If you don’t know it by now, war has broken out__between New York Times executive editor Bill Keller and Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post web site.
In Sunday’s NY Times Magazine, Keller attacks “the American Idol-ization” of news and those who “aggregate”, which he defines as “taking words written by others, putting them on your web site and harvesting profits. In Somalia this would be called piracy.” Keller then cites Huffington as “the queen” of such pilferage.
Huffington, who went from being a right-wing media shill in the 1980s–90s to a left wing media darling today, fought back with a “mine’s bigger than yours” response, saying that Huffington Post (“HuffPo”) does have some reporters of its own (a few of whom actually get paid) and anyway, her site gets twice as many hits as the Times site does, so Keller’s just jealous.
While the battle between these two Ripley’s Believe It Or Not-sized egos may be amusing, Keller’s complaint about HuffPo and other web sites aggregating, stealing, or whatever you want to call it definitely has validity. But that ship has already sailed, and what the Times can learn from HuffPo is how social media works__and what doesn’t work.
HuffPo’s comments site is light years better than the Times web site, at least as far as speed. I can get response to a comment in real time on HuffPo, while a comment made on a Times site at midnight might not appear until 12 hours later.
On the other hand, most comments on the Times site are informative and well written. Too many of the comments on HuffPo are knee-jerk screeds or worse. And while you can take Bill Keller, Maureen Dowd or the Times itself to task on its site, good luck posting anything on HuffPo that is even vaguely critical of the saintly Arianna.
That being the case, the real problem in 2011 isn’t the “new media” but the fact that real reporting is disappearing, in favor of “Obama said today”/ “Charlie Sheen said today,”-type non stories, with no digging or uncovering of facts we truly need to know in a democracy.
About 10 years ago, I wrote a freelance op-ed column for the NY Daily News. The city was preparing to spray insecticide throughout Queens after a lone chicken in the area was discovered to have the West Nile virus (I’m not making this up). No humans had contracted it, but the city was ready to spray this “relatively nontoxic” substance into the air. I called Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Riverkeepers group to check my suspicions that the spraying was potentially more dangerous than the virus itself, and Kennedy’s partner confirmed my suspicions. He also told me that I was the only reporter who called to inquire about this.
Since then, things have only gotten worse as far as investigative reporting, the lifeblood of democracy. While Keller criticizes Huffington for not reporting real news, the Times itself missed the most important stories of the twenty-first century: the terrorist buildup to the 9-11 attacks, the absence of WMDs in Iraq and the foul play on Wall Street that plunged the nation into a near depression. If not the Times, who will do this?
The bottom line is, We need more, not less, real reporting and investigative journalism. “Kim Kardasian Busts Out” and “Britney Dons Skinny Leotard” (both are real stories on today’s HuffPo) might be fine articles (ok, I might check them out myself) but if those are the only stories we’re checking out, then the U.S. will be checking out as a working democracy before we know it.
Anyway, have a nice day.
Right on, Mike. I was a reporter for the AMHERST RECORD in MA back in the 70′s. A fine paper. Much digging into stories to uncover facts and trace the why of what was happening. When I moved to NJ I couldn’t find a paper I wanted to write for– they were all so filled with non-news and sloppy, shallow reporting. That’s when I started being disillusioned with news media, and it’s gotten progressively worse. You can’t totally force-feed a diet of real stories to people who want crap I guess, but I do believe media has a responsibility to educate which has been subverted. Follow the money trail. Advertisers want media to give people what they want. Business (media) needs advertisers.
Points well taken, and again I agree… with Mr. Gritty.
Now a days, “aggregating” IS aggravating, but it has certainly become an accepted part of “the new social media”. Not only words, but also photos, art work, and music are all commonly pilfered, and being an artist, musician and songwriter myself, even I haven’t made up my mind as to whether this freedom to re-use, is a good thing or bad. (I sought of hesitate to say that “freedom” can be bad).
I happened into a westside restaurant a while back, and found that they had actually used my NYC illustration, that I had created for Business Week/ McGraw Hill, as the cover for their menu, without permission from me or Mr. McGraw. And this happened way before this “re-use” policy became accepted on the internet.
I must say I WAS flattered, but it would have been nice if they paid me. Or how about a free dinner or at least a glass or Beaujolais? And that’s sought of the same way I feel about “aggregating”.
In our lifetimes, we’ve already seen many worthy skills and crafts, become obsolete, go out of style, and die off.
And “investigative reporting, the lifeblood of democracy”, might (or already has) become just another victim, but eventually, if no one “digs”, “uncovers new facts”, or has an original thought, “the aggregators” (good name for a rock band), will run out of places they can aggregate from.
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