{"id":353,"date":"2009-03-23T13:41:34","date_gmt":"2009-03-23T20:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2009\/03\/from_stone_to_bronze_the_human\/"},"modified":"2009-03-23T13:41:34","modified_gmt":"2009-03-23T20:41:34","slug":"from_stone_to_bronze_the_human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2009\/03\/from_stone_to_bronze_the_human.html","title":{"rendered":"From stone to bronze, the human cost in old media"},"content":{"rendered":"

The SF Chronicle’s Mark Morford logged in on Friday with a spirited defense of the news organizations previously known as newspapers and a fine sprinkling of contempt for media theorists prognosticating about the future – Die, Newspapers, Die?<\/a> – linked in ARTicles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Morford offers grudging respect to Clay Shirky’s Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable<\/a>, because of Shirky’s solid analysis, but Morford is sick of everybody without a stake in the old newsroom calling it done for:<\/p>\n

\n

This, to me, is the hoariest snag in any preachy “a mature
\nblogosphere will supplant old media” argument. In the howling absence
\nof all the essential, unglamorous work newspapers now do — the
\nfact-checking, interviewing, researching, all by experienced pros who
\nknow how to sift the human maelstrom better than anyone, and all
\nhitched to 100+ years of hard-fought newsbrand credibility — what’s
\nthe new yardstick for integrity? On what do you base your choices? Some
\nfickle mix of personal mood, blood-alcohol level, and how many
\nfollowers your given source has on Twitter? Right.\n<\/p>\n

I disagree with Winer in one huge way: When the professional
\nnews filters vanish, when you lose that vigorous center of storytelling
\nexpertise<\/i>, you don’t necessarily get a rich ‘n’ wonderful mix of
\nnew choices. You get chaos. You get noise. Sure, it might be a boatload
\nof fun to read, but it’s also maddening as hell. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Of course Morford is right. Nothing has yet arisen to replace the organization of fact hunters and checkers who research and verify what sees print in a newspaper. Working without a team paid to weigh and assess every word is writing without a net. Editors can leave rope burns on copy or strangle it outright, but more often they save writers from themselves.<\/p>\n

In spite of their expertise and devotion to the truth, however, newspapers have too frequently failed us.Take the New York Times, the best of the best. Judith Miller’s reporting<\/a> on the Iraq War helped get us into that war. Those phantom Weapons of Mass Destruction? According to her, they were real. (Morford, on the other hand, got it right<\/a>, early and often.)<\/p>\n

In my own small case of online only, as a former member of a far less illustrious newspaper team than the NYT, I’m banking on readers to tell me when I’m wrong and to debate the debatable. So far,so good. Plus, change is inevitable.<\/p>\n

Here’s Mitchell and Webb<\/a> on orientation day at the dawn of the Bronze Age. Stone chippers were not amused. (Thanks to Tim Appelo for link.)<\/p>\n

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The SF Chronicle’s Mark Morford logged in on Friday with a spirited defense of the news organizations previously known as newspapers and a fine sprinkling of contempt for media theorists prognosticating about the future – Die, Newspapers, Die? – linked in ARTicles. Morford offers grudging respect to Clay Shirky’s Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable, because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}