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December 18, 2003
Interesting Theory. But Journalists Don't Do Theory. Do They?Everett Erlich calls Dean a Third Party "taking over" the Democrats. Jeff Jarvis says the Dean campaign is really a one way machine pumping out propaganda like all before it. Meanwhile, Tom Mangan, newspaper editor, wonders what good "theory" does in journalism.In a deft commentary for the Washington Post, Everett Erlich, former Undersecretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration, took apart the 2004 campaign and put it back together as a three-sided contest. Dean vs. Bush vs. the Democrats. Dean is trying to start a third party, and at the right moment turn the Democrats into that. He’s using the Internet and the “small pieces loosely joined” approach to replace the party that Terry McAuliffe heads: Other candidates — John Kerry, John Edwards, Wesley Clark — are competing to take control of the party’s fundraising, organizational and media operations. But Dean is not interested in taking control of those depreciating assets. He is creating his own party, his own lists, his own money, his own organization. What he wants are the Democratic brand name and legacy, the party’s last remaining assets of value… This theme has been sounded before. Ryan Lizza got at it in the New Republic: “Dean, by contrast, has come to represent the party’s anti-establishment forces.” But Erlich’s explanation is new. Lower information costs and new media are giving small networks the same capacity to reach voters, and so the big national party can be gotten around. Read his argument. Now suppose he’s right, and there is a three cornered competition among Dean and his network, the “old” Democratic Party, and the Republicans. (With the Christian right ready to pull a Dean on the GOP, and split off.) How does campaign reporting by the national press—let’s say at the Washington Post—absorb this possibility? Covering a three-sided race is different, more complicated. It demands a different deployment of people and use of news space. And yet it might be a more accurate picture—a savvier read on the situation—which means it would produce better coverage. But this would require acceptance of a thesis, Erlich’s thesis. The trouble there is the press does not ordinarily choose between one thesis and another in setting its sights for campaign coverage. It has a third choice, which is to say: “Thesis? What thesis? We don’t do that. No sir. Our job is to report the campaign, not to theorize about it.” I said this was a choice, but it might also be a style of decision-making that is common in journalism. Not recognizing an issue can be an effective way of handling it. For example, Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times argues that disclosing an editor’s basic political philosophy is always a mistake because the material is irrelevant. The news is not edited to political taste. We don’t care what political party the umpire in baseball is from, and we should not be revealing that information when groups have a passionate rooting interest and the umps stand between the people and a just victory. Our politics are irrelevant, just like the umpire’s, and political bias is not a significant problem. “Programmatic politics of any sort are at best a vestigial presence in all but a handful of American newsrooms,” Rutten writes. Poof. There goes an issue critics thought was relevant. Press think in this style can “disappear” things. So which is the more accurate image as we begin events in calendar year 2004, a two-party or three-party race shaping up out there? To me, that’s an interesting pair of alternatives for any sharp journalist to tackle. And I think the smart ones will tackle it, as the coverage goes on. But these are not two different stories. They are different premises for stories. We might also say different theories. Meanwhile, Jeff Jarvis wants to cool down some of the passions for Dean’s distributed model of campaigning and its “two way” features. He’s in a contrarian mood about it. His three theses: 1. In terms of policy and substance, presidential campaign weblogs are not two-way. They are necessarily one-way. He also says there is nothing scandalous about this, it’s just the reality of trying to win. Now you have to watch journalists—well, everyone, but especially journalists-when they set out to debunk. Not always but very often, the debunker will first inflate the claim, and then write 800 words about how ridiculously inflated the claim is. The trick is easy to learn. You exaggerate what “others” are saying (or just make it up) but in a manner that sounds close enough to what some people actually have said that the inflated paraphrase gets by without scrutiny. After that, the argument falls into place. This is considered kosher in column-writing. “The fashionable view is… (insert writer’s wish)… but I disagree.” To guard against this, I dock points from any debunker who does not quote real live people saying the things that need to be debunked. It’s cheating. And it usually means there are no people (or very very few) making the “fashionable” claim. It’s the writer’s wish to argue against them, however, and this is what the column is actually about: that wish. Last month’s example (entertaining in its way) was John Dvorak’s PC Magazine column debunking the weblog’s ultimate importance in journalism. Here’s the trick I was talking about: “We’re told that blogs… are sure to become the future of journalism.” Are we? Told this by whom? And do they know anything, have any authority whatsoever? Dvorak didn’t say, of course, because he didn’t want to argue with real and reasonably bright, informed people. He wanted to strike a controversial pose amid those people while doing close to zero work. He succeeded at that. But the best thing about this “make a wish” device (if your editor lets you get away with it) is when people howl in protest at your purposefully lame paraphrase, telling you how bad it is. These howls not only become proof of a great column (“struck a nerve, did I?”) but permit the writer to feel contrarian, even brave under assault. Dvorak’s is a feel good piece of this type. If those wrongly paraphrased don’t protest, the trick works well. If they do protest, it works even better. Now Jeff Jarvis, one of the top journalist webloggers, (fourth in this recent poll) is also one of the best quoters and linkers around. This is part of what makes Buzzmachine such a good read: he sends you to what he’s talking about. And it’s different stuff. But this… seems to me that we have been assuming — in a case of accepted wisdom I now don’t fully accept — that presidential campaign weblogs and communities are all about the people gaining control of campaigns. … is not up to Jarvis standards. Whose assumption is that, Jeff? How come no quotes, man, and no links? This is Buzzmachine, right? You aren’t trying to pull a Dvorak on us, are you? Please, take me to some of those observers who claim that “the people” have gained control of, say, the Dean campaign—via their weblogs—and the people are now running the show, policy-wise. Not Joe Trippi, not Dean himself, but the people are calling the shots and determining the candidate’s stands on what you call “substance.” It should be a snap, especially for a Webbie with your skills, to find lots of people spouting this view. I don’t know any, myself—any who say that campaign weblogs allow webloggers to gain policy control of presidential campaigns—but I’d love to read what they say in support of such a strange thesis. (Thesis? Do we do that?) Well, over at Andrew Cline’s Rhetorica, Tom Mangan, boss of Prints the Chaff and a newspaper editor, wrote this in a comment thread, and it made me think. I’m curious: how would more study of these structural biases help journalists? A reporter still needs to quote official sources, there is a finite amount of time available to report stories, there are inevitable fiscal pressures that discourage more authoritative reporting, and the audience’s attention span gets smaller by the day. He has that right. Journalists and people who choose to become journalists have a strained relationship to “theory.” It is axiomatic that they don’t need it, don’t want it, and really don’t like it, but so axiomatic that after a while a close observer begins to wonder: maybe they do need it, in the sense that self-definition requires things one is definitely not. During 17 years on the journalism faculty at NYU, I have heard many hundreds of students complain that they are not in J-school to learn “theory,” a statement I fully agree with. But it is odd to keep hearing it because we have no “theory of…” courses in the journalism curriculum, no professors whose specialty is theory, and no reputation as a theoretical program. Without being instructed in this, journalism students pick up on an act of self-definition that will later be expected of them, and some of them use the word “theory” to show themselves, and us, that, yes, they’re becoming journalists. There’s nothing really amiss in that: acculturation is part of learning to be a… I’m not for dumping press theory texts on newsrooms, either (it would be a disaster). But go back to Erlich’s theory that the 2004 campaign is really a three-way race. This notion, if accepted, affects everything an editor and a team of correspondents would do with the “more time, talent and money” they need to cover the 2004 campaign. Suppose the campaign team in the newsroom says: “Nah, we’re not convinced. It’s an interesting theory, though. We will stick with the premise of a two-party race.” Aren’t they deciding to go with their own theory? Read Britt Blaser and Jeff Jarvis, among others, in the comments section. Matthew Stinson comments in a similar vein with Jarvis: “I think blogging and other forms of Internet communication have altered the general dynamics of the campaign, but the campaign blogs, up to this date, have not impressed me very much.” Ed Cone also reacts to Jarvis: “As a debunking of the starry-eyed, campaign blog-as-Woodstock meme, good stuff. Howard Dean and Joe Trippi are trying to WIN AN ELECTION, not run an encounter group. Ditto the other candidates using or about to use the Internet to manage their campaigns. That’s the whole point of setting up your own parallel media. But I think Jeff sells short the collaborative possibilities of an Internet campaign.” Those interested in the Erlich thesis should read the full rebuttal from Professor Bainbridge. Headline: analogy flawed. Here’s one writer supporting the case for Dean as third party force. Part One. And two.
Posted by Jay Rosen at December 18, 2003 6:47 PM
Comments
What if this turns out to be a "vs." story after all? It will be if the open vs. closed source "conflict" story jumps from software to politics. That's good news for the Master Narrative, since the press is accustomed to covering the open source conflict, which may be more real in politics than in software (Doc Searls says there's actually no competition between Microsoft and open source tools; MS competes with its own customers' needs to use the open source toolset as a complement to MSware.) The tension between open source governance and totalitarianism has always been the essential political story. If the press picks up on this, they're actually going home again. Perhaps then the press will frame the Rs and Ds as different flavors of tories, under fire from the public they're both competing with. Posted by: Britt Blaser at December 19, 2003 9:58 PM | Permalink OK, Jay, here's one quote: It's almost spooky. The campaign is somewhere... out there. It is not at headquarters any more, although it talks to headquarters by blog. This is a de-stabilizing premise, and for a journalist who decides she buys it, a kind of reporting nightmare.That, of course, is you here. I am saying that the campaign -- especially the substantive campaign -- is very much at headquarters, still; it's not out there. Or take Glenn Reynolds' assertion -- which I quoted and quite fully bought here -- that the Dean campaign proves you have to give up control to gain power. I'm now questioning that. I'm now questioning that, operational and recruitment issues aside, the Dean campaign is giving up control or can give up control. Should I have quoted those quotes and linked those links? Perhaps. Always fair criticism. But sometimes, accepted wisdom is accepted wisdom and one can argue with it from that starting point. For example, is it accepted wisdom that we haven't found WMDs in Iraq or that many say we're mucking up post-war Iraq; need one quote and link before starting a column on those issues? Sometimes that's a judgment call. In print, it's often a space call. Online, it can be a space and time call. You and Glenn and I and others I could quote and link if it weren't late at the beginning of my vacation have all bought that the Dean online machine is changing campaigning. I agree that it's changing campaigning. But I'm arguing that it's not changing campainging in quite the ways that it has appeared. Headquarters is still wherever the candidate is. Posted by: Jeff Jarvis at December 19, 2003 10:17 PM | Permalink Excellent response, Jarvis. I see much better what you are getting at now. "There is no second campaign, really" is something I and others can argue with. I think you are right that there's a hot air quotient in many things being said in Dean's favor, and some of these "new pattern" claims may not stand close scrutiny. I'm sure there's quite a few illusions active out there. But the one you picked is *not* a common argument, I say. It's a strange thesis. Its bears no similarity to an attitude like "weapons of mass destruction not found in Iraq," which is common enough to not need citing. I cannot recall anyone--myself, Glenn, Ed Cone, any journalist, any supporter, any political pro, any weblogger you read regularly--saying that the network of Dean blogs gives control of Dean's policy stands to "the people." And I meant it when I said I would love to read such analysis and see how the writer got there. I'm not nitpicking you, lawyerly style, for evidence when everyone knows what we're talking about because there are thousands of examples. Rather, I think you got the claim wrong. "It's still at headquarters, don't buy the lost control hype" corresponds to a claim I do recognize in the work of Dean enthusiasts-- from PressThink and other places, like the New York Times Sunday magazine. http://archive.pressthink.org/2003/12/09/shapiro_dean.html I would love to see you take up in Buzzmachine the "headquarters still in charge" thing, too. But did anyone ever say the grassroots were "in charge" of the campaign overall, as against certain parts? I doubt it. Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 19, 2003 11:06 PM | Permalink Jay: Perhaps the following is not a 100.0% fit, since it's phrased as a discussion topic, but I think it does bear on the idea that the claim is not fictitious. Check out the current Berkman Center Technology in Politics question, which is in part written by the Dean Campaign "When accepting the victory, you seize the hands of two young programmers and "Now you are President of the United States, a position perceived by many as "How do you, elected on a platform of citizen empowerment, govern? ..." Posted by: Seth Finkelstein at December 20, 2003 5:26 AM | Permalink Not buying it, Seth. Others may. I still say that there is no common assumption, even among Dean enthusiasts, that *control* of campaign policy has been handed over to the grassroots, to the network of Dean groups, to webloggers, etc. I do not know anyone who makes that argument, and yet it is called a common argument. It isn't. I doubt that a single quote can be found in direct support of it. But I could be wrong, which is why I asked my friend Jeff Jarvis if he had links. Jeff, in this case, took something people have indeed said--that total control from the center has been replaced by a system where people do things on their own to benefit the candidate without direction from headquarters or coordination--and turned into a wildly different claim: that the people "out there" have taken over policy decisions in Burlington, also called "substance." If that were a common attitude, it would take minutes to produce a link. But it's a phantom. Jeff Jarvis is a great weblogger, so it surprised me that he relied on it. Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 20, 2003 11:30 AM | Permalink Jay: The only power that is meaningful in a campaign or administration is the power to change substance. If that power is not "out there" then no power is. Posted by: Jeff Jarvis at December 20, 2003 3:22 PM | Permalink These are strong opinions, Jeff, so they run the risk of being overstated: "The only power that is meaningful in a campaign or administration is the power to change substance. If that power is not "out there" then no power is." Stipulated. "I am saying that the campaign -- especially the substantive campaign -- is very much at headquarters, still; it's not out there." Sorry, Jeff. You're simply wrong. I spend a week a month at Dean HQ, where I sit as I type this. I am well within my observational powers to alert you to your mistaken impression. You've quoted Zephyr Teachout who meant it when she said the campaign is out there, one reason she just spent six weeks driving across America to update our marching orders in person. The staff (HQ & state offices) is a support system for the campaign that matters. That campaign is out there, not here. "But I'm arguing that it's not changing campainging in quite the ways that it has appeared. Headquarters is still wherever the candidate is." Wrong again. That's like saying Condé Nast exists only on 42nd Street. While Dean is in New Hampshire today, the Headquarters remains centered here in Burlington but is as distributed as Condé Nast has become. Like any modern organization, Dean Headquarters is the vector comprised by the group of professionals designing and executing the strategic plan called the campaign. Some of those are unpaid volunteers like me. Like any management, the plan is based on the resources available to the campaign, and the capital needed to increase and effectively deploy those resources. That's Biz Admin 101. Ronald Coase, speaking through Everett Ehrlich, is suggesting to us that, as the costs of information drop toward zero, the influence of the tiny bit of required capital declines proportionately. The power is usurped by the people actually doing the communicating. The Internet lets a campaign stop being a tightly controlled symphony and become a jazz improvisation. Organizations ALWAYS reflect their constituencies. When an enterprise expands its stakeholder base it takes on their biases, for better or worse. My father's GOP would have never genuflected before Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, but the Bushies have no choice. The test will be if the Dean Campaign invites the public to design and refine and, after too long a hiatus, publicize a party platform. Remember that quaint notion - a statement of core principles and values? The Dean campaign relies on a formative "smart mob" that has a strong voice in how the campaign is run and promises to staff a West Wing that continues to listen to its base: millions of people who have never previously had the [communications] power to be heard. Collectively, they will exert a visible, pervasive and powerful force on the 44th President whoever and whenever that is. All presidents must dance with the one what brung 'em, as Molly Ivins would say. Even when they're owned by the public. Posted by: Britt Blaser at December 20, 2003 6:43 PM | Permalink Interesting discussion. Jeff, why does control of the policy apparatus mean that the campaign is necessarily one-way? By segmenting the campaign into 'operations' (details) and 'policy' (the real stuff) it seems that short shrift is given to the process of electoral politics, when in fact that process seems to be dictating the political realities which will enable policy to be enacted and enforced (or not). The Dean campaign writes the policy papers, sure, but their political power doesn't come from their policy positions, as you well know. The political power of the Dean machine is mostly due to their indirect operational methodology, as you have rightly pointed out. But to discount that political power as essentially unimportant and directed by the top - as opposed to helping shape the message from the top - seems to miss a strong element of the new dynamics of internet politics. The Dean supporters are a force that Dean doesn't control, and should he decide to run a government in a secretive and top-down manner, he would quickly find that his supporters would begin fractious warfare and his political power would substantially erode. In essence, Dean as a political force becomes more powerful if his campaign is two-way. So on the 'substance', yes, Dean controls the policy apparatus, but that policy apparatus is dictated by political realities, and his campaigning style is fostering new pressure groups and support groups that shape that reality. |
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