Where were the A List bloggers on that darn journalism hearing yesterday? I'll tell you where:

[beachmom]

Bloody hell Twitter. I read that they were talking about it on Twitter. So for the first time in my life I went over there. It kind of sucks. It is difficult to keep track of the conversation. But, believe me, they were watching. Markos, KagroX, Pandagon, Oliver Willis. A LOT of them.

A few links:

http://twitter.com/KagroX

http://twitter.com/AdamSerwer

http://twitter.com/pandagon

http://twitter.com/markosm

http://twitter.com/owillis

Okay, I am officially exhausted. Oh, and there is bashing of Kerry that he sounds like he's never used the internet. WTF?

[TayTay]

1. These are part of the problem

Twitter contributes to a drive-by approach to the news that emphasizes snark over anything like content.

And it's apparently the future, though why I don't know.

EDIT: Functionally, there is almost no difference between the snarky, content-free condescension of http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/06/AR2009050603969_2.html?hpid=opinionsbox1">Dana Milbank in his WaPo article about that hearing and the Tweats from the bloggers.

Meet the new bosses, same as the old bosses.

[beachmom]

2. If the future is about scattering our attention spans just a little bit more,

then Twitter is definitely the way to go.

Come to think of it, it seems that the goal is to go back to when we were living in caves, didn't really have language, and spoke only in grunts and moans. What do you think? A grunt or moan is probably less than 10 characters, no? Quick somebody get some venture capital for an internet start up. That'll take Twitter down a notch!

[TayTay]

3. I agree

Twitter was a great resource during the Mumbai crisis back in November. There was a lot of interesting chatter that did serve to impart some of the chaos in that city during that awful time.

But Twitter, as well as a lot o instant communications, forments cynicism. The point is not to inform but to make cutting remarks. This is useless. The last thing this society needs is more cynicism.

BTW, I think one of the worst things that ever happened to US journalism was the over adulation of Woodward and Bernstein. So much that is wrong with "professional" journalism can be traced back to what evolved from that. Celebrity journalists, the separation by class of those reporting the news from the rank and file in unions and public service and so forth. I actually think "beat reporting" died in the the late 70's when the profession was 'glammed up." Reporters don't want to be stuck reporting crime news or hanging out with local cops. They have nothing in common with them anymore. Their advanced degrees separate them, sometimes fatally, from the people they pretend to cover. The system has fallen apart for more than just money reasons.

[ProSense]

12. People know there is a problem.

Kerry is bringing this issue to the forefront.

One of the more interesting points of the hearing was the reliance of entities like Google on the content from the online editions of newspapers. The content still comes from somewhere. If the NYT print edition fails, what happens to the NYT online? It seems that some people are not making the connection between a newspaper's vast print resources and their ability to produce online content. Journalism is a people intensive business. Whether print or online, there will still need to be a vast network of people producing content for any entity to be national in scope, serve state and local communities. Can't get around it. Imagine how large Huffpo would need to become to replicate the NYT online. There's a lot of talk about the Politico model, yet it's still people intensive and reliant on other news organizations (and print).

[karynnj]

4. I think one problem is that they have no idea of the norm in Senate hearings

They are clearly assuming that Kerry does not know the answers to the questions he is asking, when in many cases, he knows, but wants it on record. In other cases, I think the questions were to plant seeds. (ie Do you see a value for you in having ...'s content? The answer was "Of, course". Put with other comments, the picture is that this is a product and "intellectual property" - something there is law about.

What is clear is the arrogance of some - like the one who linked to his American Prospect opinion. He says that newspapers don't need Congress to become non-profits. Now, I assume Cardin and the people people on his staff who wrote the proposed legislation are just dumber than he is and don't realize that the paper could just get a lawyer.

With others, there is a defensiveness towards Google, which likely feeds them. (Funny - I bet they posted regularly of Senators doing the bidding of the people who give them contributions.) It also didn't seem that the Senators were picking on Google.

Like you I hate Twitter there - it is very confusing and unfocused.

[beachmom]

6. Exactly! I do my share of criticizing Kerry, and I WAS worried

that not all voices would be represented. Well, they actually were. It was a very good hearing. The Silicon Valley paper I linked to in the other thread specifically said that all sides of the argument were there. I felt like screaming at those twitterers -- who the hell do they think put the hearing together and allowed Google on the panel that made the points they liked? You could say that for this story Kerry put all the characters in one room, it was put on TV and the web, and that is how those jerks could make their snarky comments. I didn't mind Millbank's article because I felt like it covered a lot of angles, and depicted the mood correctly. I guess I disagree with Tay that Millbank = those tweets. Millbank put together a story, a narrative, a mood. Yes he makes fun of pols. But he did offer the substance of the meeting. When he covered that Gingrich/Kerry climate change debate a couple of years back, he didn't do as good a job, and missed what I thought had happened.

Contrast Kerry to Bill Nelson, who was actually poignant in his own way. He said he'd get home at 8 or 9 PM, exhausted, and wanted the news for the day, and there was nothing to watch. How in the morning the paper gets thinner and thinner. I felt like giving him a call: say, Bill, ah, there is this thing called the internet. You might want to check it out. And failing that, BBC America rebroadcasts their excellent news program at 10 PM. Now there was a guy who clearly did not use the internet.

[ProSense]

9. Arianna Huffington kept

saying the newspapers are talking to each other, and that there is nothing stopping them from doing so, until Simon interjected that Rupert Murdoch was talking to people in his own organization.

It seems even she has no idea what anti-trust laws are.

[Mass]

5. One of the major issues is that most of these people are not journalists in the sense of the word.

They confuse opinion columns and reporting the facts (and are not the only ones. Print reporters like Dana Milbank tend to do so as well), but they rarely do any investigative work. They just live on the work of real journalists as aggregators and, at some point, use some connections they have to get some information that are more or less reliable and comment on it. This would be just fine if they were ready to recognize this, but, unfortunately, they do not.

So, in addition of not understanding the way the Senate works, they do not understand the way journalism works. They do not understand the need to present facts rather than opinions, and they certainly for most of them do not understand that doing the hard work of searching for original information costs money and takes time. They live in the 24 hour news cycle of cable news, where nothing is verified and every small rumor treated as fact.

This is a reason why I stopped reading most of these bloggers and try to read original articles. The farther you get from the information source, the less reliable and the most biased this info is.

[ProSense]

8. Exactly, but it also shows how far these bloggers have strayed from

the gap they believed they were filling: the lack of media objectivity. They're reduced to cynicism and relying on second- and third-generation snips that result in distortions.

Interestingly this comment, linking to David Simon's testimony posted at Democracy Now, is posted at one of the blogs:

I don’t agree that the entire hearing was useless. I think that David Simon’s presentation before Kerry and the committee is more than worth a listen.

Here is the link:

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/7/david_simon_creator_of_acclaimed_hbo

[ObamaKerryDem]

7. I think these people would be surprised to know that the Senator's on Twitter himself!

Well, at least it seems like it's him, lol:

http://twitter.com/johnkerry


But even if it's not, we all know he blogs on the Huffington Post, dailykos, and other places and from what I saw of yesterday's hearing, seems to have a very good understanding of the Internet and the techonology. Maybe it's just because he's not saying what they necessarily want to hear?

Twitter's fun and all, but I'd hardly want to rely on it to get my news!

[Democrafty]

10. Looks like it is him.

And that's a good use of the feed. Twitter is like any other technology - it can be used, or it can be abused. I find that it's a good aggregate of various news sources - the C-SPAN feed, in particular, is a clean and easy way to keep up with that schedule.

Problems arise when people start using Twitter as something it's not. It's not a blog or news source in and of itself.

[Luftmensch067]

11. I never thought I'd consider Twitter

But if it makes sense of that C-SPAN schedule, I might have to look into it. :-)

[Democrafty]

13. It's an excellent site, for certain things.

As far as getting your news, it's a good means to an end. (And kind of a disaster when used as an end in itself, haha.)

[Luftmensch067]

14. I already love JK's tweets

They're very characteristic and kind of sweet -- who knew his 93 year old aunt had a birthday coming up!

[karynnj]

17. Same here - as you and Democrafty say these are good

It is cool that he's going to a birthday party of a 93 year old aunt. (Obviously some good healthy genes in that family)

[Inuca]

18. JK is tweeting??

Maybe one of these days I will have to overcome my overwheleming dislike and give Tweeter a try, or at least pay it a short visit.

[ProSense]

15. Here is a terrific comment to

Jane Hamsher's shrill screed (not sure where she's coming from with the title of the piece):

All due respect, Jane, you've missed the point. Even this website depends heavily on sources for its content. I can't count the number of articles gleaned originally from dozens of newspapers that I've read here. If they go under, and recent events tell us they are, then where will that content come from? Unpaid bloggers? The breath and depth of the void will be staggering - especially in local news, which has far fewer consumers, is much less sexy and much less likely to garner national attention. When newspapers cease to be viable, the corruption of the local zoning board isn't going to be covered by volunteer amateurs - and to the extent that it might be, it will not be vetted to the same extent, nor reach the same audience.

I watched the hearings last night on C-SPAN, and one of the big problems cited for falling revenues was on-line classifieds and bulletin boards - Craig's List, for example. In the past, revenues from classified ads helped pay for the newsroom. My point is, the problems are systemic, and painting Kerry as anti-Huffpo doesn't solve the problem. Suggestion: Go over ALL the stories webcast on Huffpo over the past year that originated with newspapers, and try to imagine that none of those stories ever broke - and your total content was diminished by that much.

If Kerry recognizes that as the potential worst-case scenario, then we all should.

link

[Mass]

16. Yes, it catches the amazing aspect of these blogs.

They have become so self-centered that they do not recognize that they depend on the media (good and bad) to do their job. And this is the point. I stopped reading Huffington Post because there is little content and that every single person with his own little bit of name recognition can post as a specialist on any topic. I got tired to have to go to the biography to try figure out if it was somebody who was just venting (his/her right) or somebody who was actually somewhat knowledgeable of what they are talking about.

There are a few blogs (often locals) who actually report on what is happening because they are close enough from the source to have some first hand information. Some do a great job, but are often not recognized. For the rest, bloggers have become the same pundits that we see on TV, and they certainly have not forgotten to borrow their sense of self-importantance.

[TayTay]

19. Is this the same Jane Hamsher who had a hissy fit over ad money

a little while ago?

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/blogosphere/big-liberal-bloggers-tee-off-on-progressive-groups-for-not-sharing-ad-wealth/">The Plum LineGreg Sargent's blog
Big Liberal Bloggers Tee Off On Progressive Groups For Not Sharing Ad Wealth

Some of the leading liberal bloggers are privately furious with the major progressive groups — and in some cases, the Democratic Party committees — for failing to spend money advertising on their sites, even as these groups constantly ask the bloggers for free assistance in driving their message.

It’s a development that’s creating tensions on the left and raises questions about the future role of the blogosphere at a time when a Dem is in the White House and liberalism could be headed for a period of sustained ascendancy.

A number of these top bloggers agreed to come on record with me after privately arguing to these groups that they deserved a share in the ad wealth and couldn’t be taken for granted any longer.

“They come to us, expecting us to give them free publicity, and we do, but it’s not a two way street,” Jane Hamsher, the founder of FiredogLake, said in an interview. “They won’t do anything in return. They’re not advertising with us. They’re not offering fellowships. They’re not doing anything to help financially, and people are growing increasingly resentful.”

Newspapers don't need money to survive, blogs do. And it's not whining if we are complaining about the money, it's a progressive advancement of the cause. Yeah, right.

[karynnj]

20. In a way she is worse -Democratic ads on a left site are a waste of money

other than in competitive primaries where they would be a pretty good use. The purpose of the ads is to win over people they don't have - though the blogs have readers for whom any candidate is not pure enough, there is in reality very few unlikely to support the Democrat. The purpose of ads is not to reward media that supports you.

[Inuca]

21. Waste of money - absolutely!

Preaching to the choir squared.

[beachmom]

27. And is also begging for money:

http://firedoglake.com/2009/04/21/go-organic-no-artificial-blogging-support-marcy-wheeler/

Looks like she won't meet the goal.

Not only are new media going to run into the same problems as old media, but I think Kerry has a point that TV and radio are next.

[ProSense]

22. For a hearing that people are pretending they don't care about, this certainly got a lot of coverage

Some (like the editorial board of the St Louis-Post Dispatch) are distorting the hearing as a call for a bailout. Others, like the following op-ed in the NYT, want to have it both ways:

I’m all for journalists swarming the Hill, especially now that about half of the reporters who used to work there are gone, potentially leaving much of government to its own devices. But to leave our industry tin-cupping its way around a government it covers seems desperate and ill-advised: a cure that might be worse than the disease.

No one is arguing that the situation is not dire. Though Marissa Mayer, a Google vice president, calmly told the senators on the panel led by Senator Kerry that “it’s still very early,” we all know better. In the past six months, five major American publishers have filed for bankruptcy.

Given that monopolies that drove the business are falling apart, some antitrust relief that would allow the industry to collectively hit the reset button seems reasonable. But how exactly is the rest of it an agenda item for an elected government? Besides all the esteem we seem to hold ourselves in, it is difficult to make a rational economic argument for granting special favors to a relatively minor part of the American economy. Alan D. Mutter, who blogs at Reflections of a Newsosaur, said that newspapers “collectively employ a mere 0.2 percent of the nation’s labor force and generate only 0.36 percent of the gross national product.” In other words, we are not, like the bankers and the auto industry we have covered so ferociously, too big to fail.

(emphasis added)

[beachmom]

23. I'm beginning to side with David Simon on this: A plague on both their houses

The reaction by some in the new media and old media has been misleading and immature. I will continue to say the Snarkmeister Dana Millbank did a better job, as well as that Silicon Valley website. The rest have really missed the point. I think it was an important hearing, and have been re-watching it, it was so good. It provided a platform for the various sides to talk about what is happening. The hearing covered the issues better than most publications have. There was a good piece by Walter Pinckus, though (not covering the hearing, but the situation journalism finds itself now):

http://www.cjr.org/essay/newspaper_narcissism_1.php?page=all

I highly recommend it.

H/T Josh Marshall

[karynnj]

24. I commented on the SL one

The strange thing about that editorial is that last line which totally distorts the hearing. The hearing did address the types of issues that they actually thought real. I also suspect that the SLPD may be deluding itself. As Huffington pointed out, much of the loss ad revenue is because a significant portion of real estate and job ads have migrated to things like Craig's list. It might be the heartland is moving to this less rapidly than the coasts.

To me a stronger case can be made that this hearing should have been had a few years ago. The problem has been evident for years. The economy tanking has, in some cases, pushed things over the edge. The hearing was a nice mix of trying to get the new and old medias to see the symbiotic relationship they really have. Google News, for instance, will destroy itself if they starve the sources of the news - what would a google search pull up?

The NYT one is actually pretty good - and hard on the newspaper industry for its own role in getting to where we are. The comments on the hearing are accurate, though they don't reflect that the Senators did push back to some degree on the Dallas News guy.

[ProSense]

28. Excellent comment. n/t

[beachmom]

25. Ha, ha, ha, ha!! The Onion NAILS new media:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/mainstream_media_at_it?utm_source=onion_rss_daily

[karynnj]

26. Now, that is really good!

[beachmom]

29. Finally, a place to follow Twitter where you don't have to be on Twitter

or even like Twitter:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/live/hilldemstwitter.php?ref=fpd

I like this one from Barbara Boxer:

Barbara Boxer
Partnered with Senator Kerry today to explain What Palin Got Wrong About Energy: http://tinyurl.com/kj3cwf
07/24/09 3:12 pm EDT

Basically, if you scroll down toward the bottom of TPM, you will find the Twitter "rooms" they just set up, in the following categories:

TPM Twitter Rooms

Hill Democrats
Hill Republicans
Democratic Insiders
Republican Insiders
Journalists and Bloggers

[wisteria]

30. That is an old criticism that I saw on a RW site and is not factual-

of course. I am surprised this list of bloggers felt a need to mention it at all. This goes to show you how bad journalism has gotten from the MSM to bloggers. No one checks any sources and they report anything they thing will stick. Markos and his ilk have always seemed childish to me. A bunch of infantile frat boys.