I'm very cranky about the News Cycle -- that is to say, I dislike posting about something just because it's the cable news outrage du jour, or the top whatever at Memeorandum.
This is because I dislike feeling like I have been stampeded. There is no question that one of the major problems with The State of Journalism Today is the stampede mentality, the crazed idea that getting it first is better than getting it right. It's odd, but even as the value of the "scoop" has diminished to the point of pointlessness in terms of hard dollars and cents -- you beat the competition by a nanosecond, big deal, it's all over the Internets for free instantly anyway, and that's just not changing, it's the way it is -- lots of journalists, and even worse, the megacorps they work for, seem obsessed with the concept of being out in front, of being first on the scene.
But actual "scoops" that mean something are rare. I'm sure there was tons of cutthroat competition over being the first to report that Michael Jackson died, for instance. But why? This is not to say that there was nothing newsworthy about Jackson croaking. But you beat CNN by nine seconds, well, what the fuck ever.
And that's my problem with the News Cycle. A curious phenomenon: the bloggers most visibly tails-a-waggin' excited over the New Citizen Journalism That Is Blogging and I Suppose Twitter, and most spittle-flecked angry over the excesses of the Legacy Media, are always also the ones who seem most obsessed with keeping current with cable chatter-fodder and whatever's up top at Memeorandum.
And it's totally mindless. The world, I venture to speculate, was not waiting with drooling anticipation for the Gateway Pundit's take on the passing of the King of Pop.
Or mine either, for that matter. But then, my problem with the moron-level commentary that passes itself off as "journalism" nowadays is that it is moron-level commentary, and not that it is not my moron-level commentary. The problem is the stampede; the problem is not that the wrong guy is shooting the pistol that provokes the stampede.
Anyhow, all of this is a very roundabout way of saying goodbye to Walter Cronkite. For reasons Roy points out, if Cronkite was widely trusted in his day, that is because he earned that trust.
Of course it is highly elitist of me to say so and thus clearly Global Climate Change is a hoax.
And that's the way it is. Sláinte.
On the same day Cronkite dies, we find out David Gregory was offering to spew RNC talking points about Mark Sanford's disappearance.
I've seen kids straight out of college who'd be more principled.
Posted by: coozledad | July 18, 2009 at 08:28 AM
RE:dear Uncle Walter Rolling Stone article 1977.
Also, I don't know if they are compute accessible but read Church Commission report from the 1970s. Search for dear Uncle Walter.
Yeah, dear Uncle Walter was a CI lying A tool.
Sorry to spoil your grief.
Posted by: evil is evil | July 18, 2009 at 04:32 PM
it's almost like a microcosm of american journalism! always feeding off itself! and it sure inflates my traffic stats!
Posted by: skippy | July 18, 2009 at 11:56 PM
hahahahahaha
ha
Posted by: Ian Welsh | July 19, 2009 at 05:15 AM