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Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Blogs are a "one man circle jerk"
“A blog is still a view of the world through a pinhole,” he said, noting that it can sometimes fall as low as being a “one man circle jerk.” “There is a pressure to feel well informed without ever confronting an opinion that confronts your prejudices,” he said of blog readers.
Bill Keller, Executive Editor of The New York Times
This is the most recent comment from Mr. Keller from giving a speech as the key note speaker at a benefit dinner last Friday night. I'm surprised that such a comment would be made by him a day after his company announced the purchase of About.com. Basically, the NYT is paying $820,000.00 for each of the 500 weblogs that make up About.com. I guess the NYT thinks a "one man circle jerk" (or a multitude of them) is a good investment.
As far as the comment, “A blog is still a view of the world through a pinhole,” is concerned I think you need to wake up and smell the coffee. Because of blogs, people are not tied to the editorial and opinionated pieces of the MSM anymore. This is a good thing considering the MSM has not been reporting fair and unbiased news for sometime now. The MSM are more interested in appeasing their corporate owners and prime time sponsors then they are in reporting unbiased news stories. The media's "view of the world" might not be seen through a pinhole but it is definitely blurred by the efforts to increase shareholder return on investments so that they can strengthen their political agenda's.
One way to possibly fix this is to adopt the same rules set out by the government to regulate the accounting industry. After the fall of Enron the U.S. government ruled that it was a conflict of interest to have accounting firms and consulting firms under one roof and ruled that they needed to separate. Maybe the MSM and its parent corporations should think of doing the same thing, big corporate conglomerates owning media outlets is a huge conflict of interest.
Lets face it Mr. Keller, blogs are not going away anytime soon. So, you can either, keep calling them names, or, you can make the MSM honest again. Either way your opinion and the opinion of the MSM just don't matter as much anymore. Maybe, if my suggestion doesn't work you could start your own blog site.
Posted by The Bastard at 06:05 PM in The Bastard | Permalink
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Comments
As a journalism student, I must agree with you. The MSM has gone to the dogs, or the GOP anyway. Most of the MSM has been bought out by special interests or those who allow their special interests to decide how and what they stand for. I am sorry about that.
Posted by: Advocate of Democracy | Feb 22, 2005 6:41:20 AM
Swift Boat Veterans for Circle Jerking on the New York Times....with
Charlton Heston.
What a load of crap! Did not the New York Times publish fiction (Jason
Blair) as fact?
Posted by: Furor Celtica | Feb 22, 2005 5:42:19 PM
Worst case scenario: The blogosphere's "pinhole" is big enough to fit a Sunday NYT through it.
Posted by: Whymrhymer | Feb 22, 2005 11:22:11 PM
You can get as indignant as you want over one more traditional media critique of blogging, but face it: He's right. How many blogs, especially of the shrilly-political variety, are nothing but insular screeds? Those site might very well have 50 comments per post, but they're all of the same groupthink. There's no debate or examination of issues, it's purely group therapy.
Readers tend to gravitate toward blogs that share their outlook, to the exclusion of different slants. That's not necessarily bad, but it's limiting.
It kills me when people tout blogs as a way to get "unfiltered" news and views. Obviously, a blog is an additional filter, considering that over 90 percent of them don't do any primary reporting. There's value in punditry, but as your primary information source? No thanks.
Posted by: CT | Feb 24, 2005 9:59:34 AM
You can get as indignant as you want over one more traditional media critique of blogging, but face it: He's right. How many blogs, especially of the shrilly-political variety, are nothing but insular screeds? Those site might very well have 50 comments per post, but they're all of the same groupthink. There's no debate or examination of issues, it's purely group therapy.
Readers tend to gravitate toward blogs that share their outlook, to the exclusion of different slants. That's not necessarily bad, but it's limiting.
It kills me when people tout blogs as a way to get "unfiltered" news and views. Obviously, a blog is an additional filter, considering that over 90 percent of them don't do any primary reporting. There's value in punditry, but as your primary information source? No thanks.
Posted by: CT | Feb 24, 2005 10:02:20 AM
I couldn't agree more with what you just said. Hell, this blog might just fall into what you just described.
I definately pitty the person that thinks that they should come to the blogosphere for their first source of news. But I guess what I was trying to say was that the MSM personal views have creapt way to far into the stories they report. The average Joe wouldn't notice it but its a war on adjectives. One network exec refuses to let their reporters describe something in a certain way and vice versa with the next network. When this happens it is no longer straight news its more like an op/ed.
I look at blogs more as a huge town hall meeting where people can more readily sound off about what is being fed to them through the MSM. And by doing so they can disect and understand the full scope of some of the material. In a way becoming educated about current events, something that is sorely lacking in this country.
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