Ron Hardy argues that Oshkosh blogs are showing "serious signs of fatigue," done in by the Oshkosh Northwestern which has "killed" them. Just a couple of brief thoughts on this subject:
*It's hard to find anyone who believes that the Northwestern's online presence, with the possible exception of the Thursday live interviews, is anything other than mediocre or lame. Citizens like CJ, mac1 and Tina Haffeman (and others) frequently make insightful comments in the NW forums, but the forums have for the most part been done in by the same factors that do in the Oshkosh blogs: trolling, obsession with personalities, inability to stay focused on a topic, etc. etc. My point is that if something as mediocre/lame as the Northwestern online presence killed the Oshkosh blogs, then those blogs were not very alive to begin with.
*Political and media junkies often make the mistake of thinking that everyone else is at their level of awareness of things, or that what they say is "common sense." Case in point: most people reading this blog know that the Gannett corporation is a bottom line outfit, and that even if we stipulate that Stew and the (mostly) boys have the best of intentions, the profit motive of the parent company seriously limits what they can do. This is NOT obvious to most casual consumers of media, nor do we have any reason to expect that it would be. Casual consumers of media tend to think the problem is "bias" (i.e. the paper is too liberal, too conservative, etc.). So I think bloggers and other independent sources would do a tremendous public service by just trying to get a larger number of people to simply UNDERSTAND WHAT THE CORPORATE MEDIA ARE. General Motors sells cars. Gannett sells audiences (i.e. you and me) to advertisers.
For a variety of reasons, corporate media under report, ignore, and sometimes flat out suppress important stories. My journalism hero is the late George Seldes, a principled investigative reporter who spent most of his adult life revealing the "missing" parts of the mainstream story. I think blogs are at their best when they serve that function, and probably at their worst when the blogger sees him or herself as a "partner" with the mainstream press. In the latter case, a blogger might say to him or herself, "I don't always agree with the Northwestern, but we have the same goals and so we should work together cooperatively." That blogger is mistaken: s/he does NOT have the same goals as the Northwestern. Mr. or Ms. blogger may be trying to get at the truth; the Northwestern is trying to sell an audience to an advertiser.
All this does not mean that there are not some outstanding people working in mainstream, corporate journalism. Of course there are, and what makes them outstanding is the fact that they understand the limitations on what they can do and they are open about it. The best mainstream media folks view blogs as a kind of healthy competition that might force the mainstream to do the right thing even when it is not profitable. The mainstream hacks see the blogs, at best, as something to co-opt and manipulate in order to maintain or increase market share. Everyone needs to decide for themselves what kind of mentality runs the Northwestern these days.
The March Media Rant is already out (I'll post it later this week or next), but I never got around to posting the February entry. The February Rant is called Censored in 2007, part 2. Here it is.
*It's hard to find anyone who believes that the Northwestern's online presence, with the possible exception of the Thursday live interviews, is anything other than mediocre or lame. Citizens like CJ, mac1 and Tina Haffeman (and others) frequently make insightful comments in the NW forums, but the forums have for the most part been done in by the same factors that do in the Oshkosh blogs: trolling, obsession with personalities, inability to stay focused on a topic, etc. etc. My point is that if something as mediocre/lame as the Northwestern online presence killed the Oshkosh blogs, then those blogs were not very alive to begin with.
*Political and media junkies often make the mistake of thinking that everyone else is at their level of awareness of things, or that what they say is "common sense." Case in point: most people reading this blog know that the Gannett corporation is a bottom line outfit, and that even if we stipulate that Stew and the (mostly) boys have the best of intentions, the profit motive of the parent company seriously limits what they can do. This is NOT obvious to most casual consumers of media, nor do we have any reason to expect that it would be. Casual consumers of media tend to think the problem is "bias" (i.e. the paper is too liberal, too conservative, etc.). So I think bloggers and other independent sources would do a tremendous public service by just trying to get a larger number of people to simply UNDERSTAND WHAT THE CORPORATE MEDIA ARE. General Motors sells cars. Gannett sells audiences (i.e. you and me) to advertisers.
For a variety of reasons, corporate media under report, ignore, and sometimes flat out suppress important stories. My journalism hero is the late George Seldes, a principled investigative reporter who spent most of his adult life revealing the "missing" parts of the mainstream story. I think blogs are at their best when they serve that function, and probably at their worst when the blogger sees him or herself as a "partner" with the mainstream press. In the latter case, a blogger might say to him or herself, "I don't always agree with the Northwestern, but we have the same goals and so we should work together cooperatively." That blogger is mistaken: s/he does NOT have the same goals as the Northwestern. Mr. or Ms. blogger may be trying to get at the truth; the Northwestern is trying to sell an audience to an advertiser.
All this does not mean that there are not some outstanding people working in mainstream, corporate journalism. Of course there are, and what makes them outstanding is the fact that they understand the limitations on what they can do and they are open about it. The best mainstream media folks view blogs as a kind of healthy competition that might force the mainstream to do the right thing even when it is not profitable. The mainstream hacks see the blogs, at best, as something to co-opt and manipulate in order to maintain or increase market share. Everyone needs to decide for themselves what kind of mentality runs the Northwestern these days.
The March Media Rant is already out (I'll post it later this week or next), but I never got around to posting the February entry. The February Rant is called Censored in 2007, part 2. Here it is.
4 comments:
I’m sure the Northwestern’s motivation for maintaining community forums is not completely altruistic but I do believe that they give voice to many people who may not have been engaged before. And I think that’s generally a good thing. But I agree with you that Northwestern blogs don’t threaten other local blogs - at all! I think Ron is letting this last, long, Bush winter get to him.
Tony - I think I see where you are going with this. I'm making a connection...
Oshkosh Blogs and websites (with the exception of Fullofbologna) do not sell advertising.
So...if Oshkosh Blogs began selling advertising on their sites, that might threaten the ONW's "revenue source"... but not really.
But I bet it would really get their goat.
I've bragged that my site is "advertising free" or "commercial free" - but I'm beginning to re-think that. What if I sold little side bar banner ads for $30 a month and even promised to give the money back to my community.
Or why not just link for free to local businesses that you really like and want to promote. Why get that dirty green money involved.
Blogs and forums are lame and will always BE lame because people are lame - whether garbage man or professor, right or left, rich or poor, anal-retentive or pee-yerself funny. In addition, I am sure that if you took a pile of the people who think YOU are lame, and added that to the pile of people who think I am EXTREMELY lame the combined piles would reach sufficient heights that any future shuttle missions could be cancelled and we could all play Pass-the-Bucket games to get stuff up to the moon. So I dunno if I'd really start out by pointing the Finger of Lame like that.
And - blogs, "democracy", and citizen participation were never very alive to begin with. They were not. Most days you could have public beheadings at city council meetings and no one attends. Any increase in that pitiful default state will be very easily knocked down, likely will be short-lived.
Political and media junkies NEVER make the mistake of believing that the Average Citizen is that well informed, I think it’s the opposite if what you said. They treat them like morons and assume they are stupid. Yes,too many who pipe up in forums and blogs work over time to prove that Moron theory true, but that doesn't mean there aren't large numbers sitting at home fully aware that they are being jerked around - whether by corp. media, issue ad propaganda or bloggers. Twenty years ago what you said was probably true, but not now.
And for god's sake, we ARE swimming in oceans of bias. But it’s only the biases opposite of ours that we call people on. Writing that mirrors our own perceptions we all call “the truth”. Comfy biases just do not set off the alarms. So I think we grossly underestimate the level of bias we are seeing. The human brain is a 24 hour a day Bias-Generator (but not a topic for this space)
EVERYONE knows what the corporate media are - even the corporate media. It's so obvious to one and all that numerous big media heavy hitters are now making money off this false self-castigation nonsense "oh we big media folks screw up and fail the public in this way and that way...oh well, but (giggle) we'll do it again tomorrow. Tee hee, I need a spanking.” Brian Williams the day after Super Tuesday, Dana Milbank, the guys who blab at Gwen Iffel, too many to list.
Subscriptions down, ads down - everyone knows.
Blogs are at their worst quite often and usually when one of the following is true -
1. The purpose (unstated) of the blog is to filter everything it runs into to support a pre-existing agenda. As opposed to “this is how it seems to me” stuff – vastly different in both intent and product. The worst are secretly orchestrated groups of echo-chamber blogs that agree on content and strategy. Yes, I do mean here in Wisconsin.
To whatever degree a blogger "protects" his own party, or other alliance, or personal goals that blogger is doing the same thing to his/her blog that the profit motive does to a newspaper as you have described it here.
Specifically - if Ron Hardy will not criticize the Green Party because he loves it and is an officer OR if YOU are running for office by opposing this or that condition (or dramatically dial down your blog’s intensity and inflammatory quality so as to not alienate voters) - does that not have the same filtering effect on content? A desire to favorably represent the Greens, Paul Soglin's desire to bash the WMC? Your own desire to bring new leadership to Oshkosh? A group of blogs that sets out to “prove” we need public financing for judge races or a health care package month after month after month after YEAR? THAT is better than/less corrupted than corporate media? I say not. Corruption takes many forms. Blogs are rife with corruption.
A subgroup of this type of Blog-Badness is the self-monitoring that loyal blog readers do when they are trying not to “hurt the feelings” of the blogger. If Ron is enamored of some Northwoods guy I think is a total nut job, I have to weigh all that stuff before I rip Ron a hole over the guy. And a normal person would hold back, seeing how Ron likes something, getting nasty is just that – being nasty to a Nice Guy. That’s not a boon to “truth finding” either. You and I almost killed each other over various issues. Or, one of us was “nice” and didn’t say something, chose not to rattle the cage for the sake of Other Things. Not so differnt from not rattling a cage to not lose revenue is it? (Now we don’t speak at all. Will you even allow this to be posted? Proving on th esmallest of scales that heedlessness of consequences DOES lead to loss, and NORMAL people WILL calculate and act accordingly) Yeah, that’s some truth-finding purity and superiority among bloggers we all have.
2. When the deeply personal motive of the blogger is to "get noticed" and "belong" to any perceived power group. I would say mainstream hacks who want to manipulate blogs to their advantage and Loser-Nobody bloggers who want to muck around with the big boys (that Uppity WI guy, TOTAL suck up, and it's REALLY working for him!) are pretty equally disgusting.
a.)A sub-group of this is people who like to play "revolutionary". There are a lot of these out there I am finding and not all are bloggers. People who play the outsider card long enough to get "in" and then pull the road up behind them.
This truth stuff is bigger than all of us. And so-called Corrupting Influences and thought/behavior traps go far beyond the profit motive. They are all ingrained into the human psyche.
I am an arrogant you-know-what, so I am perfectly comfortable telling everyone what “types of mentality” run the Northwestern today.
(Aside from the odd creep here and there)
The Northwestern is run by people who wanted to be journalists because someone told them as children they could write and they didn’t know what else to do, who went to school and busted their butts for demanding professors while going into debt, wanted to live/stay in the Osh area (!), got a job for a local paper that got sold in a sudden and unexpected 2 month deal to Gannett which racked the entire group who - even if they left in protest - would face the exact same thing elsewhere OR they are people who were hired afterwards, in this current environment, and it is all they know or can imagine.
So they - the ones who remained here - are providing a service. It is a franchise like everything else in America. The corporate structure effects choices there like it does in everything else. But they still have the information networks, the wire services, all the crap that bloggers do not have. All the things that makes comparing bloggers to journalists ludicrous. An apples-to-oranges question. And doing that is old, old framing of the issue. "Blogs will kill newspapers". That was the rhetoric - why are we still talking that way? Either-or? It's dumb, it isn't that. Bloggers and newspapers are NOT the same thing; do not provide the same service. That framing keeps bloggers from seeing what they are (I mean "could have been"). Accepting the Us or Them mentality is what “killed” bloggers.
Gawd! - And how is any piss-ant blogger going to "reveal the truth"? We have only opinion, we don't SEE this stuff - stuff in Iraq, stuff in Washington or even Madison. What- by relying on the words of some OTHER person - maybe closer to the scene - and passing THAT along? Cut and paste and link our way to Truth? In that scenario the blogger is completely dependent on the unseen source. That is no better and could easily be much worse than corp journalism. I still say that bloggers, as a cultural group, have failed because of their own unwillingness to be intentional about what they are, or want to be. It isn’t about Stew; I feel strongly that in that regard we were wrong.
What kind of self-reflection have we ever done? Did we ever try to determine the best way to handle our personal biases? What role they play. How to run comments? How to handle attacks? How often to post and the effect of fequency, to specialize or not. What meant most to readers? What types of issues examination really would benefit our communities most? What were our individual strengths and weaknesses?
So many unasked questions. All of the questions that the profit motive (or respect for journalistic integrity I suppose) forces journalists to ask and answer. Questions that give them intentionality and purpose and direction. At least they CHOOSE something. We just fart around…LAMELY…and project our anger at our parents or whatever hang-ups we have onto authority figures when we’ve had a bad day? I'm kinda joking about that pernt thing, but I'm sure it comes off that way to some people.
Really, what did we do to inspire or earn the faith and trust of our fellow beings?
“You’ll never get bloggers to work together, blogging is all about Ego and you’ll never get bloggers to work together for ANYTHING” That’s what I was told, about 2 years ago now. And I’m pretty sure you can guess who said it. (But there I go again, flying up the nose of someone I had wanted to be friends with.)
Dammit! I thought it was about something more than ego. Like maybe the first time in human history the Individual had this much communicative power at each fingertip, and – hey guys! - What are we going to do about it, might this be worth some discussion? Some (again) intentionality and self-reflection? Some kind of learning and adaptation process as we “got in there” and compared what really was happening to what we THOUGHT we were doing?
Nothing like any of that. No, we will win them with the charm of our personality, the glow of our vision and our individual Swords of Truth.
I am SO tired of talking/hearing about Stew R. SO TIRED.
Final thought – (ha ha NW readers)
Much the same as no individual professor is responsible for the (large and small) UW system administrative polices, or the way no professor personifies the entirety of our educational system today (which I think SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS) so it is also true that no small-potatoes editor is responsible for, or personifies, all of our Media Culture. And EVEN IF HE WAS the All-Powerful Man Behind the Curtain, the only thing we can control in a scenario like that is OUR RESPONSE. Once again class, even if Stew and the Northwestern ARE evil, all we can control is our response to that evil.
And our response was lame.
And everyone knows that too.
Jody, I didn't quite understand what you were trying to say. Could you restate your point.
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