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People tend to overestimate the value of newspaper journalism. Paul Graham does a great job of exploding the myth of business journalism in his "submarine" ess

People tend to overestimate the value of newspaper journalism. Paul Graham does a great job of exploding the myth of business journalism in his "submarine" essay. Financial journalism has obviously been just as bad. The worst, though, is political journalism. Most "journalism" is simply writers being a conduit for leaks and bureaucratic turf wars. Woodward and Bernstein did not uncover Watergate. They were tools of one branch of power ( the FBI ) that wanted to strike against another branch ( the Nixon White House). The crime was not discovered by journalists, but by illegal FBI surveillance. ( http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20081222_death_deep_throat_and_crisis_journalism http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20081222_death_deep_throat_an... ) It would actually be an enormous improvement if these agencies just said what they wanted to say through blogs, rather than filtering it through "journalists".

freejoe76 18y ago
Seems like you're painting some pretty broad strokes here. There's a difference between national and local political news. There's a difference between national and local business news. Even within local there are many flavors of news (small-town, big-city, suburban paper, etc.). And, though you don't see it, there's a heck of a lot more local journalism that gets done every day than there is national.
cyunker 18y ago
RE: http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20081222_death_deep_throat_and_crisis_journalism http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20081222_death_deep_throat_an... Well this certainly isn't journalism. It's just a big conspiracy theory with no sources to back it up.
critic 18y ago
> myth of business journalism in his "submarine" essay Fascinating article! Thanks for the tip. Submitted :-)
greyman 18y ago
>>> It would actually be an enormous improvement if these agencies just said what they wanted to say through blogs, rather than filtering it through "journalists". <<< But as you wrote, they will just say what they want to say, which might non necessarily by the truth...so while it might be entertaining to read such a blog, ultimately I want to know what each party is saying, also with some background research, and that is a work of a journalist. Of course, another issue is whether current journalism plays such a role...

freejoe76 18y ago

Seems like you're painting some pretty broad strokes here. There's a difference between national and local political news. There's a difference between national and local business news. Even within local there are many flavors of news (small-town, big-city, suburban paper, etc.). And, though you don't see it, there's a heck of a lot more local journalism that gets done every day than there is national.

cyunker 18y ago

RE: http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20081222_death_deep_throat_and_crisis_journalism http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20081222_death_deep_throat_an... Well this certainly isn't journalism. It's just a big conspiracy theory with no sources to back it up.

critic 18y ago

> myth of business journalism in his "submarine" essay Fascinating article! Thanks for the tip. Submitted :-)

greyman 18y ago

>>> It would actually be an enormous improvement if these agencies just said what they wanted to say through blogs, rather than filtering it through "journalists". <<< But as you wrote, they will just say what they want to say, which might non necessarily by the truth...so while it might be entertaining to read such a blog, ultimately I want to know what each party is saying, also with some background research, and that is a work of a journalist. Of course, another issue is whether current journalism plays such a role...