Media Giraffe
I’m at the Media Giraffe Confab at UMass, after driving up here with Jay Rosen (four hours in the car, plotting to take the world over complete). Will blog as paneling allows.
Helen Thomas is speaking first. I’m not sure why. She dives right into her screed: “I never felt before that our country is as rudderless, leaderless as it is now.” Follow with litany of privacy fears, “the fear card,” WMDs, and “that groveling, Republican-controlled Congress.”
Well, I suppose it’s an interesting beginning to a journalism conference in the new age when objectivity is dead. We are, indeed, watching its obit.
But it’s also interesting that the woman who has thrown lighter fluid on the embers of her career with opinion and advocacy now also tries to keep others out of her game: “Everyone with a laptop thinks they are a journalist. The problem is that anything goes. There are no basic standards about what’s accurate and the truth…. Bloggers are not necessarily journalists.”
I am going to ask as a convener of the first panel, with Vin Crosbie, that we take a pledge: This is not about bloggers v. journalists, damnit. It’s not about preserving the past, complaints, seeing the people as competition, working apart, us v. them.
June 28th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
Great pledge, Jeff. I think my latest favorite quote applies here:
“The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting for the old, but on building the new.†— Socrates
Good luck!
June 29th, 2006 at 12:24 am
This won’t be the first time someone says that “B vs. J” is dead. I remember a little conference 18 months ago where that was the wish. But then the conference starts, and people take sides. So it goes.
June 29th, 2006 at 5:47 am
While it’s true that blogs are getting a lot of attention, and are a lot of fun, the research that media does isn’t quite being replaced by them. I would like to see more digging up facts, less arguing among each other, by blogs, myself. Helen Thomas has a lot of background in solid integrity, has earned her position.
June 29th, 2006 at 6:24 am
And Helen had the nerve to tell Hugh Hewitt that she isn’t biased? Or perhaps she limited her statement to her bias not finding its way into print. Which would mean she’s only openly biased when she speaks.
BTW, every time an openly biased journalist speaks down their nose at bloggers it makes me happy to be a blogger.
June 29th, 2006 at 8:07 am
[...] From Jeff Jarvis on Helen Thomas at Media Giraffe: [...]
June 29th, 2006 at 8:29 am
The folks who’ve convened the conference you’re attending know who is who and what’s what as far as the future of news gathering and dissemination. I say this because they found me and solicited me to attend, and, although those who know me might say otherwise, I’m really no one except a person with a brains to find a tool to express myself and, according to the few who do read my blog, the sentiments of, well, at least those 100 or so that read my blog regularly.
Helen, I love what you’ve done as a body of work over time, but please, get with the program. The times aren’t a changin’ - the times have in fact changed and we need to see “the times” as they are and work as best we can through whatever tools are available - blogs included - to make them what we want and what we need.
June 29th, 2006 at 8:59 am
A serious question for you Jeff, which I hope you might consider addressing in a post: If everyone is a journalist (the position for which you’re such an eloquent advocate), then why we need journalism schools, what is their role, and what type of person constitutes their student base? I ask this because you’re a key faculty member of the CUNY graduate journalism school, which will be starting up this fall. Thanks.
June 29th, 2006 at 10:22 am
We need some new terminology: blogger and journalist are based upon the type of media the person publishes in, rather than how they approach their task. So, in my book, Josh Marshall and his staff are journalists who publish online. They use the traditional tools of investigative reporting (contacting sources, digging through documents, etc.)
Others, like me, are not journalists. I sometimes do some information gathering from published sources to back some of my remarks, but I don’t contact people or attend newsworthy events. If I have to refer to what I do, I say I’m an armchair philosopher. I do comment on blogs and post essays on my own web site.
So maybe we need to use terms like “reporters” vs “commentators”. The french have the world “feuilletonist” which expresses the role of a person with lots of opinions. The outlet has just been moved from print to online. Helen Thomas is different then me and Markos and this should be recognized.
June 29th, 2006 at 10:34 am
Helen Thomas? Why?
June 29th, 2006 at 10:41 am
> the research that media does isn’t quite being replaced by them.
The media doesn’t do research, it rewrites press releases and leaks.
The flacks and leakers can distribute those things without “the media”.
June 29th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
So Andy, you read that the SC rebuts the pres’s usurpation of authority, or you go sit there in the SC and listen?
June 29th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
[...] Also blogging this: - Jarvis picks on old lady (Hope those ads are paying well Jeff - ouch…) - Robert Washburn, Canadian journalism and tutor says opening session was messy - Fellow PaidContenter Staci Kramer - Steven Brant for The Huffington Post - Benjamin Melançon on Narcosphere [...]
June 29th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
Telling the truth is not a bias. Helen Thomas is right. She is adding to her reputation, not detracting from it.
Bloggers are the biggest liars in the world, because they’ll tell you exactly what you want to hear.
June 29th, 2006 at 4:17 pm
I read the opinion via volohh.com, where I got both links to the actual opinion AND commentary by folks who actually know the law.
The MSM doesn’t even come close.
June 29th, 2006 at 8:07 pm
Max, your version of truth is what you want to hear. You say Helen Thomas is right, but that’s an opinion of yours. How do you know she is right and (apparently all) bloggers are not? Can you quantify that?
I’m not a Bush supporter. I voted for a 3rd party candidate in ‘04 and will do so again in ‘08. I agree with Helen Thomas to an extent, in that there is a lack of leadership. However, that cannot be pinned on one man or one party. Do you oppose the war in Iraq? Then blame both parties because they both made it possible, only one party’s members are now backpeddling away from their vote and trying to blame Bush for deceiving them. This despite them having all the info that Bush had available when they voted in favor of the action. I think Hillary Clinton is a devil woman, but at least she isn’t attempting a revisionist history where her war vote is concerned.
June 30th, 2006 at 9:36 am
Good for you Andy, then you know that Sen. Specter has announced that having known the military tribunals were unconstitutional, he had already drawn up legislation setting up a court procedure for trial of the detainees, which he introduced yesterday? [source; watching C-Span coverage of yesterday's Senate session]
July 1st, 2006 at 12:57 pm
Objectivity, or deference, is dead?
July 1st, 2006 at 8:14 pm
More, regarding deference, from The Next Hurrah, that reflects my sentiment (and, serendipitously, specifically uses the word “deference” as I intended):
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:04 pm
My sense is that we need to train each other to catch lies and ridicule the liars, whether or not we agree with their overall philosophy. How can we best do it? How can democracy be a vote on true facts? Multimedia can glorify the expression, but the expression must be respectful of the people formerly known as the audience’s intelligence.
July 4th, 2006 at 5:45 pm
Hi Jeff…
I’m coming to this a bit late, I know…but still wanted to leave the comment:
yes, I was dismayed by what HT said, and even more dismayed when she kept saying how the people are “zombies.” Maybe the White House Press Corps are zombies right now…but they’ve got a tough job (maybe tougher than in the past)
But the people are hardly zombies. We’re out here having conversations every day.
It’s a heck of alot more than what people were doing when they sat in their armchairs and yelled at Walter Cronkite.
Robert Feinman’s got a point about changing the terminology a bit. Blogging is often about conversation rather than journalism (which is a process involving more than one person having an opinion.) There are those who use the blogging tool to create journalism…and they are some seriously smart cookies (you missed meeting some of them Jeff). But the rest of us are having conversations–sometimes about what y’all are doing, sometimes about our lives. Sometimes we’re using the blogging tool to write out short stories or exchange info about design and code.
Blogs are not one monolithic thing. Blogs are lots of things. Some will use them for journalism, some will use them for conversations, still others will use them for other things. It’s a form of communication– not necessarily always a form of journalism.