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August 26, 2004
The Convention in Section ViewI may try it next week, just to see what response I get. I may slip into an elevator at Madison Square Garden and catch the eye of someone who looks to be in charge. "Excuse me, but could you perhaps tell me: What floor is the convention on?" Some notes on the vertical logic of the event.Cross posted to Sky Box, my convention weblog as a contributing writer for Knight-Ridder. See the welcome post here. When I was in Boston, at the Fleet Center, covering the last convention, I spent time in the mornings walking around the arena, before it filled with conventioneers. Looking at the space when it was empty made it easier to see how it worked when the red light was on. The more I studied the set-up —what they built at the Fleet Center to “hold” the convention—the clearer it got. Imagine taking a big knife and slicing the Fleet Center in two from the top. The building is now in cross section and it’s shown there are levels to the convention, a vertical order. Level One, at the bottom, is the convention floor, assigned to the delegates, who are seated by states. (It crawls with journalists too, and those who have passes.) Level Two is the podium, set on an enormous and expensive stage, and… directly across the way, on the arena’s opposte side, the big bank of television cameras, clustered for the head-on shot, and centered at mid-court. Level Three: The print press have seats here, with bad views of the podium. Party VIP’s have seats here, with good views. The Kerry Convention, trying to look even more like a giant television studio, added seating directly behind the speaker— a “studio audience.” For the big speakers those seats were filled with cheering Democrats and an Oprah effect was created. Highly synthetic. Level Four has the Network Sky Boxes, which I wrote about in my last post. Studying this arrangement meant checking in at different times of day. Visit “the floor” during the evening when the convention is on, and no matter how close you get to the podium, in feet and inches, it always seems far away, the speaker somehow remote, the vibe traveling elsewhere, not at you. People on the floor may be listening to the podium, but the podium—and the convention program—is hardly ever listening to people on the floor. The podium, on Level Two, talks to others on Level Two— the cameras across the way, the directors backstage. Negotiating the floor during the event’s peak hours, I constantly had the sensation that I was walking under a power line, or a bridge, and that a busy highway ran over us as we went about the business of “the floor.” In fact it was television and politics hooking up overhead, as the camera and the podium connected along sight lines worked out in advance. For the organizers, Level Two is where the convention happened for keeps. Two is the where the silent alchemy of politics went on, and where the money shots (“look, the party is united”) were taken. On Two is where the event had to come into focus, or remain unfixed. On Level Two a kind of live current was available between “convention” and “nation.” That was the thinking built into the Fleet Center. This current ran across the arena, over the heads of the people at floor level. It was something transacted between the podium and the camera, which talked sense to one another. The other Levels seem to know this. When you’re a delegate you understand without being told that the convention is going on “above” you. Sitting in your section, you may try to pay attention to the program and its message. I did. But you soon get the sense that it’s angled elsewhere, even though the speakers are, in the political fiction of the thing, addressing you and the people nearby. Of course, it wasn’t always so. There was a time when the mysteries of politics were transacted right there on the floor. Between the podium and the milling delegates ran the live current. For they were “the nation,” or as near as the party could come to representing itself that way. When television came along, it took the action up one level, and the people on the floor became a studio audience. The people at home were the nation, looking in on what the Democrats were up to. But who says that pattern—and its fictions—have to last? Now we have the Internet. It has information users more than it has an audience. I may try it, just to see what response I get. I may slip into an elevator at Madison Square Garden and catch the eye of someone who looks to be in charge: “Excuse me, but could you perhaps tell me… What floor is the convention on?” After Matter: Notes, reactions & links… Ouch… Readers have been e-mailing me about it. Jack Shafer of Slate, in an extended (and quite interesting) reflection on why we don’t have A.J. Liebling-style press critics, gets around to observing: Liebling invented, almost from scratch, the journalistic genre of literary press critic, but because he wrote as well as he did he seems to have closed the door on the way out. Liebling’s literary vision is too vivid to imitate, and it’s hard to imagine someone trumping it. So, instead of producing the next Liebling, the field of journalism saddles us with the worry-bead analysis of Tom Rosenstiel and the goo-goo intentions of Jay Rosen, for which there is no audience outside the industry. (Maybe not even inside it.) Daily newspapers, which employ art critics, film critics, dance critics, car critics, book critics, music critics, restaurant critics, and architecture critics by the millions rarely put press critics on staff, leaving the job of press criticism mostly to alternative weeklies, partisan organizations such as FAIR on the left and the Media Research Center on the right, think tanks, and academia. For those not familiar with the dialects in journalism, “goo goo” is short for good government types, reformers, virtue-crats— always humorless, usually clueless, and quite infantile in their basic understanding of things, though they want to improve them. Thus: “goo-goo intentions.” Jack Shafer, The Church of Liebling: The uncritical worshippers of America’s best press critic. From back in September, PressThink: Spokesman for Press Priesthood Laughs. “Jack Shafer of Slate says public journalism bombed. Here’s what I say back to him.” The Wall Street Journal profiles the fifteen officially credentialled bloggers for the Republican National Convention: Meet the Bloggers, Part Two (Aug. 26)
Posted by Jay Rosen at August 26, 2004 12:06 AM
Comments
Ah, but Slate should be read like a Christmas present is opened -- remove and discard the colorful wrapping to see the substance inside. The substance -- minimal self-reflection -- is a worthwhile nugget. Good for Shafer. But, Jay, remember that Slate depends on colorful wrapping -- its brazen style overreaching its substance and frequently coloring it. You notice that Slate's reflection is directed elsewhere and not at itself. The internet will drag newspapers kicking and screaming into Liebling's world both with "goo-goo" and without. So... say "Ouch" but then laugh and continue on. Shafer's a really smart guy, but that comment makes me think he's never read Pressthink. He's using WHAT ARE JOURNALISTS FOR?--a book that's five years old--as a stand-in for an entire movement (Civic Journalism) that's only partially related to the big-picture that Pressthink is about. I agree, and Jay, you probably would too, that the arguments of that book and other like it were never meant for the general public. And no one thought that book, or the arguments others have made for civic journalism, would change day-to-day operations at the Times. Posted by: Eric N. at August 26, 2004 11:17 AM | Permalink No audience outside the industry? What am I, chopped liver? Thanks, Eric. That's a good point, Georg. From back in September, PressThink: Spokesman for Press Priesthood Laughs. "Jack Shafer of Slate says public journalism bombed. Here's what I say back to him." Shafer is arguing with a stick figure from 1994, a parody version of a civiltarian who wants to replace all rough, tough, agile, interesting and watchdog journalism with relentless do-gooding. Who wants that? No one but a few foundation officers and boring academics. That was his impression ten years ago, five years ago, yesterday, today. It's always the same point. Public journalism and its dreary cliches, for which there is zero demand. I haven't written much about it for the last five years. I feel I said what I had to say in What Are Journalists For? (Shafer disliked the book) which was about an episode internal to the press and to press think. A breakaway church emerges, and of course it causes a fuss. Shafer scoffs at it, and this is what he wants us to know: "I scoff." Of course, his piece was about A.J. Liebling and the modern press, not any of this. We were a topic quite in passing.
There's something viscerally unpleasant about being outside a group of "do-gooders" who value highly - and consider themselves to have - virtues that you yourself are underendowed with. (I speak as someone who has felt this, and in other contexts no doubt inspired others to feel it.) I would guess that a considerable amount of gratuitous offhand subgroup (or member-of-subgroup) disparagement stems from this source. Posted by: Anna at August 26, 2004 4:15 PM | Permalink Letter to Romenesko today: After Jack Shafer interrupted my blogging to tap me on the shoulder and say, "you're no A.J. Liebling, man," I read his piece on that problem in Slate. Now I have a question: A.J. Liebling wrote the Wayward Press column for the New Yorker. Shafer writes the Press Box column for Slate. Those are roughly similar activities. Shafer tells us that Liebling did 82 press columns over 18 years at the New Yorker. Judging by the PressBox archive, Shafer has written 200+ columns over four and a half years. Is it a fair to ask: why has Shafer himself not emerged as the "next" Liebling? After all, he has the most interest in the question. The opportunity has been there for him, week to week. He had motive, means. Is it the anxiety of influence? Other priorities at the time? Lack of competition, perhaps? Of course, his piece was about A.J. Liebling and the modern press, not any of this. Perhaps some (future) Lieblings are being overlooked? My cynical interpretation of your very well written structural framing of the convention, and some questions: Level One: The people's political representatives at the convention. Long locked out of the smokey backroom, now denied even the courtesy of recognition from the podium. Besides, the people you represent are watching via Level Two and all the decisions were made before you arrived. Level Two: The D/s symbiotic relationship between TV and politics celebrating a 40 year marraige, familiar with their roles, mindful of paying the Nielson bills. Serves the dinner hour voyeurs and cable junkies. Level Three: With all the decisions made, the populous delegates disenfranchised, the VIPs are now freed from the smokey backrooms to hob-nob with each other and spin the print journos. Level Four: The "View from Nowhere" position where the powerful insiders enthusiastically act professionally disinterested. Horse. Flies. I'm foolishly thinking the important interaction missing is between Level 1 and Level 3, previously given the pretense of playing out on Level 2 before the television lens captured the focus of the VIPs' at the podium. So, how do you act as a conduit between Level 1 and Level 3? Does it need to go through Level 2, or can you be the conduit, a wormhole perhaps, between 1 and 3? Is that a role for ("credentialed") bloggers not bound by the rules, in fact looking to establish a new role with new (defined by themselves) rules? Can the internet create a surrogate for TV between Level 1 and Level 0, where Level 0 is the information consumer, the dinner hour voyeur and cable TV junkie? Just asking (as someone who is, I think, outside the group(s) of do-gooders and people with "goo-goo" intentions). Posted by: Tim at August 26, 2004 4:56 PM | Permalink Be sure to catch the 'Debate for the Undecideds' off the floor. THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE of the 2004 election cycle will be held on Tuesday, August 31, in New York City. http://badnarik.org/PressRoom/archive.php?p=970 Posted by: Wilson97 at August 26, 2004 8:40 PM | Permalink You and Shafer both write too long, without the discipline of compression that reaches out to readers with passionate clarity. There are no musical rests in your compositions, no room between the lines for the reader to engage with your thoughts. Look up, write to us. What you think is not as important as how what you say furthers what we already understand. Tease the genius gently, though. We haven't been dazzled often, or lately. Posted by: A.J. at August 26, 2004 11:33 PM | Permalink Media Moans (H/T: Instapundit) I've been listening to mainstream-media types talk about the terrible threat posed to the news business by one new phenomenon or other since I began my career 22 years ago. The complaint is invariably, and drearily, the same: Whatever is new is bad because it supposedly lowers the historically high standards of the mainstream media. The last two years in particular have seen the explosion of a new medium — the personal Internet newspaper, or blog — that has already and will forever change the way people get their information. Posted by: Tim at August 30, 2004 5:24 PM | Permalink |
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