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July 29, 2004
"There is an Orthodoxy to Our Thinking." Thomas B. Edsall of the Washington Post on How Blogs Can Enliven Journalism"I spend the first thing in the morning and also before I go to bed sort of scanning the blogs, and in all honesty I read Wonkette because I find it amusing." Five minutes from the Washington Post's political writer Thomas B. Edsall, speaking from the convention on why political weblogs count for him as a journalist, and what they are good at-- busting up group think in the newsroom. "Pretend journalists?" Edsall doesn't think so.BOSTON, July 29: Around 4 pm on Monday of convention week, when I finally got myself equipped and online, I opened my e-mail and found this note sent to me by professor Thomas L. McPhail of the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Jay: Do you tell your j students that they are wasting their time getting a j degree, rather they should just run out and become bloogers and pretend journalists with no commitment to ethics, laws, fairness etc. Tom McPhail ps how are the bloogers at the DNC? I am afraid that in the charge to get the scoop of the conference, that they may send out unedited or unchecked rumours as if it/they were fact. Thanks That’s not the kind of note you edit or change in any way, and I haven’t touched it. Now this is the same professor Thomas L. McPhail of the University of Missouri-St. Louis who wound up in dueling quotes with your correpondent (me) in the text of a USA Today article some weeks ago, previewing bloggers at the convention. (It also made Romenesko, the daily bulletin board for journalists.) Here’s his quote: That bloggers get front seats bothers Tom McPhail, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri: ”They’re certainly not committed to being objective. They thrive on rumor and innuendo,” McPhail says. Bloggers ”should be put in a different category, like ‘pretend’ journalists.” It didn’t seem right not to reply to Professor McPhail, who is, after all, a professional colleague. But what to say? On day three of the Democratic National Convention, I went over to the Washington Post’s tent to interview political reporter Thomas Edsall about a wide range of subjects, all pivoting off the convention and some of the ideas in my prior posts. (Day One, Day Two) The interview runs 42 minutes and it covers a lot of ground. My plan is to edit it down to five minute sections on topical themes, and offer it in parts over the next few days (weeks.) Who is Thomas B. Edsall? One of my favorite journalists. A writer for The Washington Post who regularly reports on national politics, taxes, and campaign finances. Been reporting on politics and government for 35 years. From an online bio: Prior to joining the Washington Post in 1981, Mr. Edsall was a reporter at the Providence Journal Bulletin and the Baltimore Sun. Mr. Edsall is the author of two books, The New Politics of Inequality and Power and Money. He is the co-editor of The Reagan Legacy: A Nation Adrift and has contributed to numerous other edited works, including Deadlock: The Inside Story of America¹s Closest Election. With his wife Mary, he is co-author of Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights and Taxes on American Politics. Chain Reaction was a Nominated Finalist for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize in the category General Non-Fiction. In addition to his work at the Post, Mr. Edsall has written regularly for such publications as The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The American Prospect and The Washington Monthly. So that’s who he is. Now here he is in the Post during convention week: For Lobbyists, Big Spending Means Big Presence Among the many things he and I touched on was the bloggers. Edsall brought up the subject (I didn’t) because he reads blogs daily, once in the morning and at night, he said. (Edsall was a key player in the Trent Lott downed-by-weblogs story. For the background see this.) By way of reply to Tom McPhail and his note about “bloogers” (sic) I offer five minutes of my conversation with the Washington Post’s Tom Edsall— on why political weblogs count for him as a journalist, and what their advantages are: Click here for audio: Thomas Edsall of the Washington Post on the blogs and why they matter. (interview with Jay Rosen, July 28, 2004) One highlight: JR: One reason the blogs might be able to do that is that they are an antidote to group think within the journalism profession itself. Even though you have a lot of arguments about what’s news, and you have smart people who know a lot, there still are certain ways that journalists think [in] the same fashion. And the Trent Lott piece is a good example. Listen to the rest. (MP3 format, 5:03 in length.) After Matter: Notes, reactions & links…. This just in… Today I struck a handshake deal to blog the Republican Convention in New York for Knight-Ridder, so I’ll be going. Of course, PressThink will benefit too.
Posted by Jay Rosen at July 29, 2004 10:24 AM
Comments
Jay, serious question: If we said "Many bloggers are Op-Ed columnists", (which is true) would that molify some of the institutional journalist objections? Posted by: Seth Finkelstein at July 29, 2004 11:35 AM | Permalink This is a great interview and I look forward to hearing more snippets. Interesting controversy over Matt Stoller and the convention. I'm trying to triangulate the thoughts of Rod O'Connor in making the messages more media manageable (many-to-many messages, mediums and markets), with the truth-testing tendencies in orthodox PressThink (Edsall v. Mears) and new Journalism's communicative blogging. Much to mull. Posted by: Tim at July 29, 2004 11:46 AM | Permalink I'm sure a lot of journalists who are working at the convention will be interested that Mr. Edsall spent 45 minutes talking to you. He must not have enough to do. Posted by: Dexter Westbrook at July 29, 2004 12:45 PM | Permalink Along the idea of 'truth-testing,' the view from out here in the readership/viewer ship is one of whole-cloth fabrications being taken as gospel - well not gospel that would be religious - but at least prima facie truth. Is there any attempt, in traditional, editorial, or blogging forms of reporting / journalism to test the veracity of the hundreds of assertions that are being made? Or is this all some big exercise in group think so that the 15000 media all have the story straight before returning to their home beats? Posted by: John Lynch at July 29, 2004 1:06 PM | Permalink Following up on my previous post. How quickly would a given journalist be made to feel uncomfortable and unwanted in this great crowd of delegates and journalists if he/she were to cross (as in cross examination) an interviewee? I'm not talking softball questions, but real challenges to some of the assertions. Is the game up there one of tribalism? Is there a feeling of "I'd be ostracized if I asked that”? Is there a sense of "everyone else acts as if that is the truth, so I'll not question it either”? Posted by: John Lynch at July 29, 2004 1:55 PM | Permalink There was a brief (5 min?) interview on Nightline last night, where Ted Koppel spoke with Jon Stewart about the media coverage. I wouldn't say it was confrontational, but there was a definite hint of... well maybe "staid status quo" vs. "young, street-cred upstart". Koppel even asked about the issues of connection with viewers, credibility, etc. Of course it's material worthy of a long discussion and this was 5 min, so it's a bit shallow in the end. Maybe it's on the ABC site, I couldn't find it. It was nice to see someone with a good sense of the general distrust/disdain/inanity of most media coverage talk about it with a well-known media icon. I was almost shocked it ran on Nightline at all. Of course the Daily Show thrives on the "quality" of most news coverage, so it's a bit of a symbiotic relationship I suppose. Found it. Alas, it's now paid content. If anyone has the ABC News On Demand account or whatever it is you can watch it here: Right column on this page. For some reason I looked for a Nightline clip in the Nightline section of the site. Silly me. Maybe there's a clip floating around online somewhere. Lost Remote has a partial transcript of the Koppel-Stewart interview. http://www.lostremote.com/archives/001905.html For what it's worth, I got a sense that Koppel takes Stewart and his role in the news chain more seriously that does Stewart. Posted by: Staci K. at July 29, 2004 4:56 PM | Permalink I agree - Koppel almost seemed to be trying to extract a secret recipe from Stewart. Stewart himself seems to lean more to the 'celebrating the absurd' of the state of the media, or at least have no pretensions about improving or changing it. I guess beyond his show (which he repeatedly emphasizes is NOT a news program). John said: "How quickly would a given journalist be made to feel uncomfortable and unwanted in this great crowd of delegates and journalists if he/she were to cross (as in cross examination) an interviewee?" For the last 30+ years I've often seen reporters/ journalists ask the rudest and predictable questions at Presidential News Conferences. The last Presidential News Conference was the most rude experience I've witnessed by journalists at such events. A new low in polite behavior by news media professionals. Maybe Dick Cheney should have been there to respond from the side to some of those rude reporter questions. He's know to tell it like it is to rude Senators. That's when I decided I want see a lottery from across the nation to select journalists by random to attend and ask questions at Presidential News Conferences. That would be a better cross-section of reporters and journalists in my opinion than the Washington elitists could ever assemble. As for me, "Shove it!" sees to be in vogue to say to reporters that cross the line. Don Posted by: Donald Larson at July 29, 2004 7:39 PM | Permalink Jay: If you get a chance, Glenn has some great, and related, posts. Two teasers: Drezner's latest meta-blogging and OJR ("But the mainstream media didn't just write about those bloggers -- they launched their own high-profile blogging efforts while poaching talent from the blogosphere.") In the name of transparency, can you tell us how many parties our correspondant attended or observed others attending? Posted by: Tim at July 29, 2004 8:45 PM | Permalink That's great, Jay. Knight Ridder has been demonstrating a lot of leading journalism lately and you'll be another asset in their ranks. Just remember to abstain from everything while at the RNC so you don't catch anything fun. ;^) Posted by: Kevin Hayden at July 30, 2004 1:47 AM | Permalink Note: History Was Made Here -- and you were there. This day saw the introduction of the word "blooger" into the lexicon. Bookmark the page. Blooger will join fisking. Now all we have to do is define it. McPhail has provided yet another unbelievably stupid & clueless comment about blogging. There are so many out there. The e mail from him is priceless and so much dumber than his quote in NYT. I have my own take on McPhail at http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2004/07/stupid_quote_ab.html Posted by: Richard Silverstein at August 1, 2004 1:48 AM | Permalink All the news that's fit to blog [snip] "I'm not sure I've been able to get any real sense of what this convention is for," he wrote in a posting on Tuesday, the second day of the proceedings. "This is not a national town-hall meeting; it's more akin to a televised debutante ball. "I'm afraid that politics here in America is so abstracted from reality that it is, in fact, impossible to understand on a level other than the superficial." (H/T: Dan Gillmor) Posted by: Tim at August 3, 2004 8:57 PM | Permalink Great site. I really found a lot of interesting and good information on your site. You could surely be one of the best sometime in the future. The blog busters: "The sites that started as observational home pages for enthusiasts have become so powerful that they are starting a new industry of blog monitoring in which media companies scour the net to advise brands on how their name is being talked about online, away from the traditional newspaper and broadcast media sites." Posted by: Tim at August 10, 2004 4:17 PM | Permalink |
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