I get my ideologically favorite viewpoints from MSM and read blogs and such for the “other” side.

Yes, if only the mainstream media had been allowed into Iraq to thoroughly, accurately, honestly cover Saddam Hussein’s regime! Why, I was telling Eason Jordan that just the other day …

Has MSM done anything comparable in the past? If not, why would that time have been different?

“..we have lost that comprehensive view of the world that only a newspaper gives.”

Anyone remember Hearst?

What do you mean ? There is always plenty of 911 coverage at the anniversary time and there is coverage in documentaries et al.

Still waiting for the MSM to rerun 9/11 footage and remind people what happened that day.

All she says is “might”. I don’t really agree with her, but its possible

“Note that it’s unclear that MSM would warn us of an impending attack. Many professional journalists believe that it would be wrong to tell US troops about an ambush, so why is it likely that they’d spill the beans about an attack? ”

We’re not talking about details of an impending attack. We’re talking about the dangerous terror situation growing there, which could lead to an actual major attack. Not the details of the attack itself.

I don’t think historical patterns suggest that Web 3.0 will be about recentralization. In the West, revolutionary milestones have been about enabling the individual, chipping away at the power the elite have to disseminate information top-down.

Whether we start with the Roman Republic, the Renaissance, or the American Revolution…new avenues have been created to level the playing field and increase freedom. Eventually, though, those avenues are purchased in spades by concentrations of power and wealth followed by struggles and/or innovations to increase freedom and make it even more difficult to take it away.

Imagining this pattern and its continuation, the question I ask is will there ever be an innovation so revolutionary that it cannot be purchased, even by all of the wealth on earth or owned even by the strongest coercive force?

You ask an interesting question: do we need a mainstream media in order to have something to talk about at a national level (if I’ve understood you accurately)? I think the answer to that is “no.” That’s like saying we need a mainstream cough to catch a cold. The innate viral nature of overlapping social networks is sufficient for “mainstream” to emerge from the bottom up, rather than the top-down. Instead of being told what the news is, it is determined by a natural consensus.

Essentially, everything is flipped upside down…and it still works, but “better.” Instead of starting with one story carefully crafted by a professional fact spinner that is broadcast to the masses and then picked apart, stories are told to smaller audiences and undergo mass scrutiny before the story spreads into the mainstream.

We can see this happening all around us, but if the MSM ignores it or dances around it…the masses will never know. No doubt, there is a certain debt owed to the MSM and all journalism of the past…without it, something like Web 2.0 would never have been possible.

Ultimately, it isn’t us who need the mainstream media in order to communicate with each other. It is the mainstream media that needs us in order for it to communicate at all.

When has coverage made us aware of a major attack that occurred? Why would this time be any different?

Note that it’s unclear that MSM would warn us of an impending attack. Many professional journalists believe that it would be wrong to tell US troops about an ambush, so why is it likely that they’d spill the beans about an attack?

As far as Iraq goes, I doubt the bloggers would have made such difference. But the fact is that the mainstream media including the NYT went along pretty much like poodles with the admin’s lies.

“There is no war,” Remington wrote to his boss. “Request to be recalled.”

Remington’s boss, William Randolph Hearst, sent a cable in reply: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.”

Personally I find the BBC and PRI added to the NY Times do a pretty good job of covering world news. Domestic is another matter…

I agree with most of the posters here on this woman’s comments. Jeremy, Kris, TC@Leather Penguin, David Cooke, jblog, Percival L, pst314: all of you raise good points.

330angelo & Easton Ellsworth raise points I’d like to expand on. The blogosphere is decentralized. Does that mean it keeps us trapped, to some degree, in our own little worlds? And what is the cost of centralization, if that is needed? Does it mean a marriage between media and money must be forged, a marriage that is imperfect and ripe for abuse?

Most of you have focused on how we can use the blogosphere to find the relevant and important info we need. And you’ve pointed out quite rightly that the decentralized blogosphere allows for an awareness and participation that just didn’t exist when the MSM was the only game in town.

But take note of how Buzzmachine works. This blog gets a lot of attention because it is in dialogue with the MSM to some degree, in that it is engaged with the problem of centralized/decentralized media outlets.

Which brings up via metaphor the really, really deep question: To what degree do we, as citizens, need something in common, a common point of reference, to have a discussion that can be fruitful to all parties? It isn’t enough to speak the same language; what we need is something which sets the agenda, if not the exact facts of a situation. And that something, which exists in school as a syllabus, exists in a looser form in the media as a newspaper. We can point to it and say “so-and-so said this in this editorial,” and then have a debate about whether it should even be the topic (something that can’t be done in school, of course).

What will characterize Web 3.0 (when that happens), I think, is a recentralization trend, as opposed to an enabling trend. Google triumphed because it enabled. But it’s Yahoo’s directories which make Yahoo a force, still. What we need to do as bloggers who want blogging to mean more is ask what character we want the recentralization to take on. We don’t want big money tied to sensationalism and marketable crap masquerading as journalism. But we do need to recognize that there are things we don’t know, and maybe we need to orient journalism around expertise or a particular moral stance, and work from there. Maybe we need to think in terms of groups of bloggers as opposed to individual bloggers, and focus on the strengths of real time and cooperation.

Of course, these things are happening now, but you know what I mean. It does no good to bash the MSM at some point. They’re pathetic because they’re trying not to lose something of which they don’t understand the full significance of. The truth is probably that newspapers were more significant than the woman writing above even knows. And we need to figure out what that significance was and consolidate it, if the New Media is to prevail and be something lasting and productive and beneficial.

Yes, many hundreds of years ago Muslim travellers were reporting with horror and disgust on how Western women were allowed to appear in public, socialize, speak their minds, and actually be treated as something a bit more than property.

Yes, I’m sure that Geyer can teach us all why we should be apologizing to Muslims.

Newspapers are out to sell papers, much like the evening news, as a result, many news orgainizations sensationalize much of what they report to drive readership. Papers may also be influenced by political lines and/or corporate directive, so in essence you may get the story the news source/reporter wants to you to have; not necessarily the whole truth.

The beauty with the internet is that it allows one to choose stories of interest, but you can also check facts; i.e., determine if the article published or story reported (online or in print) was acurate or just a one-sided view. The beauty with blogs is that they’re a forum for opinion, like this one, which may be based on fact or fiction, but I’m free to post it. And if you’re reading this, take it with a grain of salt… it’s an opinion!

In case Ms. Geyer didn’t know, the Muslem distain for western lifesyle and philosophy predates my lifetime, certainly hers. Perhaps she may want to do a little research and find out just how far back it goes.

They do not. To the contrary, they provide an increasily narrow, biased, ignorant view of world events.

Hence the rise of bloggers to fill the gaps.

Ms. Geyer’s expressed views are a perfect example of why she and her colleagues in the MSM are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Sheesh.