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Oct

23

The power and responsibility of blogs


Now, more than ever.

From this JewishJournal.com interview with investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh [bold is my emphasis]:

JJ: New York magazine has a profile this week of Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report, and they call him “America’s Most Influential Journalist.” What have bloggers like Drudge done to journalism, and how do you think it compares to the muckrakers that you came of age with?
SH: There is an enormous change taking place in this country in journalism. And it is online. We are eventually — and I hate to tell this to The New York Times or the Washington Post — we are going to have online newspapers, and they are going to be spectacular. And they are really going to cut into daily journalism. I’ve been working for The New Yorker recently since ‘93. In the beginning, not that long ago, when I had a big story you made a good effort to get the Associated Press and UPI and The New York Times to write little stories about what you are writing about. Couldn’t care less now. It doesn’t matter, because I’ll write a story, and The New Yorker will get hundreds of thousands, if not many more, of hits in the next day. Once it’s online, we just get flooded.
So, we have a vibrant, new way of communicating in America. We haven’t come to terms with it. I don’t think much of a lot of the stuff that is out there. But there are a lot of people doing very, very good stuff.

JJ: Some people have a problem with muckrakers. Why do you think it is important to shine a light on filth?
SH: I can’t imagine what else there is to do in the newspaper business today right now but to write as much as you can about what is going on. Like it, don’t like it, what you call filth is the normal vagaries of government and foreign affairs these days.

Take away:
“We’re going to have online newspapers, and they are going to be spectacular.”

“But there are a lot of people doing very, very good stuff.”

“…what you call filth is the normal vagaries of government and foreign affairs these says.”

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 1:57 pm October 23rd, 2007 in Blogging, Elections, Foreign Affairs, Government, Media 

Comments

6 Responses to “The power and responsibility of blogs”

  1. 1 LilaTov Cocktail on October 23rd, 2007 3:17 pm

    I love Seymour Hersh's writing in the New Yorker. He wrote a piece about 3 years ago about the war in which he talked about the zillion retired and current military leaders at the Pentagon who thought Rumsfeld's policies were disastrous.  That was the first time I heard Pentagon personnel talk explicitly (although many were anonymous) about Rumsfeld's profound, mulish, ignorance — and the last time I heard about it until last year.  It was the kind of story you wanted to take everywhere and make everybody you know read …

  2. 2 Jill Miller Zimon on October 23rd, 2007 3:29 pm

    I can just imagine. I remember when experts were saying before we went into Iraq that they were terrified about having no plan for peace.  Ta da.  The kind of story everyone should hear and yet no one paid attention (well, the right people just ignored it).

  3. 3 Maggie on October 23rd, 2007 4:55 pm

    I think this is a rather astute and honest assessment of the impact of blogging.  Thanks for sharing it.

  4. 4 Jill Miller Zimon on October 23rd, 2007 5:40 pm

    What's so interesting to me is that I've found that older folks – like 65 and up? They get it – they totally get the "new communication" aspect of blogs.  But then there's like this blacked out age group that is far less convinced or interested, or something, in the new media.

    Maybe it's a pure concern over work and a livelihood – that's understandable.

    But I just remember when my 72 year old dad came with me to a Meet the Bloggers session.  He just was so bowled over and kept saying, you guys are it – you are the next thing – you are the only voice left.

    Really.

  5. 5 LilaTov Cocktail on October 24th, 2007 9:43 am

    Does it have something to do with the fact that the 65 and older crowd (or is it 55+?) are the biggest readers of newspapers?  Perhaps having seen firsthand the dumbing down of the American newspaper, they are more attuned to print media's current shortcomings and thus more open to reportage in other media? (And why am I writing this in question form? I don't know, do you?)

  6. 6 Jill Miller Zimon on October 24th, 2007 5:55 pm

    lol you are so funny Lila.

    That may be – I'm not sure re: being the biggest group that reads newspapers.  Would make sense.

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