Newsweek Editor: Who Cares If Bloggers Criticize Us? As Long As They Link Us, We've Succeeded

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/11/newsweek_editor.php

Newsweek Editor: Who Cares If Bloggers Criticize Us? As Long As They Link Us, We've Succeeded
November 16, 2007 -- 4:49 PM EST

One thing that really bums this blog out is this inane idea still harbored by some in the traditional media that if you're getting criticized equally by both sides of the blogosphere, you're "doing something right."

Case in point: Newsweek editor Jon Meacham. The Columbia Journalism Review points us to a rather dispiriting interview that Meacham gave to Howard Kurtz, in which Meacham addressed Newsweek's hiring of Markos and Karl Rove to contribute political articles. Here's what Meacham, who occupies a very powerful post in journalism, had to say about this mag's decision:

"I'm fully prepared for both the right-wing and left-wing blogosphere to be outraged, which means we're doing our job."

If you take an equal pounding from both sides, that means "we're doing our job"? Please stop it. Right away. Thank you.

The editor of one of the two top newsweeklies tells us he goes to sleep with a smile on his face if he gets lots of criticism, so long as it came from blogs on both sides. But "doing our job" presumably here means "doing good journalism." So if people on both sides say you aren't doing good journalism, the correct response isn't to say, "thanks, I appreciate it." Rather, one should say, "Hmmm. People are criticizing me. Is there something to what they're saying? Is one side perhaps right?"

You always hear variations of this. The problem is this presumption that blogospheric criticism from both sides is equally illegitimate because it's equally rooted in nothing but ideology or partisanship. By this model, blogospheric criticism can't ever be an accurate response to any actual journalistic failures on your part. It can only be because the bloggers are trying to game the refs and get you to help their cause. If both sides are being equally noisy, this means that your journalism isn't helping either side and thus is "balanced." So no blogospheric criticism can ever be substantively legit.

The subtext lurking under this attitude, unwittingly suggested by Meacham here, is even worse: That blogospheric criticism is a goal because it boosts traffic. Blogs are good for traffic and nothing else, so never mind whether the criticism of the quality of our journalism is right or could improve our discourse. If we generate lots of anger and traffic, we're "doing our job."

The journalistic professionalization of one side of the blogosphere -- and not the other -- has been kind of a big story for the last few years. One side can be right, and the other wrong. Too bad some folks with very powerful posts at the big news orgs have missed it and are still stuck in this reactionary view of what's been happening.

much.

What we have now are "marketers". theya re marketing a story. They want just enough of "this side" and "that side" to appeal to everyone.

They end up pissing off everyone, and not telling the facts of the story.

getting "hate mail" from BOTH sides of an issue should NOT be the goal of journalism.

Telling pale shades of truth, or half-truths, mixed with a few tall tales is a stupid journalistic plan too.

Truth just IS what it is..Tell us EVERYTHING FACTUAL you can find about a story, report it without all the "leading" adjectives, and we'll decide who the "bad guy" is..

I have heard one of these hacks transcribing what a dem or repub said in prepared statement I would be a very rich man. Its like the MSM can't figure out that all politicians are going to spin issues most of the time because they have something to gain from that. However, its their job to give to un-spin it for us. Its more like they are incapable or unqualified to do that though because they don't understand the issues they are reporting on enough.

I just linked to "Newsweek" for the last time. Uh, no, Newsweek, I don't link to drive traffic to other sites. I link because those who are reading me should be able to look at the material I've read and am commenting on, and make up their own minds.

The traditional media is scared shitless of bloggers, and they should be. They want to believe that there is a huge amount of signal to noise ratio. Uh, there are a very large number of blogs now that offer much more substantive and truthful reporting than traditional media, and they're not going away. Bloggers have broken multiple important stories that the media virtually ignored. I might also add that the folks that run www.firedoglake.com were offering tutorials on the Libby trial evidence to traditional media. They knew more about the story than any of the print and TV journalists at the courtroom, for instance, and it wasn't the first time or the last it's going to happen.

Julie

not link there.

there are menus in average restaurants larger than the latest copies of Newsweak and Time..

Rove against Kos? Like a laser beam against a stick of butter.. I love Kos but while he may have an idea of the Pulse of the People, he's got no idea where the Juglar IS..

They should have hired me, I've cornered those assholes a number of times, on Scarborough and O'Rielly's shows... If only I would have maintained Takebackthemedia.com instead of making films and writing my book these past five years ... :)

Maybe, more often than not- considering the tabloid nature of the publications and the he said/she said crap that poses as "journalism" in the so called mainstream media.