| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Bloggers: Are You Ready For War? |
| 2005-02-16 |
| Previously I warned that bloggers had better prepare themselves for 2005: the year the media establishment fights back. It's time to sound the alarm louder than ever, now that the Pajama Team has scored its biggest victory yet: ousting Eason Jordan from CNN after his strange comments about US troops in Iraq, targeting journalists for extinction. There's just no way without the efforts of dozens of bloggers such as Michelle Malkin and many others that Jordan would have left the network. Yes, his duties had been sharply reduced over a year ago and he no longer had day-to-day newsroom oversight. And it wasn't the first strange outburst from Jordan. I have him to thank for three hours of loaded radio call-in lines one day, after he admitted CNN gave Saddam a free pass from criticism, in exchange for access to Iraq. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board yesterday strangely took the old media's side, essentially contending that bloggers had become rather a bit carried away on the Jordan story. They claimed it was really just an inappropriate off-handed comment that didn't warrant termination or resignation. When even the WSJ is getting nervous, after several years of championing bloggers at OpinionJournal.com, it's clear the medium has arrived. And with that, I will warn again, it will get ugly this year. Get ready, bloggers, you've had fast success and this will be your true test. How do I know? Because I've been there, done that and seen what happens when they fight back. Talk radio really began to be taken seriously by the news media several years after catching on with large numbers of listeners. November 1994 was the turning point when the old guard woke up from their long slumber and took notice. I'll never forget how fast things changed after that election: suddenly we were the hot-heads, Rush-clones, gun-nuts, every name in the book. The news media focused on a few extreme comments made by a handful of hosts and attached them to all of us. At the station I was with at the time, KSCO in Monterey Bay, California, we had a low-rated late night host named Dave Alan who frequently went into raving conspiracy mode. After the Oklahoma City bombing, he claimed on- air that black helicopters had been seen near the building just before the attack, along with other similar rantings. Almost instantly, San Francisco TV stations (two hours away) began to cover his comments extensively in their newscasts. Never mind that the Monterey Bay was not part of their market area so they didn't normally cover stories there. From there, the story went national, and Alan was seen on a number of programs. Always, the story angle was on the extreme rhetoric coming from that scary new medium, talk radio. In addition, on-ar comments made by G. Gordon Liddy about self-defense were warped and twisted into an assertion he said federal agents should be assassinated. We didn't know what was hitting us at the time because we were too new at the game. Many hosts had little or no previous media experience. We were all made to be guilty by association. This is exactly the situation bloggers are in now. Some have journalism or talk radio backgrounds, most do not. The media establishment may have overlooked the Dan Rather success, partly because Rather still anchors the nightly news at CBS, but with Eason Jordan a line has been crossed. And there's no turning back now, get ready for your trial-by-fire. Hat tap to The Radio Equalizer. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #7 Murdock's top mgmt is meeting tomorrow, I think (decided not to post the article since it was only one paragraph with nothing more than the announcement), to determine the shape of Fox and the rest of Murdoch's empire, print - TV - radio, in light of the Internet, blogs, etc. They might have been the purchasers, lol! Should be a very interesting next few years. Much writing on the wall, heh. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-02-16 11:43:36 PM |
| #6 Perhaps the shape of things to come was the recent sale of crikey.com.au to a mainstream media company reputably for a $1M. Forward looking established media coopt (buy into?) the best blogs and create a hybrid. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-02-16 11:39:19 PM |
| #5 Excellent points, 2b. Currently, the RB Editors who monitor, add in-line commentary, keep the peace... Someday, they'll beep their list of topical columnists - to see how many want to work on a breaking event - the added value analysis and perspective - beyond the facts which are posted as they come out in the central thread. And that hard data may be free - or bid for, in lex's News eBay, if you're trying to lead the story - i.e. be the source of a scoop, as they used to say. These columnists have access to databases of interlinked / pre-searched topical info - previous articles, facts, who's, when's, what's, why's, how's. Kinda like what Dan, Paul, et al, do now, heh. They make the connections for us, flesh them out, create sidebars, the whole nine yards. Of course, the Editors take everything generated, all the connectivity discovered, and update the DB's... Something like that. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-02-16 10:28:02 PM |
| #4 He's right, of course. But the Internet is different. The Internet is a global and it's unstoppable. We are witnessing a true revolution in terms of how news is disseminated. They simply can't compete with the brain power and instantaneous nature of the Internet. Smart investors will dump their stock in the major networks and magazines like Time Magazine, US News, etc. For two long, they've had crappy writers who pedal little more than a point of view. Now these chosen few will compete with the expertise of true experts, and people who write because the love to and who are often far more skilled than the "professionals", despite the lack of credentials. If the want to succeed, they will provide quality reporting and information. Hiring on the best bloggers, etc. There is a need for accurate reporting - but the ability to control the flow..ie: distribution of that information is already beyond their control. Good writers, will survive through paying blogs and whatever form the future "newspaper" will take. But it won't be like the New York Times, or Time Magazine, or USA Today, formats who try to be all things to all people. Those days have passed. Rantburg is probably a good indication of things to come. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-02-16 10:10:28 PM |
| #3 Agreed. If I were a student at the Columbia School of Journalism, I'd be seriously questioning both my career options and the value I was getting for my tuition. |
| Posted by: Matt 2005-02-16 10:03:16 PM |
| #2 Spot-on, BH. Bring it on, crybabies. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-02-16 9:49:07 PM |
| #1 But what the radio stations didn't have in 1994 was back-up. The MSM can go after the bloggers if they want, but they better have their story perfectly right. The distributed nature of this new format means that there will always be somebody with specialized knowledge who can call BS if they don't, as proven by font-geek Charles Johnson. |
| Posted by: BH 2005-02-16 9:12:55 PM |