Gets It, Doesn't Get It
Democrats are trying to decide how much they hate the corporate media. It's always going to be a love-hate thing. Kevin Drum comes to the defense of the big papers.
My gods, how long as this man been in Washington, D.C.? Newspaper journalism = "New York Times" (and a few others)?
Go visit America sometime, Kevin. You'll like it, I bet. In 2003 the number of daily newspapers sold in America every weekday was just over 55 million. Of that, just over one million was the "New York Times."
To most Americans, "daily newspaper" means the "East Jesus (Pa.) Caluminator-Avalanche & Farm Report" or whatever name the local fishwrap goes by that advertises their yard sales and prints their grandpa's obituary and their daughter's engagement picture.
Leave it to the media guy to get the media picture all backasswards, and a military man, writing at Mudville Gazette, to see it right. John Harriman has been publishing on that blog "letters from a Vietnam veteran to our soldiers in Iraq." Here's part of his latest:
Bingo! I've been at that wire desk, at least one day a week, since the war began. It's drudgery, and most editors don't want it, but you have more unchecked power there than in any other chair in the newsroom. Even the big boss is usually too busy keeping the publisher happy and balancing his expense accounts to make much impact on a paper. But in East Jesus Township, Pa., if you're the wire editor of the "Caluminator-Avalanche & Farm Report," you're that community's lifeline to the war. It looks the way you make it look.
You pick the stories, the play they get, the headlines they get, what pictures go with them. Your boss can't even spell "ombudsman" much less afford one.
Media pundits who obsess over the tortuous ethical workings of the boys on 42nd street don't seem to realize that the "New York Times" reaches about one-fifty-fifth as many people as are affected by the unsupervised decisions of lone wire desk editors in a hundred newsrooms scattered across America.
That's a real problem, because newspapers are the only consistent source of real reporting we have. In fact, you can narrow it down further: the only sources of serious, day-to-day reporting left in the United States are the major national dailies: the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, and a couple of others with big reporting staffs.
...
Because if big newspapers die, that's pretty much the end of real daily reporting in this country. That would suit the right just fine, I think, but not so much the left.
My gods, how long as this man been in Washington, D.C.? Newspaper journalism = "New York Times" (and a few others)?
Go visit America sometime, Kevin. You'll like it, I bet. In 2003 the number of daily newspapers sold in America every weekday was just over 55 million. Of that, just over one million was the "New York Times."
To most Americans, "daily newspaper" means the "East Jesus (Pa.) Caluminator-Avalanche & Farm Report" or whatever name the local fishwrap goes by that advertises their yard sales and prints their grandpa's obituary and their daughter's engagement picture.
Leave it to the media guy to get the media picture all backasswards, and a military man, writing at Mudville Gazette, to see it right. John Harriman has been publishing on that blog "letters from a Vietnam veteran to our soldiers in Iraq." Here's part of his latest:
When the press's history of the War-for-Oil II is finally written, Abu Ghraib will be the shorthand term for it, just as Tet is shorthand for Vietnam, which is shorthand for everything that is wrong with America, which I'm tired of reading.
What's my problem here? Why am I so rabid about this?
Because. As a rule, one person, the wire editor, gets to choose the war news that goes inside the paper. The wire editor feeds you a constant stream of news, firehose-style, depending on his personal take on the war. Check your paper. What's his slant?
Am I telling you that the history of your service in Iraq is being written into the minds of readers by one guy who might dislike soldiers?
You bet I am.
Bingo! I've been at that wire desk, at least one day a week, since the war began. It's drudgery, and most editors don't want it, but you have more unchecked power there than in any other chair in the newsroom. Even the big boss is usually too busy keeping the publisher happy and balancing his expense accounts to make much impact on a paper. But in East Jesus Township, Pa., if you're the wire editor of the "Caluminator-Avalanche & Farm Report," you're that community's lifeline to the war. It looks the way you make it look.
You pick the stories, the play they get, the headlines they get, what pictures go with them. Your boss can't even spell "ombudsman" much less afford one.
Media pundits who obsess over the tortuous ethical workings of the boys on 42nd street don't seem to realize that the "New York Times" reaches about one-fifty-fifth as many people as are affected by the unsupervised decisions of lone wire desk editors in a hundred newsrooms scattered across America.
