CaptiousNut says: “The most “justifiable” reason for that anonymous post was its untrammeled ignorance.”

I disagree. As someone who posts to a blog under a pseudonym as I do, I suspect that you might agree that anonymity allows people to express thoughts and ideas which they would otherwise feel pressured by society to keep to themselves. While I make it a point to try to never say anything online that I could not defend if confronted with in my personal life (anonymity is never absolute after all), I find that being free of the immediate pressure of family, peers and coworkers allows me to ask questions, make criticisms, arguments and observations that I would not feel free to in my personal life.

Just because the comments of this anonymous “journalist” are unimpressive does not change the fact that anonymity can be a beneficial thing and in no way detracts from the worth of the comment maker. There is also the fact that anyone (who has not already lost all anonymity by being in the public eye) who puts their real name up on the Internet is riding for a fall. If this journalist fellow had felt obliged to use his real name he probably would not have risked bringing embarrassment to his employer (which, given his arguments is a near certainty) so we would not have gotten to see Mr. Jarvis’ reply.

And in case you wonder why I don’t post my real name? I like my job just fine.

Best.

What is important is that newspapers are not a way to become informed. They pass along so much dis- and mis-information that they’re not really useful as a source of information. They have a front page, above the fold article on something they really feel passionate about. Then, when it turns out the story was really too good to be true, the correction goes on pg 17.

I used to read the NY Times every day. Then, they were my Internet home-page from 1997-2004. I don’t even bother reading them anymore as they no longer inform so much as slant what they tell so I think ‘correctly’.

Newspapers don’t “inform”, they spin.

Amazing. Enjoy your echo chamber.

As to why I’m anonymous, you’ve invited that, and I prefer it to the spotlight.

Spotlight?

Don’t you mean the ignominy of having getting lambasted on a worldwide stage?

We are all “web journalists” you dope.

And what in your opinion constitutes “Merit” in online news?
Flawed and biased, at least the print media has a form of meritocracy.
Not every numbskull who can scribble is given a voice.
Is that bad?

I dunno, it seems like “serious news” has become so trivialized and diluted with the thousands of clown acts posing as News Sites that important issues no longer have any weight at all and no longer force any attention. The murder of civilians in Iraq by US troops is reduced to “d3wd u sux0r!”.

I’m a longtime web journalist living the day-to-day reality of what I wrote.

These are real problems. The people who might nod at that sentence are not here. That’s one of the problems.

As to why I’m anonymous, you’ve invited that, and I prefer it to the spotlight. Since my early days online I’ve kept a self apart from my job.

It doesn’t matter who I am, or who says this. A report from a different edge got dropped at your place.

I bet some others would.

I was once a local journalist, and we were looked down on by the bigfoots from national news, or from the big newspaper. They swooped in for a murder or some other big story. But they weren’t there for the daily life of a community.

Big newspapers, with their bureaus and zoned editions, fractions of staff for a big geographical region, while everyone at the newspaper knew the big stuff happened at the big newsroom. Did you ever see a reporter get promoted to bureau…besides Washington DC?

Tell Journalist to tell Debbie Galant about how local news is something no one cares about.

Jeff the reason the editors, from Fred Flinstone to Interested in Internet, will never get it is because their worldview is built on the notion that local news, news close to people’s lives, is boring and unimportant. But news from the Statehouse or from some federal bureau of something is important. These bigshot editors think having someone stationed on Air Force One, or having a reporter in London when you’re coverage area is a city in the Midwest, is prestigious and important. It’s not.

I’ve got so much to say about this, I can barely organize my thoughts. (PS. Please tell your former employer to do something about their dreadful websites.)

Fantastic job of beating back his arguments. I admire your organized and logical thinking.

He had his plays well memorized though…digital divide, corporate profits, execs fleeing for the beaches.

Of course, he forgets to mention the former Inquirer writers and editors that now are well paid and work for NPR (William Marimow) or those at the Pew Foundation (forget the name) or The Constitution center (Jane Eisner).

Lastly, I drove a truck for the Evening Bulletin (Philly) for 7 years (late 1970’s) while I was in college (tells you I was a great student huh). It was union job and paid great. The old union guys had a saying “if you got fired by the Inquirer, go and get a job at the Daily news, if they fire you, go to work for the Bulletin for the rest of your life”). That was true until like most afternoon papers it folded in 1982.

Really enjoy your work.

Thanks,

AJ

Same whine, different bottle.

How ironic that anyone (librarian or journalist) in a field that is all about information would hate the idea that information could spread more quickly, more widely, and be discovered by interested people more precisely. And how sad.

Change is hard. People do it poorly. And yet somehow we live in a world with flush toilets and jet airplanes, and the Internet. So luckily for the rest of us Ludd and his kin keep losing this battle.

Got it – thanks for the clarification.

Matt, you’re a spamming toad…I’d ban your lame ass.

I like getting my information in a variety of ways, including the newspaper. While I realize that the information may not be up to the second, I really don’t need up to the second for a lot of information. I’m not making stock trades based on this information, I’m just learning about what is going on in the world, and in the country, and the state, and the county, and the local area. If I were making trades, sure, I would use the real time information sources, but other than a small minority of the time, who really needs the information blasting to them at every turn of their head or click of the keyboard.

As for getting the information when I want to and not on the newspapers schedule, well, I suppose I could read the paper at 7:00 in the morning, or, 7:00 at night. Sure, I’m on their schedule rather than mine for the next day’s news, but again, does it matter if it’s current to the minute?

What I find humorous about the meme’s out there, Digg, memorandum, Tailrank, etc, is that what are they, but a summary of the news. And, what is a newspaper, but a summary of the news. How often do articles change on the meme’s? I don’t know, but, we have Scoble and Weiner talking about new way’s to present the news because the main articles in the middle of the screen just don’t change often enough to warrent checking all day long.

And what about the fact that most blog’s don’t break news stories, but instead add subjective, and valuable, context to the stories? There certainly are blogs that break stories, as documented in Paul Kedrosky’s blog, but, are there that many? And not to say that newspapers break all the stories either, they don’t, they regurgitate a lot of stores just like the blogs. But, they do break a fair number of stories, and, if we depend on blogs for our information, who’s going to break the stories that they add commentary on?

So the loss of the newspaper journalist does concern me.

This is the man, by the way, who wants to be the next Republican President of the United States.

(READ MORE HERE: http://mattstover.blogspot.com/2006/03/so.html)

None of these idiots seems to comprehend that invading a nation which has not attacked us, killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians (the current best estimate, which our Pentagon continues to suppress, is 25-30,000 Iraqi civilians died in the actual fighting, and the bump in overall death rate from all factors, comparing pre- and post-invasion, suggests that the invasion of Iraq was responsible, by the end of 2004, for 130,000 Iraqi civilian deaths. And we wonder why they hate us . . .), kidnapping innocent citizens of friendly nations and shipping them off without trial or even the faintest shred of evidentiary review to be tortured — not to mention maintaining our own officially-sanctioned torture chambers in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan, and having an executive banch of government (Constitutionally charged with enforcing the our nation’s laws) openly declaring that our nation’s law does not apply to them . . .

I mean, how much more wrong can our fucking signals get? Ahhh, anyway. Anyone still wondering about the actual legality of the domestic wiretap program might want to check out the details here: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18650