogs, no matter how tribal, trump a few newspapers.

There is certainly a good piece on the overconfidence of the Blogosphere waiting to be written. Too bad Rago only hits the most obvious points (which have already been conceded). BTW if anyone wants to write such an article, I have a title that I like but am not planning to use - "An Army of Davids or a Boy Scout Troop of Onans?"

I just got around to reading the Rago article and, besides its obvious pomposity, the author seems to have missed the salient point - that very little original reporting comes from the MSM or the blogosphere. Technology and the future, of course, is on the side of the blogs, so let's hope more original reporting is forthcoming, as Simon seems to be looking for at his company. As for the poster above me, his Boy Scout Troop analogy feels rather weak since mainstream reporters are starting to blog right and left. An ever-expanding group of onanists, i guess.

"There is certainly a good piece on the overconfidence of the Blogosphere waiting to be written."

I would say the confidence of the blogosphere is more about a realistic idea of the pitifulness of the MSM rather over-inflated views of their own prowess. That can only lead to overconfidence in head-to-head competition.

December 20, 2006: Remember the Maine(stream)

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