What’s that old saying?
If you can’t beat them , join ‘em.
One of the most interesting changes in the media coverage of the current gubernatorial race is that almost every major newspaper in the state has started has started a political blog.
A substantial part of the campaign coverage of the Washington Post, the Daily Press and other papers is now found on the paper’s own blogs, where the reporters mix straight reporting of campaign events, with political gossip, and their own perspective on what may be occurring.
This is part of a larger trend in contemporary media coverage that effectively erases the distinction between facts, and analysis, perspective and opinion. And while there are many objective journalism “purists” who find the situation appalling, my own feelings are far less negative.
While there is an awful lot of hand wringing about the decline of “objective” journalism and the blurring of fact and perspective, it seems to me that more and more people are actually choosing the media they read and watch based on its perspective.
If you’re a liberal Democrat who watches cable in the evening, you’re likely to tune in to the Obama station. Other people simply call it MSNBC.
On the other hand, if you’re a conservative who can’t stand Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow, you click over to Fox, because it’s “fair and balanced.”
It has been interesting to watch the Virginia based media adjust to the new reality.
There are some reporters who are far more comfortable reporting “just the facts” and are obviously struggling to develop the kind of individual voice that makes a blog interesting. But there are others who have a unique take on what is happening and express their perspective with a distinctive voice.
My sense is that we are moving into an environment where the reporter/blogger can establish her or his own brand, one that is essentially separate and distinct from the newspaper for which they work.
We’ll start thinking less about what The Post is doing, but will focus more on what Amy Gardner is writing, or what Anita Kumar, Roz Helderman or Mac Fisher has to say. Jeff Schapiro, of course, was blogging before anyone even invented the term.
Our own perspective on the media is likely to get far more personal and opinions are likely to be more intense.
Who are the fairest reporters? Who’s insightful and thought provoking? Who’s simply cynical and predictable? And who do we flat out just love to read?
Who’s the all-star team of reporters and analysts that we look at every day?
Fortunately, for people who want just the “facts,” the internet will give them plenty of places to go. Just think of how the Virginia Public Access Project has placed everything we need to know about campaign finance just a few clicks away.
The collapse of the business model for daily newspapers has raised a set of serious concerns about the future of journalism in contemporary America.
But I tend to like the idea that more and more we’ll be judging reporters on their personal capacities- intelligence, insight, sense of fairness, angle of vision and wit- and not simply on their institutional affiliation.
Isn’t this how we like to do things in America?
In an age of “vanity” news where leftists just want to be spoon-fed more of what they believe in and the right want to only hear from those on their side, I really think sites like yours that aggregate stories and opinions from both sides will have a very strong presence/niche in the new media world. Thank you for what you do! I think blogging, on the whole, is great because it cuts through the old and stale establishment media that had been too complacent and too clubby. So long as bloggers don’t become like those they characterized themselves against (old media) and don’t become hacks, bloggers help truthseekers seek out what’s really happening a lot better–and quicker–sometimes than those in the old media who only printed the news that was “fit to print” in THEIR opinion.