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I've known a few old newspapermen in my various jobs, and they have all been fascinated by the speed of information in this new order. They see the opportunity
by look_lookatme 14y ago
I've known a few old newspapermen in my various jobs, and they have all been fascinated by the speed of information in this new order. They see the opportunity and the power.
But they also like to wax about the old times... and make no mistake, the old times was just a big boys club. Alcoholism was rampant, misogyny was par. A big story or scoop would take weeks if not months to develop and it might get buried on some fucked up principle (see Caro's excerpt in the New Yorker this year on LBJ's impending downfall until JFK and Dallas... a scoop, if not buried, alters the history of a million young American men and American foreign policy in profound ways), and then, once ready for the presses, after the editor trimmed it down, they'd all go celebrate their Pulitzer chances at a pub. It was a culture of exclusion and entitlement; your entree was "J-School" pedigree, or worse, your ability to kowtow to as a junior to an established writer until you got your chance, because that was your only path to being heard.
It was a time where accountability was proportional to distribution, which is to say, tightly controlled at all levels and, for better or for worse, self regulated. It was also a culture of self-congratulation. The only redeeming quality of the old school is that self-control over distribution gave them stupendous levels of access and leverage, something that doesn't seemingly exist anymore.
- brandnewlow 14y agoEvery profession out there has had periods that could be described this way from the last century.
- look_lookatme 14y agoThis is fundamentally not true. The massive disruption of this industry isn't from Japan/Germany or banana republics or China, this is pure change in distribution. It's analogous to music or movies or tv, only none of those industries fancied themselves as the "fourth estate" while the getting was good. The ground moved beneath the feet of this industry and as much as they like to sit around and acknowledge that with self-loathing NYT pieces, I'm not sure they've accepted it. Seems like there's still a lot of sitting about and grumbling about how bad it is and how much better it was when back when. Or worse, how relevant they really, really, really still are cough David Carr cough. See The Newsroom on HBO for example of this version of onanistic self flagellation.
- brandnewlow 14y agoWhat does an HBO-produced show about TV news, written by someone who majored in musical theater and never practiced journalism, have to do with the newspaper industry's self-image? My point was that every profession has times when it's full of elitists that think they've got some special dispensation to carry out their work. That comes with the mindset of being a professional. And eventually walls come down as the output of a profession becomes commoditized.
- look_lookatme 14y agoWhy does the elitism inherent to "every profession" of the "last century" have more relevance than a piece of socially critical art by a writer who has made a career of cultural criticism (however flawed). Is the critique of news in The Newsroom irrelevant to this conversation because of the platform or because the guy had a theatre degree? Both? Regardless, I don't get your point. All things fail? Everything comes to an end? Great. Write an existential letter to NYT. My point is there is a generational myopia that is pervasive in journalism still. There is an unwillingness to acknowledge, fully, that it's over. Donezo. It's never coming back. You can call out NYT in an NYT column and you can call out Newhouse and you can point out how fucked AOL Patch is and yet you are just writing for all the readers and writers who are terrified that things are changing. It's probably the same point you are making, but I find your approach annoyingly pithy.