March 8, 2005
Just under the wire before Lenten semi-hiatus, when our mother machines will go a little dim, Monday's Non Sequitur calls a newspaper, well...
Dilys says "Heh." Click to enlarge.
Via Kottke.
Update: Jay Rosen today kicks off discussion via a letter from a senior editor at a major publisher, who reads blogs and won't publish a MSM writer who isn't a feature or link-target in the 'sphere. We wrote a slightly ascerbic and ill-humored comment, and decided to post it here rather than toss it under Jay's shrubbery, even though some of the allusions are specific to that discussion:
The [blogger] does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public, he offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only...[a version] of The Daily Me.
We are part of the private, recent, non-geek, non-old-boy bloggers, with insignificant stats, who think aloud in public, becoming a part of varied conversations, adding a nano-gram to consensus or controversy on certain subjects, and occasionally achieving a mini-scoop by virtue of observation or privileged access in our own circle.
When in retrospect blogs are evaluated, we believe it will be this kind of ordinary educated citizens' distributed intelligence with its impact on the market and the polity, including the expressive content of millions who also read the expression of others, that will have rumbled the tectonic foundation of our common life. Dwarfing academic or journalist-careerist concerns about who gets hired, who gets paid, who makes a name. That's just celebrity culture, visible, brittle, ephemeral, and essentially the same-old Here-Comes-Me-Again-to-Have-My-Say, in lights.
The phenomenon is bigger than that, and less predictable or controllable. We do not concern outselves with p.lukasiak's worry that the early entrants have it wired; "it" seems to be merely successful LookAtMe. Even in an empty quadrangle, someone(s) may be listening, well before dawn, to the sound of millions of keyboards.
Update: Mr. Lukasiak very cordially engaged the discussion further by e-mail, and we thank him for his civility. Perhaps at a later time that correspondence, including both our comments at PressThink, can be mined for further clarity on how
--he, who maintains via a website on the subject of President Bush as AWOL, and appears to hold associated ideals and opinions, and
--we, utterly predictable "free-market dinosaurs," in his accurate term, can remain in tenuous reciprocal understanding. Thank you, Paul, you prove yourself a gentleman, or if you prefer, comrade worth engaging and appreciating. One purpose for the stormiest of straits in our time, might turn out to be the engineering of a new span of bridges. Knowing our own clumsiness, we can nonetheless hope.
Update: We're flattered that PressThink decided to quote a hunk of Dilys' ruminations. Jay is the mother ship (there's that metaphor again, is fountainhead a better, more gender-appropriate encomium?) of intelligent analysis on the subject of How Journalism Lives Now. His forum is "the best," if we may be permitted to formulate our praise with so fine, elegant, and educated a diction [Ed.: Put a sock in it already, OK, Dilys? : ) ]
We do not concern outselves with p.lukasiak's worry that the early entrants have it wired; "it" seems to be merely successful LookAtMe.
As I think I mentioned in my original post, my primary concern is the early entrants represent a specific subset of humanity...those who are "early adopters" of new technologies. There is a clear and inherent "personal empowerment" (as opposed to collective/community empowerment) among "early adopters" which is all well and good in general.
[And, it should be noted that many of these "early adopters" are politically liberal.... in other words, "personal empowerment" should not be interpreted with the assumption of any single political ideology (although there does seem to be an imbalance of far-right bloggers among the "blogging elite, "early adopting" is not the exclusive domain of the right)]
The problem as I see it is that the mainstream press is now struggling with what the emergence of the internet/blogosphere means to them. Their first and foremost concern is the "new business model" that will emerge for journalism. And virtually all the advice and information that they are getting are from people who have a "personal empowerment" bias.
Thus, the business models that are being considered (even those that talk about "empowering the communities") are all really about making money by giving people lots of choices with regard to from whom they get their news.
This presents two separate but connected problems.
The first is that people will decide what news they want to hear about, and pretty much ignore the rest.
The second is that people will have a choice of the perspective from which they want their news presented.
The end result here will be a loss of any common frame of reference within communities and the nation as a whole. To provide an examples from a current political controversies, some of us will be reading news about the privatization of social security, while others will be reading about the creation of "Individual Retirement Empowerment Accounts." Those of us who are pro-choice will never have to see the words "pro-life" in our news, and those of us who are "pro-life" will never see their opponents described as anything other than "abortion advocates."
In fact, the only thing close to a common frame of reference we will have will be the advertizing we are exposed to...but even that will be personalized to the point where some of us will be sold beer because it "tastes great" while others will be sold the same beer because it is "less filling."
We are in the process of building a new "Tower of Babel" here -- a nation (and communities) where nobody actually understands what anyone else is talking about, because each of us has defined our own realities.
(We can already see the beginnings of this....popular sites like Free Republic have people monitoring them 24/7 to make sure that its readership is not confronted with contrary facts and opinions.)
Even in an empty quadrangle, someone(s) may be listening, well before dawn, to the sound of millions of keyboards.
but in hyperspace, no one can hear you scream :)
Posted by: p.lukasiak | March 08, 2005 at 07:31 PM
MCP Press Agency anticipated
the victory of the American leader.
Congratulations to the new President of USA, Barack Obama!
The brilliant result of the democrat Barack Obama, finalized through occupation of the Oval Chamber, brings to light also this time the power of the democracy which was predictable, not only a simple political slogan.
This model of democracy vitality proved clearly that Luther King's dream should had become a reality and that nothing is random.
So, the first Afro-American president, Barack Obama, declared in an impressive gathering that:
“I never had this much hope that we will win”.
For the representatives of the Organization which I represent, “MASS COMMUNCIATION POWER”, the motto: “With better peoples, the hope becomes reality!” can be surely confirmed also in Romania.
I recommend you to read also the Press Release of MCP Press Agency, from 15 of January 2007, called “In Memoriam of Dr. MARTIN LUTHER KING”.
A conclusive paragraph of the present press release, state the fact that: “the idea of civil society, cannot exist outside the civil rights in a democracy, and those have as central point, the personality of Dr. KING, with his life and activity”.
The material is displayed on the website “Curaj.Net – Exprima-te!”.
The same article is posted also on my blog – Blogger: User Profile: MIHAIL GEORGEVICI
Yours,
President of “MASS COMMUNICATION POWER” (WWW.mcppress.ro)
Ec. MIHAIL GEORGEVICI
Posted by: MIHAIL GEORGEVICI | December 16, 2008 at 05:12 AM