New day in journalism? So what?
(From 25 May 2006)
We the Media
Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People
By Dan Gillmor
251 pages. O’Reilly Media. $16.99
Huey “The Kingfish” Long, populist demagogue and dictator of Louisiana in the 1930s, proclaimed: “Every man a king.” Dan Gillmor, newspaperman and cyberspace guru, proclaims: every man and every woman a reporter and a photographer.
In one sense Gillmor is right. The technology has transformed communication to such an extent that anyone with a computer and Internet access can be a journalist. And anyone with a video cellphone can be a photographer. (The ever-advancing technology is dizzying to this guy from the antiquity of pre-television days. But it is also dismaying in that no one reads serious books anymore in this Aural and Visual Age.)
Will this grassroots journalism, which Gillmor exults over, make America a better nation? No.
Sure, the Internet allows anyone to take part in what Gillmor calls a great conversation. So? What progressive measures will come of it? It will be the same old reactionary politics, the same old status quo. We’ll still get dumbbells like Presidents Reagan and Bush II running the country and the world.
Gillmor uses various phrases to hail this grassroots journalism: civic journalism, public journalism, citizen journalism, interactive journalism and citzen media. It sounds so wonderful, getting away from dreaded corporate and Establishment media. But none of it will bring about so much of what the nation needs. Such as:
• National health insurance that all industrial nations have.
• The end of the death penalty. Universal acceptance of gay and lesbian marriage. The right to abortion without the fulminations of un-Christian right-wingers.
• The right to death with dignity. The right to medical marijuana. An end to the phony drug war. Laws to aid labor not hinder it. Repeal of so-called “reform” of bankruptcy law written by credit card companies. Return of regulations that Bushites repealed in their deregulation madness. The closing of offshore tax loopholes.
People journalism will not see a return to muckraking, the most glorious era in U.S. journalism history. Internet journalism will not produce people like Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair who attacked the fraud and corruption of the robber barons of the Gilded Age.
Oh, 10 years from now Congress will raise the minimum wage from the paltry figure of $5.15 an hour to about $6. But money in politics will always trump grassroots journalists. And boobus Americanus will still rule.
Gillmor glows with optimism. He writes: “Grassroots journalism is part of the wider phenomenon of citizen-generated media, of a global conversation that is growing in strength and power…They literally can change the world.”
All revolutionists declare that they will change the world. But cyberspace is a mere culture change. It is not the social revolution so desperately needed in America.
Blogging? Fine. The bloggers work off angst, frustrations. Pour out soulful feelings. Good for the psyche. But of what societal good? Gillmor declares that bloggers have “engaged the community”and “brought forth new voices.” So?
More foolish optimism. Gillmor says: “the rise of the citizen-journalist” will produce “a truly informed citizenry.” But citizens are as informed now as they want to be. (Most want entertainment not information.) As for news, TV stations “would have to dig deeper to be shallow,” Gillmor writes in the best line in the book.
Spreading news as Gillmor suggests? The bloggers and online “reporters” spread trivia. They do not spread news that matters, truths the Establishment media do not report or underreport.
Gillmor asks excitedly: “What will happen when 10 average citizens aim their phones at the stars and zap their images?” Such paparazziism will not improve a nation that is No. l in weath and military might but just No. 10 in everything else.
The wonders of technology will never produce the great nation that never was. Yet Gillmor keeps harping on conversations as the salvation of the nation.
One blurb for the book says “We the Media” vividly demonstrates how “democratizing information” will allow an “ongoing conversation between reporter and citizen.” So?
New Media, supplanting Old Media, will not produce progressivism. Gillmor’s nationwide conversations will do nothing to restore liberalism and the justice of socialism.
We the Media
Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People
By Dan Gillmor
251 pages. O’Reilly Media. $16.99
Huey “The Kingfish” Long, populist demagogue and dictator of Louisiana in the 1930s, proclaimed: “Every man a king.” Dan Gillmor, newspaperman and cyberspace guru, proclaims: every man and every woman a reporter and a photographer.
In one sense Gillmor is right. The technology has transformed communication to such an extent that anyone with a computer and Internet access can be a journalist. And anyone with a video cellphone can be a photographer. (The ever-advancing technology is dizzying to this guy from the antiquity of pre-television days. But it is also dismaying in that no one reads serious books anymore in this Aural and Visual Age.)
Will this grassroots journalism, which Gillmor exults over, make America a better nation? No.
Sure, the Internet allows anyone to take part in what Gillmor calls a great conversation. So? What progressive measures will come of it? It will be the same old reactionary politics, the same old status quo. We’ll still get dumbbells like Presidents Reagan and Bush II running the country and the world.
Gillmor uses various phrases to hail this grassroots journalism: civic journalism, public journalism, citizen journalism, interactive journalism and citzen media. It sounds so wonderful, getting away from dreaded corporate and Establishment media. But none of it will bring about so much of what the nation needs. Such as:
• National health insurance that all industrial nations have.
• The end of the death penalty. Universal acceptance of gay and lesbian marriage. The right to abortion without the fulminations of un-Christian right-wingers.
• The right to death with dignity. The right to medical marijuana. An end to the phony drug war. Laws to aid labor not hinder it. Repeal of so-called “reform” of bankruptcy law written by credit card companies. Return of regulations that Bushites repealed in their deregulation madness. The closing of offshore tax loopholes.
People journalism will not see a return to muckraking, the most glorious era in U.S. journalism history. Internet journalism will not produce people like Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair who attacked the fraud and corruption of the robber barons of the Gilded Age.
Oh, 10 years from now Congress will raise the minimum wage from the paltry figure of $5.15 an hour to about $6. But money in politics will always trump grassroots journalists. And boobus Americanus will still rule.
Gillmor glows with optimism. He writes: “Grassroots journalism is part of the wider phenomenon of citizen-generated media, of a global conversation that is growing in strength and power…They literally can change the world.”
All revolutionists declare that they will change the world. But cyberspace is a mere culture change. It is not the social revolution so desperately needed in America.
Blogging? Fine. The bloggers work off angst, frustrations. Pour out soulful feelings. Good for the psyche. But of what societal good? Gillmor declares that bloggers have “engaged the community”and “brought forth new voices.” So?
More foolish optimism. Gillmor says: “the rise of the citizen-journalist” will produce “a truly informed citizenry.” But citizens are as informed now as they want to be. (Most want entertainment not information.) As for news, TV stations “would have to dig deeper to be shallow,” Gillmor writes in the best line in the book.
Spreading news as Gillmor suggests? The bloggers and online “reporters” spread trivia. They do not spread news that matters, truths the Establishment media do not report or underreport.
Gillmor asks excitedly: “What will happen when 10 average citizens aim their phones at the stars and zap their images?” Such paparazziism will not improve a nation that is No. l in weath and military might but just No. 10 in everything else.
The wonders of technology will never produce the great nation that never was. Yet Gillmor keeps harping on conversations as the salvation of the nation.
One blurb for the book says “We the Media” vividly demonstrates how “democratizing information” will allow an “ongoing conversation between reporter and citizen.” So?
New Media, supplanting Old Media, will not produce progressivism. Gillmor’s nationwide conversations will do nothing to restore liberalism and the justice of socialism.
posted by Jake Highton | 5:07 AM
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