There is only one conversation in journalism right now. It took place a million times over the holiday season, and it was not a balanced conversation. 3 or 4 people stood around a grinning twerp and badgered him, Why don't you mourn the newspaper!? Think of the amazing coverage the Times provides me, with my cup of coffee, every morning! Something great is being lost, something great! People don't read from screens, they don't have any attention spans! I can't read more than 30 seconds at a time, my eyeballs-- The depth--the depth--you have to agree with this-- is being destroyed! There is something about holding a piece of...
We can get to all these questions some other time. For now I just want to register one thought. A few years ago it was these same 3 or 4 smart people who used to stand around and pull their chins and say, Literacy is over! People don't know how to write any more. The epistolary art is gone--they don't write letters. They are on the telephone all the time, they are playing video games...
Well they got their wish. The fulfillment was beginning even as they complained on that occasion. People began writing more than they ever have before, everywhere. They wrote more letters than anyone has ever written. Because of the new machines of course, an industrial revolution was taking place, and now a guild is being destroyed. And kids today are so ardent about writing I understand that you can be having a conversation with them, say about the death of the newspaper, and they will be texting blindly in their pocket. And of course a great number of these new writers are daring to say something intelligent to others about the world before them, without demanding professional status or the largesse of caged advertisers, and we are all better for it. (Though yes, me and my friends are in income tailspin).
The usual critique goes something like this:
But cell phones and online stuff raises quantity of data way over quality.
The counter of course is online reading has the tremendous advantage of hot links follow up and search engines to check out facts, which serve
to offset any sourced (but always unnamed in print if the info is really
controversial regarding governmental activity) .
It's not so much that print holds short attention spans better than
a computer screen, but that online opinions cover those seldom
exposed in the MSM, and also gives facts glossed over or ignored
in the MSM (& TV).
While it lasts, a free online is the best things that ever happened to informed citizenry. No more semi-disguised Pravda. If you live
in China, Iran, North Korea, Egypt, etc your news and access to
counter views and facts is very much limited by goverment-imposed filters. Even in Australia, there is a major push to censor the internet there–problem there is less directly political; some
want to censor to protect the kids from porn & predators–but the
filters also block very useful and needed info that is totally inane.
The MSM press has given up its right to claim itself as a break
on government, as a key part of the checks and balances, as has
congress itself.
Third party views are easily found on the net, and in detail. How many citizens found such info by watching TV or reading the MSM press in the last election?
Your parallel is bullshit.
What is lost is thought, and as important, FACT-CHECKING.
The blogosphere is ONLY able to convey rumor. Some individuals have the earned credibility of conducting their own fact-checking, but few do.
For example, YOU DON'T!!!
Comments in blogs have launched a billion writers, just like it is launching another billion song writers. Some journalize. Some search for truth. Some lie for their ethnic group or nationality. Some have for the first time been able to make their voice heard, even if it is to just a few W. Bush American murderers. Increasing the supply of writers, as the internets have done, will diminish the incomes of establishment writers, but those incomes were probably greater than the median wage.