Just Say No to "Journalism"
I really don't care for the direction of this whole "who is and who isn't a journalist" debate going on lately.
Steve Gilliard posts a farewell letter from Newsday's Laurie Garrett. It's a thoughtful, stirring piece of work describing the monolithic trash heap that constitutes the ignoble landsape of American journalism exemplified by Newsday. Steve's caption was "journalists suck" - an opinion with which I happen to emphatically agree (a little too emphatically for many people's tastes).
Nothing rankles a blogger like pointing to an inconsistency - and, of course, being human, we all tend to host a few despite our valiant efforts to be consistent. Much to our discomfort, beneath those inconsistencies lie icebergs of truth which cry out for further investigation.
And so the dialogue goes something like this:
Good for Laurie Garrett.
Journalists DO suck.
Yet, for all the moaning and bitching in Left Blogsylvania, an awful lot of bloggers are just thrilled at the prospect of being classified as journalists.
The stench of hyporcisy is caustic enough to burn my nose hair.
Do journalists really suck? And, if so, why do so many bloggers want to be journalists? Gee, could it be because they're drawn to the seductive flame of the cocktail circuit... just like the journalists who - oh, did I mention? - suck.
Yeah, I think so.
I have to go now. George Stephanopolis is on hold, and it's rude to keep important people waiting.
Arvin Hill | Email | Homepage | 03.09.05 - 11:58 am
Arvin Hill,
Well some of us ARE journalists, and I wouldn't be so quick to sneer at the title, since there are significant legal protections, from press passes to shield laws, which come with it.
But what Garrett is talking about the way a lot of journalists have forgotten about their job and used the craft for personal glory.
A blog is a tool. A journalist is a person.
stevegilliard | Email | Homepage | 03.09.05 - 12:16 pm
Information is the tool. A blog, like a cigarette - or a newspaper - is a delivery device.
Legal protections? Surely you jest. Don't faint, but America has entered a post-Constitutional era. It's here. We're in it. You think you'll get an exception? There is no Fourth Estate, period. It's gone. Finished. Finito. You're chasing a ghost. Knock yourself out, all you journalists out there... but you're a day late and a dollar short. And if you find that dollar, you'll still be a day late.
I'd rather eat glass than be lumped in with the narcissistic Wal-Mart World O'Journalism. Commenting on journalists and journalism is not journalism - it just plays journalism on TV.
What journalism is or isn't can be debated ad infinitum, but one thing can't: The people who utlimately change the rotten course America is on - assuming we change course at all - won't be "journalists."
Arvin Hill | Email | Homepage | 03.09.05 - 11:58 am
I don't presume to know what journalism, per se, is - but I don't think anyone else knows, either. What I do know is I am routinely misinformed and disinformed intentionally by entities most people would recognize as practitioners of journalism.
Understandably, bloggers who aspire to journalism or consider themselves journalists take some offense at having their belief systems challenged. But is this desire to be called a journalist really due to a yearning for "journalistic protections" (which I assert don't exist in today's post-Constitutional America)? One of the dullest tools in the journalist's arsenal is a ridiculously lazy dependence on "confidential sources" - which, having survived the Clinton years, appear to be used at least as often for the purposes of evil as for the public good. Confidentiality is abused with enough frequency to render it vastly overrated, at least in my book.
And if it's not legal protections the aspiring blogger-journalist wants -- well, what else is there? Prestige? Money? Status? A few rounds of foreign policy a-go-go with a pantsless Tim Russert on Sunday morning? Maybe the privilege of sitting adjacent to the animatronic David Broder on Washington Week and expounding on the vagaries of conventional wisdom?
It's not difficult to find a swarm of opinion from liberal bloggers taking the position James Guckert aka "Jeff Gannon" wasn't a journalist because he lacked credentials. Yet, many of the same people who asserted this will tell you they are journalists - and they don't have any credentials, either. While this is another one of those inconsistencies worth pointing out, the point here isn't the credentials. Personally, I'm not big on credentials. I never spent a day in college and have worked for more than my share of morons with impressive academic records, fratboys and sorrority sisters who typically considered me barely a notch above an armed robber or methamphetamine dealer (that's dealer, not cook).
Whatever it is bloggers seek at the end of the rainbow, the ones worth their salt needn't be designated "journalist" by a federal court judge or - god forbid - the United States Supreme Court. Perhaps another word is needed for what bloggers do. Better still, maybe we needn't bother with semantics at all and just keep doing what we're doing right now: Speaking the truth when and where others won't.
Steve Gilliard posts a farewell letter from Newsday's Laurie Garrett. It's a thoughtful, stirring piece of work describing the monolithic trash heap that constitutes the ignoble landsape of American journalism exemplified by Newsday. Steve's caption was "journalists suck" - an opinion with which I happen to emphatically agree (a little too emphatically for many people's tastes).
Nothing rankles a blogger like pointing to an inconsistency - and, of course, being human, we all tend to host a few despite our valiant efforts to be consistent. Much to our discomfort, beneath those inconsistencies lie icebergs of truth which cry out for further investigation.
And so the dialogue goes something like this:
Good for Laurie Garrett.
Journalists DO suck.
Yet, for all the moaning and bitching in Left Blogsylvania, an awful lot of bloggers are just thrilled at the prospect of being classified as journalists.
The stench of hyporcisy is caustic enough to burn my nose hair.
Do journalists really suck? And, if so, why do so many bloggers want to be journalists? Gee, could it be because they're drawn to the seductive flame of the cocktail circuit... just like the journalists who - oh, did I mention? - suck.
Yeah, I think so.
I have to go now. George Stephanopolis is on hold, and it's rude to keep important people waiting.
Arvin Hill | Email | Homepage | 03.09.05 - 11:58 am
Arvin Hill,
Well some of us ARE journalists, and I wouldn't be so quick to sneer at the title, since there are significant legal protections, from press passes to shield laws, which come with it.
But what Garrett is talking about the way a lot of journalists have forgotten about their job and used the craft for personal glory.
A blog is a tool. A journalist is a person.
stevegilliard | Email | Homepage | 03.09.05 - 12:16 pm
Information is the tool. A blog, like a cigarette - or a newspaper - is a delivery device.
Legal protections? Surely you jest. Don't faint, but America has entered a post-Constitutional era. It's here. We're in it. You think you'll get an exception? There is no Fourth Estate, period. It's gone. Finished. Finito. You're chasing a ghost. Knock yourself out, all you journalists out there... but you're a day late and a dollar short. And if you find that dollar, you'll still be a day late.
I'd rather eat glass than be lumped in with the narcissistic Wal-Mart World O'Journalism. Commenting on journalists and journalism is not journalism - it just plays journalism on TV.
What journalism is or isn't can be debated ad infinitum, but one thing can't: The people who utlimately change the rotten course America is on - assuming we change course at all - won't be "journalists."
Arvin Hill | Email | Homepage | 03.09.05 - 11:58 am
I don't presume to know what journalism, per se, is - but I don't think anyone else knows, either. What I do know is I am routinely misinformed and disinformed intentionally by entities most people would recognize as practitioners of journalism.
Understandably, bloggers who aspire to journalism or consider themselves journalists take some offense at having their belief systems challenged. But is this desire to be called a journalist really due to a yearning for "journalistic protections" (which I assert don't exist in today's post-Constitutional America)? One of the dullest tools in the journalist's arsenal is a ridiculously lazy dependence on "confidential sources" - which, having survived the Clinton years, appear to be used at least as often for the purposes of evil as for the public good. Confidentiality is abused with enough frequency to render it vastly overrated, at least in my book.
And if it's not legal protections the aspiring blogger-journalist wants -- well, what else is there? Prestige? Money? Status? A few rounds of foreign policy a-go-go with a pantsless Tim Russert on Sunday morning? Maybe the privilege of sitting adjacent to the animatronic David Broder on Washington Week and expounding on the vagaries of conventional wisdom?
It's not difficult to find a swarm of opinion from liberal bloggers taking the position James Guckert aka "Jeff Gannon" wasn't a journalist because he lacked credentials. Yet, many of the same people who asserted this will tell you they are journalists - and they don't have any credentials, either. While this is another one of those inconsistencies worth pointing out, the point here isn't the credentials. Personally, I'm not big on credentials. I never spent a day in college and have worked for more than my share of morons with impressive academic records, fratboys and sorrority sisters who typically considered me barely a notch above an armed robber or methamphetamine dealer (that's dealer, not cook).
Whatever it is bloggers seek at the end of the rainbow, the ones worth their salt needn't be designated "journalist" by a federal court judge or - god forbid - the United States Supreme Court. Perhaps another word is needed for what bloggers do. Better still, maybe we needn't bother with semantics at all and just keep doing what we're doing right now: Speaking the truth when and where others won't.
posted by Arvin Hill at 3/09/2005 11:41:00 AM
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