Comments on: What is “the news”? Good question

By: mathewi

mathewi — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:29:04 +0000

fair enough, Nate.

By: Nate Westheimer

Nate Westheimer — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:43:04 +0000

Matthew, I'm quite sympathetic to the pressures of modern journalism. But there's a difference between those who try to get it right and those who try to get it first. Those who get it right will win the long-run… I can prove it (and will in an up coming blog post). Anyway, I appreciate your thoughts on the matter — and again, I'm sympathetic to these pressures, but I don't find any room for excuses for plain-old bad reporting, such as Riley's, in that sympathy.

By: Tim Burden

Tim Burden — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:43:47 +0000

I agree. This presents an opportunity for MSM. It is probably more important than ever for a news organization to maintain its credibility and reliability. How else will readers sort through the morass of comment and opinion that forms around a story? At some point in the “process”, someone with an authoritative voice has to summarize, distill and contextualize the event.

Even so, I give poor marks to any news site that doesn't allow readers to comment on stories. Comments help other readers get a sense of what people are thinking about an issue, and spark thought and debate about what has happened. But I also question the motives of any outlet that gives priority to speed and “me too” and doesn't check the facts.

By: mathewi

mathewi — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:31:02 +0000

I'm not saying that there's no value in objectivity (or at the very
least, fairness), or that there isn't still a place for traditional
media with “old-fashioned” standards — if anything, I share your
feeling that these things may become more valuable rather than less.
But I'm not sure the traditional media are the only ones that are
capable of supplying those things — I guess maybe that's part of my
point. Obviously accuracy and reliability and trust still matter, and
perhaps matter even more now.

By: dschatsky

dschatsky — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:19:29 +0000

So, maybe journalistic objectivity is an illusion. And maybe traditional journalism gets (or got) more credit for accuracy than it was due. Then maybe Internet-age news-as-a-process is a technology-enabled adaptation to that reality. And maybe produces more reliable news stories over time through successive refinement and the embrace of the dynamic of socially constructed truth.

But there are limits on how much time people can spend with media–or “participate” in the “news process.” The proliferation of digital information sources may well -raise- the value of product-oriented (old media) news vs. process-oriented (new media) news. If old media abondons lowers its product standards in pursuit of the process ethos, any news organization that preserves old fashioned standards may be a lifeline to the average reader, at sea in an ocean of partial information, who wants to know, with reasonable accuracy and reliability, what happened and what it means.