craigslist - the new drudge report?
 

A story is running shortly about an interview with Craig Newmark, the founder of craigslist.org, in which he spells out (in moderate detail - expanding on remarks made last month ahead of the Newspaper industry conference) plans to steer the site toward a focus on community journalism.

By this he basically means a semi-organized group of writers and bloggers to investigate scandals and cover politics while sidestepping the primary hindrance professional reporters face, which is being forced to accept what politicians and executives say as "fact," even if those words are blatant lies. He wants to turn up the heat on industry-defined "objectivity."

This really is nothing new. Bloggers have been doing this for a while and have had a few bright spots as the free web becomes more and more part of mainstream media. But now Newmark wants to see a network of guerrilla reporters and editors challenge professional journalists in a formalized manner.

I don't know what to make of this. It's fine and dandy, and I don't at all feel that my profession is being threatened. Do you folks out there think this is feasible? Why do we pay a quarter for the newspaper or subscribe to stacks of magazines? Who do you trust for your news these days?

There's obviously plenty to be said about being "honest" and telling things "as they are," which seems to be Newmark's grand objective. But professional or not, there is ALWAYS bias is everything that is written about the news. It depends who is reading the copy and what he/she personally thinks. Further, trusting your report to a band of gypsies with notepads and tape recorders might lead to devastating consequences - only there's no liability involved, and thus less accountability. That's setting a stage for some reckless reporting, I think.

I'll post the link when the story hits the web.

hmmm. craigslist? is he still advertising escorts and massage parlors across the nation?

This is interesting to me. In many ways, I think the "new media" (or whatever you want to call talk radio + blogs + drudge + whatever) explosion and the collapse of institutional media (LA Times, NBC Nightly News, etc.) parallels the collapse of the music industry major labels.

Under the old system, people looked to the major distributors for content. If you wanted news, or music, the only consistent and reliable method of getting it was from the major distributor. With that, you had to accept whatever editorial, perspectival choices they made about content. Which bands got signed, developed, marketed, and distributed relied heavily upon those editorial choices by the major distributors.

All of that has changed now. It's entirely possible to listen to music that you like 24 hours a day and never once support an major distributor, or be bound by their editorial choices. It's possible now to get news content from hundreds of places without having to be reliant upon one perspective.

So what's the value of the major distributors these days? I think it's in exactly that role that we pound them fore: editorial and perspectival choices. If you like schmarmy piano music, you probably don't want to sift through 200 records to find the one that you like, but you may have developed a relationship with Wyndham Hill - if they release it, there's a good chance that it will be something that you like. If you're into indie rock, you probably don't want to listen to 900 CDs that 900 guys smoking weed did in their moms' basements on tape recorders. But you may have cultivated a relationship with a particular internet radio streamer, and you trust that the content they deliver will be something you enjoy.

I think the same thing holds with news. When I see the tagline from NY Times, or from NBC Nightly News, I expect a different level of accuracy, of research, and of scope than I would expect from newsy blogger dot com. Their value is specifically in their editorial acumen. I may see a news story on 50 blogs with conflicting details and sketchy analysis, but if I see one story on it in the NY Times, that carries more weight.

I think this is exactly why there was such outcry over Dan Rather and the faked documents - they violated our expectation of editorial standards. How many times do bloggers get it wrong? How many times has Drudge released a bogus report? Why is there no outrage? Because there is no expectation of accuracy.

-ml

That is all true right now, but when the major distributers are picking up stories from Drudge and the bloggers without doing their own research, they lose credibility. When they cover stuff like the "Runaway Bride!", they lose credibility. When they close their overseas operations, they lose credibility. When they think that objectivity means "he said she said" without any fact checking, they lose credibility.

Right now, the big news corporations are coasting on stored credibility, not building any. Some of them are using the illusion of credibility that big money and slick presentation can give when they don't even have stored credibility to coast on.

HM, that is the most insightful post I've read all year.

It's from the heart, man. [thumps chest] From the heart.

Agreed, the blogs are drawing some people away from the main stream but the main stream is driving just as many, or more, away.
Pick a subject, form an opinion, somewhere there's a blogger that agrees with you no matter how left, right, up or down your position.
I think more people will turn to blog filters that sift and separate.
Besides, you can rely on UT. :)

Hm pretty much has it dead on, when all you see if reuters regurgitated it's not going to be very interesting. craigslist is however a Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy.

When you're good, you're good. :)

But there is good stuff on Craigslist. :D

That was damn funny.

I almost stopped him, but I wanted to see how retarded it would look.
I gleefully helped him install it. Yup, totally retarded. Classic. tears in the eyes funny.

Maybe that should be printed out and slipped under a few wiper blades hereabouts.

No school like the old school.

Or, to quote a friend of mine:

There's no replacement for displacement.

They drove me away. I wouldn't trust the networks or the big papers to tell me the time of day.

Used to be reporting was reporting. Now, its opinion engineering. Articles used to be objective presentations. Now, articles are editorials disguised to look like articles. Reporters used to be reporters. Now, everyone is an advocate.

At least the bloggers never pretended to be something they weren't.

BULLFUCKINGSHIT!

The 'period of innocence' of blogging lasted about as long as a virgin on prom night, bloggers are if anything, even less accountable than hacks - they don't even have pretences of being objective or unbiased, lots of bloggers are paid to express certain opnions or push certain products, if it's a major blog you can pretty much assume this is the case. This doesn't stop 'blogsphere' thinking it's some kind of grassroots movement when in reality it's just another mouthpiece for the same 'opinionmakers' who buy time on every other mediascape. The sooner why whole scene gets the fuck over itself the better. Don't even get me started of fucking podcasting, what a fucking joke. It's the same breakdown as blogs, mostly people mumbling into their $10 logitech mikes about their choice of breakfast cereal and a whole bunch of glossy professionally produced elongated advertisments.

It was never wise to trust any media source but I perfer things like the BBC, The Economist and The Independant to 'blogsphere' for information any day. if anything the irony is now, you pay for what you get with media. The good stuff costs money, the economist is 3 quid a week, the financial times isn't exactly cheap and I think The Independant is the most expensive daily.

I'm all for it, the reason I ever found this place is from someones blog, and honestly the major media need a serious shake up.. being spoonfed information from ' official sources' has always made me wince. there is a point to a free press, and near as I can tell it's for a disemination of information so that people can make their own decisions on the subject matter... then again I am an idealist ;)

That was my point, jag. That, and that "big media" always did push an agenda while pretending that they weren't.

Yes, and blogs aren't any different.

Every successful blog puts its agenda on its sleeve.

Which is what makes them such a good example of the biggest problem with this kind of 'new media', it makes it too easy to reinforce their own ignorance and prejudices and insulate themselves from anything that might challenge that. Little Green Footballs, Free Republic & Common Dreams being prime examples. The value of media that at least attempts to be objective cannot be overestimated, as more and more people turn to these 'sources' for their news the more partisan they get making common ground harder and harder to find as the misinformation and ignorance grows. It's one reason I've always felt so strongly about media-ownership laws.

And yet this country's experience with media ownership laws, which existed here for many decades and were strictly enforced, is that they produced a system in which 90% of journalists are self-described Democrats (there's your monoculture) and where CBS News could not admit to the truth when it leaped up and bit them straight on the ass.

Everyone has biases. The reason blogs are popular is that this is finally admitted flat-out, after which it's suddenly possible to have real conversations. Blogs convert news into conversations.

I've found that the different edges produce their share of truths, and if you read all sides you can determine what's really happening with a clearer narrative than before. LGF versus Daily Kos, both produce great information after you take their bias into account, followed by lousy monoculture conversations. (Our conversations here are better, because we have different agendas; this is the strength of the Cellar, because some of us think others of us are asses and that's what it is in real life!)

see, that is what the misunderstanding here is... Jag actually believes that mainstream media really does ATTEMPT to be objective. I think, and many agree, that the mainstream media merely pretends to be objective - and doesn't do a very good job at that.

i would much rather read some of the larger blogs where i know EXACTLY what their agenda is - read their stories, filter out the agenda and compare to some other sources of info. chances are that i will probably get a clearer understanding of the situation than if i'd listened to only the mainline media.

I also think that big media got away with it for so long because they had no challengers. And with no credible dissenting views to contend with, big media had no incentive to shoot straight.

The minute a challenger with the same distribution power as big media cropped up, big media began to implode. Dan Rather is the poster boy for this phenomenon. But for the bloggers, he'd still be shovelling the same old liberal manure onto America's plate. And CNN can't get enough of the runaway bride. Hell, even the National Enquirer has moved on.

Look, I can spot a liberal bias at 100 yards just as well as the next guy, but I think this might be a bit unfair. I think the intent of the mainstream is to be unbiased, and to give balanced perspective. The problem is, at UT stated, that 90% of the journalists, and I would guess the numbers are about the same for the editorial staff, are dems and liberal dems at that. That's the temperature of the water in which they swim. If that's your starting place, your centerline, then being balanced means getting a moderate democrat to your right and a communist to your left to give perspective.

A bit of an exageration, I know, but the principle holds. They don't merely intend to be balanced, they beleive that they ARE balanced, and they can't figure out where Fox News' 50 bajillion viewers are coming from.

What media ownership laws? Real conversations? On LFG? Kos? If you like infantile partisan slanging matches when one of the 'opposition' intrudes and a circle jerk the rest of the time counts as conversation we're all in trouble.

I think good media either has far more subtle or a greater tendancy to report both sides of the story. Of course the US media is probably the worst in the free world (along with Italy) for this so YYMV. Here we have both ends of the spectrum from News of The World that usually leads with a celeb scandal to The Independant that I've seen accused of being both left and right wing, usually a good sign that the paper is doing a good job. I should clarify that while I think good media tries to be unbiased, I don't think The Guardian or CNN or Fox really are in this category but there are still papers that (gosh!) when a major issues comes up publish one editorial for each side.

Then there's traditional papers that have a public bias but a very high quality of reporting such as The Economist which covers a lot of issues that otherwise don't get airtime, they have a strong bent but it's clear and easy to read though.

Ever wonder why most journos were left leaning? Food for thought.

Two theories from me on this. One: I would guess that its because all journalists are educated by journalism professors many of whom grew out the anti-war movement of the sixties. Two: liberals are generally more academically oriented than conservatives so while conservatives get their degree and move on, more liberals tend to stay in academia to develop and communicate their ideas and to form a bastion against the conservative agenda. Tenure is granted to like-minded liberals.

Before anybody decides to debate the point that colleges and universities are almost 90 liberal or democratic, the Washington Post removed all doubt about that with an intensive study of the higher education system across the country and proclaimed liberal domination of the system to be a verified fact. I don't have a link but I'm sure its googleable.

a friend of mine recently asked a similar question. he asked why i thought most professors were liberal leaning. he is a very good friend of mine so we give each other quite a bit of shit... my answer to him was that 90% of professors have spent their whole lives in academia talking about ideas and theories. "liberal" ideas are much more palatable and just feel right.

he asked me about the other 10%. i explained that those are the professors who did something in the real world before they entered academia. they understand the difference between "theory" and "reality".

That hardly applies to journos lookout. Beestie, I've got quite a few friends who studied or are studying journalism, that isn't the case. As for academics, yes and no, depends on the field as much as anything.

The divide is between fields where thinking and communicating are ends in themselves, and fields where thinking and communicating are a way to get money. So journalists and professors are Democrats, and media owners and executives are Republicans. A gross simplification, but so is everything else here.

Reading the blogs and filtering the agendas out is a great way to find the real story unless you have to work for a living and can't devote half the day to it.

OK, you put in the time and effort to find the nugget of truth....now what? What are you going to do about it besides sit smugly at your PC(or apple) and feel proud of yourself for finding the truth (that may not be)?

Does this make you better than the people that grab on to cause they feel strongly about (opinions may vary) and go out to change the world? :confused:

I tried changing the world. It turned out the world didn't want, nor did it need changing. When I look at what I did, I feel a little foolish. I thought I was helping when I was just grasping at straws. Next time I'm going to make sure I get it right.

Thanks bruce, for bringing to light a larger point in the discussion.

I think this whole situation has to do mostly with coming to terms with reality. People have opinions and they're going to show, and with so much open interpretation out there you're going to believe what you want to think.

I don't agree entirely that mainstream media has lost all of its credibility, but I especially don't think that readers can turn to the mass of blogs out there as "credible" news sources, or at least more credible than professional outlets.

Blogs are viral webs of opinions based on opinions based on more opinions. It's exhausting to read through thousands of words of mudslinging to find whatever "truth" you're looking for, and, as I think UT pointed out early on, there is a blog out there for you, however left, right, up or down you lean. Filters might work for educated readers, but I think - for at least the next 10-20 years or so - the average person isn't going to exert that kind of effort. Most of those who do will find two or three blogs that complement their opinions and feed bullshit from there anyway.

Bloggers challenge the media because they can do things the pro outlets can't. They can openly preach an agenda, they can be inflammatory, they can expand on hypotheticals based solely on rumors. They are also completely at liberty to - and often do - omit facts or whatever that don't work in their favor. Suddenly that's become a more respected form of news analysis? I struggle with that. But is it needed to advance discussion? Of course.

Yes, editorial crusading is awful, and mainstream media (mostly TV) needs lots of retooling. The errors and bias are committed by relatively few, and it's usually in the sake of trying to get a scoop. But don't think the major outlets aren't there to challenge each other, too - trust me, I hear plenty every day about doing what it takes to beat the big papers and wire services by proving that their facts are inaccurate or downright wrong.

OK, then is personal success measured in change (which ain't likely) or in the effort to try, to do the "right" thing, to make an effort?
Seems to me the double belly buttons and JW's seem quite content with preaching regardless of success.
Radar's liberals keep butting the wall of reality quite happily.
You older folks might remember the Brooklyn Dodger fans chant, "Wait till next year".
Maybe these people fall into the "fat, dumb and happy" category but I'm not so sure that's a bad thing.
At least I've got the fat and dumb down. :lol:

I believe my role on this earth is to try to improve the lot of humanity somehow. I don't have to succeed, all I have to do is try.

Not to veer wildly off topic, but I believe that, too. There's got to be moderation though. You can kill yourself trying.

The object, I think, is to die trying. Understanding that success is not required should reduce the number of people that kill themselves.

Personally, I feel the best way the lot of humanity could be improved is through targeted assassinations of some of the worst offenders against it. Spammers, persistent trolls, dictators, record company executives, linguistics professors with delusions of political genius, etc. Only problem is

1) It's hard to implement
2) I'm pretty sure I'm on the list.

russotto - i'll second your emotion if you will kindly add one category to the hitlist: Lobbiests.

thank you.

If you put lobbyists on the list, you need to put the members of the organizations that hire lobbyists on the list too. Only fair. The lobbyists are just doing what they are told.

so were the soldiers in auschwitz.

i guess i was looking at the whole lobbiest organizational chart. i'm into mass extermination. it helps with population control.

In the arena of blogs vs traditional media.......I got an email today from the L.A.Times. I guess they feel moving the paper onto the web is enough. Same shit different venue. :rolleyes:

I got the same e-mail, I guess hit delete. BTW they let me out today. Five wonderfull nights of what ever.

Welcome back, Buster. :D

Congrats on the running head start. I hope it takes you to some good places, buster!!

I hope you get hooked up with some great people, busterb. That seems to be key in early sobriety...good luck my friend!

Thanks all.