PressThink: All Regimes Are Founded on Opinion: Two Letters to PressThink

All Regimes Are Founded on Opinion: Two Letters to PressThink

A pastor in Ohio says that mainline churches have had the same model of professionalism that is causing such problems in mainstream journalism. A volunteer in Northfield, MN says that when public officials start weblogs, it makes local blogging more vital.

That all governments are founded on opinion is a famous maxim from the political philosopher David Hume (1711-1776.) Here it is in context (Hume’s essay “Of the First Principles of Gobvernment.”)

NOTHING appears more surprizing to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as FORCE is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.

Among those to discover the truth of Hume’s maxim, the most spectacular case in recent times was of course Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania, whose power crumbed before his eyes. Bruce Nelan in Time magazine made note of it a week after Ceausescu’s execution on Christmas Day, 1989.

“A dictator falls when fear changes sides, when individuals coalesce into crowds and defy him,” Nelan wrote. “Emboldened by the discovery that they are not alone, they take to the streets and squares to protest, and they learn — though sometimes at great cost — that no tyrant can kill or arrest an entire nation.”

“Opinion” in Hume’s sense, which is not yet “public” opinion, was the decisive factor in the velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe, where the reluctance to attack one’s own people among policemen and soldiers—their opinion that this would be a terrible crime, and a stain on themselves that would last forever—led to peaceful regime change.

But it’s not just government. Bill Gates is speaking Hume’s language when he says that Microsoft is always three years away from extinction. As it was for the regime in Romania, so it is for the regime in Redmond, and so for the professional regime in journalism: it too is founded on opinion, in a far deeper way than polls can ever measure.

Yesterday I received a letter from Jeff Gill, a pastor (Disciples of Christ) in Granville, OH. It’s about how all newspapers—and all churches—are founded on opinion; when opinion shifts the foundations will rock. Those who have built their professional house on it may forget what the foundation is made of. They start to see themselves as the solid thing.

Gill is also a “Faith Works” columnist for the local daily, The Newark Advocate. He says, “As a pastor I have a very real sense of the importance of local dailies and even crappy ol’ free weeklies to build community, or foment division if that’s what clarity brings. Some regular platform for cueing the 20 percent of any town, village, or city that actually get things done as to what needs doing, or stopping, is incredibly important. I can’t figure out what that would look like in Midwestern communities without a newspaper, but I’m afraid that folks who are concerned about big-C Community had better start imagining, fast.”

Here’s his letter:

“There is no loyalty to the mechanism, not because loyalties changed, but because they were never loyal to the mechanism in the first place.”

OK, so i’m late to this party, but as a columnist in two papers and a 20+ year pastor, i couldn’t not share this thought with you after reading this quote from Matt Welch in your post, “laying the newspaper down” gently or not…
In case you didn’t notice, Shaw thinks he and his colleagues are “accurate and fair”…. This, I believe, is the nut of his real objection — that the weird, ahistorical 1960-2000 period of newspaper consolidation, and the “professionalization” that came with it, produced a monochromatic culture of trying-to-be-fair newsgathering that Shaw believes is basically the only legitimate form of journalism. It’s an incredibly conservative and arrogant view.
That, sir, is exactly what Mainline/Oldline Protestant Churches did in the post-WWII period; the huge influx of thankful vets and Boom Babies masked systemic problems that went back before even WWI, and as downtown churches and regional/national structures consolidated and calcified, they pushed aggressively a model of clergy “professionalism” that left them utterly unable to respond to the entreprenurial surge of untrained, personally motivated new start-ups of the Assemblies of God, COGIG, Vineyard, WillowCreek, and Saddleback approaches. The world they built was based on a “weird, ahistorical 1960-2000 period” and many national and regional structures still can’t comprehend what’s going on.

Add to that a recent uptick in bequests from dying WWII era folk that mask the final drawdowns on endowments, etc., and a new found appreciation for stewardship and tithing preaching from even liberal pastors, which has pushed per capita giving up enough to cover the decline in total numbers, and you have…

Well, it looks a lot like the newsprint and ink world to me. The core function of communicating to and between people is still vital and necessary, but when the mechanism for doing it breaks down, folk will find one that works, no matter what it looks like. There is no loyalty to the mechanism, not because loyalties changed, but because they were never loyal to the mechanism in the first place. Their connection is to the community that’s created, and the sentiments about the delivery mechanism were no deeper than, well, sentiment.

This ties both newspapers and oldstyle programmatic, board/committee driven churches together, with Masters of Divinity/seminary trained pastors and J-school journalists in the same leaky boat. It’s not that they don’t “like” us or stopped “liking” us: they never “liked” us, they liked and even love the community we helped to deliver and maintain. Stop doing that, and they move to the light and warmth of company and community somewhere else.

And if you’ve read this far: what happens when advertisers stop believing that advertising works? When they realize that everyone else dumps the inserts and the bagpacks and the fliers in the trash first, just like they do? And when enough old hardbitten used car and appliance traders finally go to the internet and classifieds go entirely digital, won’t the Emperor catch a breeze in his hinder parts?

Peace,
Jeff Gill
Granville, OH

Another letter came yesterday from Griff Wigley of Northfield.org, (Citizen Wig) who could have been featured in my citizen journalism survey post, Are You Ready For a Brand New Beat? He wrote to tell me about his nonprofit, which is trying to get the civic leadership in town to start blogging, under the theory that while having a few local bloggers and an aggregator page may not mean much, it starts to get interesting when the police chief, a member of the local school board, and a state representative, to name three, are actively participating. Even local governments, after all, are founded on opinion. A public official’s weblog is a recognition of that, but also a new way of imagining the job. Here’s Griff Wigley’s letter:

“We’re getting a view of these leaders in a way that’s not typical. And their blogging gives the citizen bloggers good stuff to blog about.”

I’m a volunteer for a community web site called Northfield.org in my hometown of Northfield, Minnesota. It’s run by a non-profit, Northfield Citizens Online. In late 2003, we started a Civic Blogosphere Project, where we began putting weblogs in the hands of the local citizenry.
A few months later, we decided to include local political candidates who were running for office in hopes that they’d continue blogging after they won. Our thought was that blogging which focused on leadership, problem-solving, and listening would be considerably more interesting and helpful than the usual campaign-style blogging. (It’s always bugged me when political candidates start blogs during election season but then don’t continue blogging when they win. It’s as if they’re saying, “I’m only interested in communicating with you, my fellow citizens, when I need your vote.” )

Having made the leap to politicians-in-office-as-bloggers, we also began trying to include others who we considered to be civic leaders. Our current crop includes a city council member, a county commissioner, the police chief, a school board member, a state representative, two planning commissioners, and several non-profit executives and board members.

Here’s what we’re learning about civic leader bloggers:

1.) They need help learning the technical skills of blogging while they learn the art of leadership blogging. We recently held a community education class for them, and continue to offer coaching via phone, face-to-face, and email.

2.) Their blogging makes our local civic blogosphere more interesting for the citizenry. We’re getting a view of these leaders in a way that’s not typical. And their blogging gives the citizen bloggers good stuff to blog about, in much the same way that mainstream media fuels the blogging of bloggers everywhere.

3.) Their blogging makes the whole project have more impact, influence, and relevance. A local blogosphere project that consists solely of citizen bloggers, especially one without a local news media partner, might take considerably longer to gain in stature in the eyes of the community.

This project has drawn the attention of government officials in U.K. who recently hired me to be the weblog coach for a local e-democracy project called ReadMyDay. I’ve been working with a dozen city councillors and senior-level city managers to learn the art of civic leadership blogging. (See this white paper about it, a pdf file.)

Griff Wigley, Volunteer
Northfield Citizens Online

After Matter: Notes, reactions & links…

Education blogger Jenny D, an ex-journalist, writes in comments:

… public education is in the same boat as journalism. It’s an institution founded on opinion, rather than specialized technology of a profession. Thus, it’s under fire. Although educators rose to prominence in the Progressive Era, using IQ tests as their professional technology, rather than “objective” reporting.

Read about the rising demand for accountability in the PR world, another regime founded on opinion.

Greensboro News-Record Editor John Robinson on Welcoming the public policy makers to blogging.

My hope is that, as public servants, they embrace the potential before them, and they use their blogs to further the principles of democracy, and develop the sites as places to give and get information and knowledge. What a wonderful way, for instance, to illuminate the council’s thinking on a contentious issue or perhaps reveal some of the civic conversation that takes place behind closed doors.

Here’s the newspaper’s list of local politicians with weblogs.

Texas State Representative Aaron Pena (Austin area) has a blog, which recently linked to PressThink in a post about shield laws for reporters and bloggers.

“The boat may be leaking, but I prefer it to a cruise with Kathy Lee.” Jeff Jarvis’s sister, Cindy Jarvis, is a Presbyterian minister (here.) She had this reaction to Gill’s letter:

Utilitarian religion that “works” (meaning numbers—headcount plus bucks) has always had sex appeal… well, you know what I mean. The mainline churches have looked to the mega-churches for technique, forgetting “the substance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen” that have, over the centuries, given people both a ground on which to stand (a perspective both complex and comforting) and lent to daily life a meaning that does not rise and fall with the NYTimes best seller list.
Given that people engage their minds in every other aspect of human existence, the guess that glitz and manufactured emotions will do for those matters of ultimate importance is a trend that will last about as long as children’s sugared cereal in the stomach of a seriously hungry adult.

Brother Jeff Jarvis says we’re at a tipping point with citizen’s media:

I know of the heads of at least three national TV news operations who are eager to incorporate citizens’ media; I know of more newspaper editors who are finally sidling up to the concept. I hear less and less of the dismissive jabs from big-time editors about small-time citizen journalists. Blogs are now a regular feature on MSNBC and CNN. Bloggers are getting quoted in newspapers and credited with big stories (Trent, Dan, et al). Newspapers are getting published with citizens’ news.
It’s spreading. It’s tipping.

Alan Mutter, at Reflections of a Newsosaur, on the big companies in the newspaper industry:

So, not only are credibility, circulation and market share crumbling, but stock prices are falling, too. Why?
The market moves for many mysterious reasons, but this one is obvious: Investors, who generally like to bet on the long-term upside of a company, are worried that the publishers don’t have a plan for the future of the newspaper business.

While existing shareholders for the moment may be comfortable harvesting the properties for profits, there is not enough new money confident in the long-term prospects for newspapers to lift the value of their stocks.

In other words, stock prices are founded on opinion.

Reporter Michael Liedtke of Business Week on the meeting of the Newspaper Association of America (publishers group):

“There are pockets of people within every (newspaper) who think we should be doing more on the Internet, but there are also other pockets of people who wish it would just all go away,” said Ian Murdock, senior vice president of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Not likely.

OhmyNews is going global. The citizen journalism sensation in South Korea “has started a citizen reporter login system where anyone around the world with an internet connection can participate,” according to this account in Editors Weblog. Equally informative is this interview with Jean K. Min, Director of OhmyNews International.

Barista of Bloomfield Avenue—featured in Are You Ready…? — pointed me to Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn, a sharp, witty and good-looking neighborhood weblog for the Park Slope area of the world’s most famous borough.

Eight is Enough. Copy editors, take note:

Getting Blogged Down in the News (Washington Post, April 17, 2005)
Blogged Down (New York Times, March 20, 2005)
Blogged Down (American Prospect, March 4, 2005)
Blogged Down in Iraq (Time magazine, Jan. 31, 2005)
Blogged Down (Washington Post again, Dec. 19, 2004)
Blogged down in Web fantasy (Star-Tribune, Sep. 29, 2004)
Firms find way to avoid getting blogged down (Chicago Tribune, July 23, 2003)
Blogged Down in the PR Machine (Online Journalism Review, May 16, 2001)

I think that’s enough for what was a pretty bad pun to begin with.

Jack Shafer writes in praise of Romenesko. Who am I to argue?

Terry Teachout is taking citizens media into the arts:

One piece of good news is that arts journalism is being transformed before our eyes by the rise of Web-based new media—and just in the nick of time. The old mass media were and are zero-sum operations, as advocates of literary fiction have been discovering to their dismay in recent years. Allocate more space (or air time) to one topic and you have that much less space available for all other topics: novels compete with memoirs, classical music with jazz, theater with film, indie flicks with special-effects extravaganzas. Now that most of us live in one-newspaper towns, and now that newspapers themselves are struggling for survival, that’s turned into an iron law.
The Web is different: it permits you to publish a “newspaper” or “magazine” of your very own without having to pay for ink, paper, bricks, and mortar—much less a graduate degree in journalism. What it doesn’t guarantee, however, is that such “newspapers” will ever be read by millions of people, or that their publishers will be able to give up their day jobs. Artblogging will never be a true mass medium because serious art doesn’t appeal to a mass audience. And what’s wrong with that? Bigger isn’t better, and the world doesn’t owe artists a living, much less critics and editors.

Read Teachout’s Eternally obsolete. It’s about art, technics, cultural shifts and what the Web has wrought in his lair. I love the way this discussion is exploding.

Via Ed Cone, this from Howard Fineman of Newsweek: “Professional journalist is an oxymoron.”

First the bad news from Howard Kurtz: Reporters are facing a “growing tide of personal attacks by bloggers and e-mailers.” Now the good news, from the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank:

Milbank says there are “nasties” on the left and right and during the campaign “both decided I was full of it and hopelessly biased. There’s so much noise that you have to tune it out.”

Right Wing News generates some news by asking “A List” webloggers on the Right side of things to name their own A List of Right side bloggers. Interesting, if you know the blogs…

I’ve said before that a weblog is a little First Amendment machine. This account from the New York Times, “When the Blogger Blogs, Can the Employer Intervene?” is all about that.

Posted by Jay Rosen at April 17, 2005 10:57 AM Print

The People Formerly Known as the Audience: "You don't own the eyeballs. You don't own the press, which is now divided into pro and amateur zones. You don't control production on the new platform, which isn't one-way. There's a new balance of power between you and us." More...

Migration Point for the Press Tribe: "Like reluctant migrants everywhere, the people in the news tribe have to decide what to take with them. When to leave. Where to land. They have to figure out what is essential to their way of life. They have to ask if what they know is portable." More...

Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over: "Here is one advantage bloggers have in the struggle for reputation-- for the user's trust. They are closer to the transaction where trust gets built up on the Web. There's a big difference between tapping a built-up asset, like the St. Pete Times 'brand,' and creating it from scratch." More...

"Where's the Business Model for News, People?" "It’s remarkable to me how many accomplished producers of those goods the future production of which is in doubt are still at the stage of asking other people, “How are we going to pay our reporters if you guys don’t want to pay for our news?'" More...

National Explainer: A Job for Journalists on the Demand Side of News This American Life's great mortgage crisis explainer, The Giant Pool of Money, suggests that "information" and "explanation" ought to be reversed in our order of thought. Especially as we contemplate new news systems. More...

The Beast Without a Brain: Why Horse Race Journalism Works for Journalists and Fails Us. "Just so you know, 'the media' has no mind. It cannot make decisions. Which means it does not 'get behind' candidates. It does not decide to oppose your guy… or gal. It is a beast without a brain. Most of the time, it doesn’t know what it’s doing.." More...

They're Not in Your Club but They Are in Your League: Firedoglake at the Libby Trial: "I’m just advising Newsroom Joe and Jill: make room for FDL in your own ideas about what’s coming on, news-wise. Don’t let your own formula (blog=opinion) fake you out. A conspiracy of the like minded to find out what happened when the national news media isn’t inclined to tell us might be way more practical than you think." More...

Twilight of the Curmudgeon Class: "We’re at the twilight of the curmudgeon class in newsrooms and J-schools. (Though they can still do a lot of damage.) You know they’re giving up when they no longer bother to inform themselves about what they themselves say is happening." More...

Getting the Politics of the Press Right: Walter Pincus Rips into Newsroom Neutrality "The important thing is to show integrity-- not to be a neuter, politically. And having good facts that hold up is a bigger advantage than claiming to reflect all sides equally well." More...

A Most Useful Definition of Citizen Journalism "It's mine, but it should be yours. Can we take the quote marks off now? Can we remove the 'so-called' from in front? With video!." More...

The Master Narrative in Journalism: "Were 'winning' to somehow be removed or retired as the operating system for news, campaign reporting would immediately become harder to do, not because there would be no news, but rather no common, repeatable instructions for deciding what is a key development in the story, a turning point, a surprise, a trend. Master narratives are thus harder to alter than they are to apprehend. For how do you keep the story running while a switch is made?" More...

He Said, She Said Journalism: Lame Formula in the Land of the Active User "Any good blogger, competing journalist or alert press critic can spot and publicize false balance and the lame acceptance of fact-free spin. Do users really want to be left helpless in sorting out who's faking it more? The he said, she said form says they do, but I say decline has set in." More...

Users-Know-More-than-We-Do Journalism: "It's a "put up or shut up" moment for open source methods in public interest reporting. Can we take good ideas like... distributed knowledge, social networks, collaborative editing, the wisdom of crowds, citizen journalism, pro-am reporting... and put them to work to break news?" More...

Introducing NewAssignment.Net: "Enterprise reporting goes pro-am. Assignments are open sourced. They begin online. Reporters working with smart users and blogging editors get the story the pack wouldn't, couldn't or didn't." More...

What I Learned from Assignment Zero "Here are my coordinates for the territory we need to be searching. I got them from doing a distributed trend story with Wired.com and thinking through the results." More...

If Bloggers Had No Ethics Blogging Would Have Failed, But it Didn't. So Let's Get a Clue: "Those in journalism who want to bring ethics to blogging ought to start with why people trust (some) bloggers, not with an ethics template made for a prior platform operating as a closed system in a one-to-many world." More...

The View From Nowhere: "Occupy the reasonable middle between two markers for 'vocal critic,' and critics look ridiculous charging you with bias. Their symmetrical existence feels like proof of an underlying hysteria. Their mutually incompatible charges seem to cancel each other out. The minute evidence they marshall even shows a touch of fanaticism." More...

Rollback: "This White House doesn't settle for managing the news--what used to be called 'feeding the beast'--because there is a larger aim: to roll back the press as a player within the executive branch, to make it less important in running the White House and governing the country." More...

Retreat from Empiricism: On Ron Suskind's Scoop: ""Realist, a classic term in foreign policy debates, and reality-based, which is not a classic term but more of an instant classic, are different ideas. We shouldn't fuzz them up. The press is capable of doing that because it never came to terms with what Suskind reported in 2004." More...

Karl Rove and the Religion of the Washington Press: "Savviness--that quality of being shrewd, practical, well-informed, perceptive, ironic, 'with it,' and unsentimental in all things political--is, in a sense, their professional religion. They make a cult of it. And it was this cult that Karl Rove understood and exploited for political gain." More...

Journalism Is Itself a Religion: "We're headed, I think, for schism, tumult and divide as the religion of the American press meets the upheavals in global politics and public media that are well underway. Changing around us are the terms on which authority can be established by journalists. The Net is opening things up, shifting the power to publish around. Consumers are becoming producers, readers can be writers." More...

News Turns from a Lecture to a Conversation: "Some of the pressure the blogs are putting on journalists shows up, then, in the demand for "news as conversation," more of a back-and-forth, less of a pronouncement. This is an idea with long roots in academic journalism that suddenly (as in this year) jumped the track to become part of the news industry's internal dialogue." More...

Two Washington Posts May Be Better Than One: "They're not equals, but Washington and Arlington have their own spheres. Over the newspaper and reporting beats Len Downie is king. Over the website Jim Brady is sovereign. Over the userï¿½s experience no one has total control. There's tension because there's supposed to be tension." More...

Laying the Newspaper Gently Down to Die: "An industry that won't move until it is certain of days as good as its golden past is effectively dead, from a strategic point of view. Besides, there is an alternative if you don't have the faith or will or courage needed to accept reality and deal. The alternative is to drive the property to a profitable demise." More...

Grokking Woodward: "Woodward and Bernstein of 1972-74 didn't have such access, and this probably influenced--for the better--their view of what Nixon and his men were capable of. Watergate wasn't broken by reporters who had entree to the inner corridors of power. It was two guys on the Metro Desk." More...

Maybe Media Bias Has Become a Dumb Debate: "This here is a post for practically everyone in the game of seizing on media bias and denouncing it, which is part of our popular culture, and of course a loud part of our politics. And this is especially for the 'we're fair and balanced, you're not' crowd, wherever I may have located you." More...

Bill O'Reilly and the Paranoid Style in News: "O'Reilly feeds off his own resentments--the establishment sneering at Inside Edition--and like Howard Beale, the 'mad prophet of the airwaves,' his resentments are enlarged by the medium into public grievances among a mass of Americans unfairly denied voice." More...

Thoughts on the Killing of a Young Correspondent: "Among foreign correspondents, there is a phrase: 'parachuting in.' That's when a reporter drops into foreign territory during an emergency, without much preparation, staying only as long as the story remains big. The high profile people who might parachute in are called Bigfoots in the jargon of network news. The problem with being a Bigfoot, of course, is that it's hard to walk in other people's shoes." More...

The News From Iraq is Not Too Negative. But it is Too Narrow: "The bias charges are getting more serious lately as the stakes rise in Iraq and the election. But there is something lacking in press coverage, and it may be time for wise journalists to assess it. The re-building story has gone missing. And without it, how can we judge the job Bush is doing?." More...

The Abyss of Observation Alone. "There are hidden moral hazards in the ethic of neutral observation and the belief in a professional 'role' that transcends other loyalties. I think there is an abyss to observation alone. And I feel it has something to do with why more people don't trust journalists. They don't trust that abyss." More...

"Find Some New Information and Put it Into Your Post." Standards for Pro-Am Journalism at OffTheBus: "Opinion based on information 'everyone' has is less valuable than opinion journalism based on information that you dug up, originated, or pieced together. So it’s not important to us that contributors keep opinion out. What’s important is that they put new information in. More...

Out in the Great Wide Open: Maybe you heard about the implosion of Wide Open, a political blog started by the Cleveland Plain Dealer with four "outside" voices brought in from the ranks of Ohio bloggers: two left, two right. Twelve points you may not have seen elsewhere." More...

Some Bloggers Meet the Bosses From Big Media: "What capacity for product development do news organizations show? Zip. How are they on nurturing innovation? Terrible. Is there an entreprenurial spirit in newsrooms? No. Do smart young people ever come in and overturn everything? Never." More...

Notes and Comment on BlogHer 2005 "I think the happiest conference goers at BlogHer were probably the newbies, people who want to start blogging or just did. They got a lot of good information and advice. Some of the best information was actually dispensed in response to the fears provoked by blogging, which shouldnï¿½t be avoided, the sages said, but examined, turned around, defused, and creatively shrunk.." More...

Top Ten List: What's Radical About the Weblog Form in Journalism? "The weblog comes out of the gift economy, whereas most of today's journalism comes out of the market economy." More...

A Second Top Ten List: What's Conservative About the Weblog Form in Journalism? "The quality of any weblog in journalism depends greatly on its fidelity to age old newsroom commandments like check facts, check links, spell things correctly, be accurate, be timely, quote fairly." More...

Blogging is About Making and Changing Minds: "Sure, weblogs are good for making statements, big and small. But they also force re-statement. Yes, they're opinion forming. But they are equally good at unforming opinion, breaking it down, stretching it out." More...

The Weblog: An Extremely Democratic Form in Journalism "It's pirate radio, legalized; it's public access coming closer to life. Inside the borders of Blogistan (a real place with all the problems of a real place) we're closer to a vision of 'producer democracy' than we are to any of the consumerist views that long ago took hold in the mass media, including much of the journalism presented on that platform." More...

No One Owns Journalism: "And Big Media doesn't entirely own the press, because if it did then the First Amendment, which mentions the press, would belong to Big Media. And it doesn't. These things were always true. The weblog doesn't change them. It just opens up an outlet to the sea. Which in turn extends 'the press' to the desk in the bedroom of the suburban mom, where she blogs at night." More...

Brain Food for BloggerCon: Journalism and Weblogging in Their Corrected Fullness "Blogging is one universe. Its standard unit is the post, its strengths are the link and the low costs of entry, which means lots of voices. Jounalism is another universe. Its standard unit is "the story." Its strengths are in reporting, verification and access-- as in getting your calls returned." More...

Dispatches From the Un-Journalists: "Journalists think good information leads to opinion and argument. It's a logical sequence. Bloggers think that good argument and strong opinion cause people to seek information, an equally logical sequence. What do the bloggers bring to this? My short answer to the press is: everything you have removed."More...

Political Jihad and the American Blog: Chris Satullo Raises the Stakes "Journalists, you can stop worrying about bloggers 'replacing' the traditional news media. We're grist for their mill, says Satullo, a mill that doesn't run without us. Bloggers consume and extend the shelf life of our reporting, and they scrutinize it at a new level of intensity.."More...

Raze Spin Alley, That Strange Creation of the Press: "Spin Alley, an invention of the American press and politicos, shows that the system we have is in certain ways a partnership between the press and insiders in politics. They come together to mount the ritual. An intelligent nation is entitled to ask if the partners are engaged in public service when they bring to life their invention... Alternative thesis: they are in a pact of mutual convenience that serves no intelligible public good." More...

Horse Race Now! Horse Race Tomorrow! Horse Race Forever!: "How is it you know you're the press? Because you have a pass that says PRESS, and people open the gate. The locker room doors admit you. The story must be inside that gate; that's why they give us credentials. We get closer. We tell the fans what's going on. And if this was your logic, Bill James tried to bust it. Fellahs, said he to the baseball press, you have to realize that you are the gate." More...

Psst.... The Press is a Player: "The answer, I think, involves an open secret in political journalism that has been recognized for at least 20 years. But it is never dealt with, probably because the costs of facing it head on seem larger than the light tax on honesty any open secret demands. The secret is this: pssst... the press is a player in the campaign. And even though it knows this, as everyone knows it, the professional code of the journalist contains no instructions in what the press could or should be playing for?" More...

Die, Strategy News: "I think it's a bankrupt form. It serves no clear purpose, has no sensible rationale. The journalists who offer us strategy news do not know what public service they are providing, why they are providing it, for whom it is intended, or how we are supposed to use this strange variety of news."More...

He Said, She Said, We Said: "When journalists avoid drawing open conclusions, they are more vulnerable to charges of covert bias, of having a concealed agenda, of not being up front about their perspective, of unfairly building a case (for, against) while pretending only to report 'what happened.'" More...

If Religion Writers Rode the Campaign Bus: "Maybe irony, backstage peaking and "de-mystify the process" only get you so far, and past that point they explain nothing. Puzzling through the convention story, because I'm heading right into it myself, made me to realize that journalism's contempt for ritual was deeply involved here. Ritual is newsless; therefore it must be meaningless. But is that really true?."More...

Convention Coverage is a Failed Regime and Bloggers Have Their Credentials: "No one knows what a political convention actually is, anymore, or why it takes 15,000 people to report on it. Two successive regimes for making sense of the event have collapsed; a third has not emerged. That's a good starting point for the webloggers credentialed in Boston. No investment in the old regime and its ironizing." More...

Philip Gourevitch: Campaign Reporting as Foreign Beat: "'A presidential election is a like a gigantic moving television show,' he said. It is the extreme opposite of an overlooked event. The show takes place inside a bubble, which is a security perimeter overseen by the Secret Service. If you go outside the bubble for any reason, you become a security risk until you are screened again by hand."More...

What Time is it in Political Journalism? "Adam Gopnik argued ten years ago that the press did not know who it was within politics, or what it stood for. There was a vacuum in journalism where political argument and imagination should be. Now there are signs that this absence of thought is ending." More...

Off the Grid Journalism: “The assignment was straightforward enough,” writes Marjie Lundstrom of the Sacramento Bee, “talk to people.” When a writer dissents from it or departs from it, the master narrative is a very real thing. Here are two examples: one from politics, one from music. More...

Questions and Answers About PressThink "The Web is good for many opposite things. For quick hitting information. For clicking across a field. For talk and interaction. It's also a depth finder, a memory device, a library, an editor. Not to use a weblog for extended analysis (because most users won't pick that option) is Web dumb but media smart. What's strange is that I try to write short, snappy things, but they turn into long ones." More...

Rep. Pena in Texas actually just launched a group blog for legislators because, when he encouraged them to blog, they didn't have the technical chops and were unsure about it all. He's trying to get them to try it out there and then launch their own. He's a real blog evangelist.

Some local techies are already discussing a training in Austin for legislative bloggers as you mention. If it's not done before the session ends in six weeks, something like that'll surely be done in TX before the next one, I'll bet, in '07. Best,

Posted by: Scott Henson at April 18, 2005 10:33 AM | Permalink

Nice letter from the pastor. I just finished writing (and submitting) a paper for the Barnard Prize, in which I argued that public education is in the same boat as journalism. It's an institution founded on opinion, rather than specialized technology of a profession. Thus, it's under fire. Although educators rose to prominence in the Progressive Era, using IQ tests as their professional technology, rather than "objective" reporting.

Daniel Carpenter, a historian who studies public policy at Harvard, wrote this in his book about the rise of public agencies and institutions:

"Autonomy arises when bureaucrats successfully practice a politics of legitimacy. It occurs when agency leaders build reputations for their organization—reputations for efficacy, for uniqueness of service, for moral protection, and for expertise."

Interestingly, Carpenter did not study how agencies lose power, but I suspect it's the opposite--when their reputation begins to crumble.

Posted by: JennyD at April 18, 2005 12:45 PM | Permalink

Jay, Hume was wrong on that point, as on so much else. As Publius put it in The Federalist Papers: "It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force."

Posted by: Mark Tapscott at April 18, 2005 3:24 PM | Permalink

Thanks for giving Northfield.org the attention, Jay.

I'm glad to know about the group blog for legislators in Texas noted by Scott. I don't think that's going to work -- group blogs where the bloggers aren't paid to post rarely succeed longterm because there's not the individual recognition nor individual accountability.

I get laughs when I tell people I'm a weblog coach in my day job. But it points to the problem that for most civic leaders, blogging isn't as simple as we'd like to think. And once the technical "how to blog" problem is addressed, then there's the "what to blog" and how to do it effectively problem.

Posted by: Griff Wigley at April 19, 2005 7:45 AM | Permalink

It's our pleasure, Griff. Thanks for what you are doing. Thanks for that report, Scott, and for the nice words, Terry and Trout.

Mark Tapscott: I believe you are misreading the passage quoted from Hume. You are if you think what Publius said contradicts what Hume said. But I am not really sure what you think: what is it that Hume was wrong about?

All governments are not founded on opinion, says Tapscott?

Or possibly you misread the part where he says, "as FORCE is always on the side of the governed..." That's the side of the governed, Mark-- us, in other words, not government. It means what Bruce Nelan said: "no tyrant can kill or arrest an entire nation."

Posted by: Jay Rosen at April 19, 2005 8:59 AM | Permalink

Maybe the most revolutionary device imaginable is one that reads the zeitgeist of the blogosphere in real time.

In the old days you had to hang out in the city square to get a sense of how the wind was blowing. Will there be a general strike? Will the police honor it? Should I commit or keep my head down for now? Big groups (or mobs, depending on your perspective) have their own psychology.

But what if you could could track that group mind from the privacy of your home?

My first thought was "wow, something like that could change the world," but my second thought made me laugh out loud. How perfectly American: A couch revolution. Somebody would figure out how to turn it into reality TV.

"Tonight on American Government: Will the neocons stay or go? You decide! Plus a very special guest appearance by Dr. Phil."

It only stands to reason.

Posted by: Daniel Conover at April 19, 2005 9:47 AM | Permalink

Bill Grueskin for some unexplained reason had trouble posting this, so I am posting it for him:

Jay: Before I came to work at The Wall Street Journal in 1995, I did something for reasons that escape me a decade later. I decided to search AOL user profiles for the term "WSJ." (Maybe I was looking for Journal reporters who had AOL accounts, I'm really not sure. Keep in mind this 1995.)

The results told me a lot about the Journal, because "reading the WSJ" showed up in hundreds of reader profiles under the "hobbies and interests" section.

Imagine that -- along with gardening, mountain climbing and stamp collecting, lots of people viewed reading the Journal as a respite, not a civic duty or work responsibility. And more importantly, they wanted to be publicly identified with, and perhaps seek out others, who had the same interests.

That told me a lot about the Journal then, and I think it helps explain WSJ.com's base now. It's easy to say we're simply an expense-account writeoff, and I'm sure we are for some subscribers.

But it also speaks to where we're all headed. News organizations, print or electronic, need to inspire that kind of passion and loyalty more than ever, because there are so many more choices, and those choices are so much more accessible. And that's when the Daniel Conovers of the world will gladly pay for online content.

--Bill Grueskin

Posted by: Jay Rosen at April 19, 2005 12:23 PM | Permalink

If we're talking about Pay to Play here, the fact is that many bloggers will quote large blocks of material from NYTimes, WaPo, WSJ, etc. because their readers have problems with registration or other factors. Let me say here, I am registered for NYTimes, WaPo, and WSJ (that is free, and others), but if any of the above would decide to charge for content, I would have no hesitation in throwing a few dollars toward my favorite bloggers so they could pay for NYTimes, WaPo, whatever. I don't think I'm alone in this.

Posted by: kilgore trout at April 19, 2005 2:33 PM | Permalink