MMMM #104 - The New Media: Nothing to Fear

     Used to be, executives and politicians, especially politicians, would be sent off to Iowa or Colorado or somewhere for "media training".
     A few days and thousands of dollars later, they would, in theory, be better prepared to do battle with those nasty reporters and talk-hosts back home who wanted to destroy corporations and political campaigns and the American Way of Life.
     It taught them to speak in bumperstickereze, allowing their comments to fit within the seven-second limit on soundbites on TV.
     It showed them how to answer the question they wished had been asked, knowing the reporters were mostly thinking about lunch or their kids or the cost of goat cheese at The Publix.
     It armed them to do battle against The Mighty Media.
     I suspect those interviewee bootcamps are touch less popular these days.
    Whom do they have to fear?
    The New York Times reports a big personnel turnovers in the world of new media (like Politico) because of the new pressure to break news 24/7, any kind of news, as long as it is posted before the competition.
    Some of the media factories now have big (digital, or course) scoreboards with the popularity of stories ranked by number of clicks.
    The more clicks, the more the reporter is paid. If your click count places you on the bottom of the heap, better be looking for work somewhere else. Who's gonna get more clicks...Paris Hilton or Paris corruption? Mel Gibson, or the reasons for and against a new State Constitution? Lady Gaga, or Lady Bird (who?).


     There was immediate pushback during the week, with the web bosses doing their usual bashing of  MSM. The CEO of  "The Business Insider" via The Huffington Post was leading the pack with a whining report so over-the-top and defensive that, at first, I thought it was satire.

It's true that this the information often appears in a rough, unedited, or incorrect form. But within seconds, millions of online fact-checkers descend upon it and hammer it into shape.

     Is he serious? Are we supposed to get our "news" from sources that will get it right, maybe, later, after milliions of people with special interest agendas have their way with it?
    Should journalists not be held to some work standard? Of course. But some stories take time. And sometimes, a lot of effort is expended looking into a story that ends up going nowhere. Those facts of journalism life should be respected. Reporting is not factory assembly work, or at least it shouldn't be. And as anti-capitalistic as it is to say, the number of readers a story attracts should not be the determining factor in whether it is a quality, well-written piece or not. But who's counting?
     And maybe I should go back to the "Business Insider" column later, after it's been worked on by those millions of "fact checkers".
     Meanwhile, both the MSM and the new media were sullied this past week during "coverage" of the firing of a low level Department of Agriculture black employee, when  one of those new media types selectively "hammered together" video of a speech she made 20 years ago, making it sound like she was advocating racism against whites.
      If you somehow missed it all, let me suggest Frank Rich's take on it in Sunday's Times. As I semi-watched the events transpire (I've been on vacation and cut back a bit on newsing), I was surprised to see nobody really holding the blogger who started it all accountable. Everyone was so busy beating up on the Obama Administration (much of which was deserved) that the main bad-guy seemed to have gotten away without a scratch!. The Rich column helps balance it a bit.
     I wonder what the Business Insider CEO would say to Shirley Sherrod about her experience with stories being "hammered together"?

[ALSO: check out this column in The Washington Post about another skill left in the dust of the old media: headline writing.]

[AND: I missed it first time around, but an excellent article at the Poynter journalism site about the U.S. states that now make it against the law for citizens to tape police in action. Really. No, not here in Alabama.]


[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog, usually on Mondays.]