Entries Tagged 'new media' ↓

David Perel, editor in chief of the National Enquirer, happily defends his paper and gleefully calls out the MSM for pretending to be more virtuous than Caesar’s wife:

Old media, which chooses to call itself mainstream media, pondered its lack of action on the Edwards affair ad nauseam, spending more time looking in the mirror than Mr. Edwards during a $400 haircut. (And, like Mr. Edwards, it usually adores what it sees.) In its self-appointed role as Prince Myshkin (that Dostoevsky character whose purity of motive is an ill fit for society) the mainstream media (by its own telling) desperately tried to prevent the public from being despoiled by tabloid allegations of a deeply personal nature.
Now, just weeks later, the rules appear to have changed. An anonymous blogger on the Daily Kos published a rumor that Sarah Palin did not give birth to her most recent child, Trig. Instead, Mrs. Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, was said to be the mother. Liberal bloggers massed like ants at a picnic marching toward the coleslaw.

In other words: When the press fails to do its job, as the press manifestly did with John Edwards, then the seething, spitting, amorphous creature known as the “new media” (which includes the outlets of the “undernews”—blogs, the tabloid press, etc.) takes over. And it’s hard to argue with Perel when he asserts that this is a good thing:

The mainstream media would like to believe it has evolved from the era of William Randolph Hearst — he of the infamous proclamation, “you furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.” Yet, when a Republican VP nominee showed up with a pregnant teenage daughter, the mainstream media’s superego disappeared faster than Dan Quayle at a spelling bee.
The people who eventually hold the highest office in this country face unfathomable challenges. In electing them we grasp for any clues to their judgment and character, signals as to how they will react, and the verisimilitude of what they will tell the American people. An affair, regardless of political affiliation, is a breach of private trust; lying about it to the American public signals a dangerous willingness to deceive when caught in tough situations.
While John Edwards and Sarah Palin have served as lightning rods for the debatable issue of how personal controversy affects public worthiness for leadership, the mainstream media vacillates between ignoring and rushing into these types of stories. New media, with its raucous pursuit of every salacious rumor, feels no such restraint. Inchoate ideas and suppositions find purchase on blogs from both sides of the political spectrum.

Long live the internets!

Once upon a time the alleged John Edwards love child story was undernews.

Now it’s burbling to the surface of the MSM.

Yesterday it made Memeorandum.

Rachel Sklar wrote up the story and provided lots and lots of links to bring you up to speed.

But Mickey Kaus owns it, and continues to track it.

The other day, Stanley Fish mourned the passing of the primaries, because things have become unbearably dull on cable “news” [e.a.]:

From early February through the beginning of June, the lament one heard from the political pundits (echoing Cicero’s first oration against Catiline) went this way: How long shall we have to endure the ordeal of the Democratic primary? How long before we get to the real thing?

But now it turns out that the primary season – extended, it was said, beyond expectation or reason – was the real thing. And I say that because, at least to date, the current season – the season that was to bring a once-in-a-century contest between two men of different generations and clearly opposed ideologies – has been totally uninteresting. …

I cite in evidence the desperate efforts of cable-news commentators to fill out an hour or even 15 minutes arguing about whether Bill Clinton’s statement of support for Barack Obama was so brief and pro forma that it amounted to a slap in the face, or about whether Obama (or a staff member) was wise to banish women wearing head scarfs from photo-ops, or whether Michelle Obama came across as a regular – that is, all-American and not angry – person on “The View,” or whether John McCain could or should separate himself from George Bush.

Fish was amusing but wrong. The gossip that passes for commentary on cable “news” is the main event, not the sideshow. Look no further than this for evidence:

Clark Attack On McCain Upstages Obama Speech

The fallout from retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark’s Sunday comment that “riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down” is not “a qualification to be president,” dominated campaign coverage yesterday. In today’s coverage, Clark is widely seen as having hurt Sen. Barack Obama by seeming to belittle Sen. John McCain’s well known record of service in the Navy and his experience as a POW. Moreover, the controversy distracted media attention from Obama’s speech on patriotism.

The main event was supposed to be Obama’s big patriotism speech. It was kicked off the air—and along with it Obama’s carefuly crafted speech and carefully staged photo op in Independence, Missouri [get it? huh?]—by breaking gossip.

One pseudo-event was upstaged by some smart-alecks who dissect, parse, deconstruct, and beat it to death on television (for a handsome living).

That’s the inextricable link between American politics and the newsbiz, 2008-style!

That’s infotainment!

See? I told you that infotainment rules!

Back when we all had a sense of humor about the buffoon George Bush, we greeted that malapropism with the appropriate skepticism.It turns out, though, that PBS has found a way to do just that—increasing its viewership for Frontline, its superb documentary series,*** by streaming it on the Web:

Executives at “Frontline” do not yet know how many people watched their recent four-and-a-half hour documentary, “Bush’s War,” because of PBS’s complicated Nielsen ratings.Online, however, “Bush’s War,” which was produced for the fifth anniversary of the United States’ invasion of Iraq, has set a record, with more than 1.5 million views of all or part of the program, which was streamed in 26 segments.“Frontline” has streamed most of its documentaries free since 2002 (www.pbs.org/frontline), part of an effort to reach younger audiences than typically tune in to PBS. The online viewing to date of “Bush’s War,” which was broadcast in two parts on March 24 and 25, is an estimated “10 times the traffic of a normal show for us,” said Sam Bailey, the program’s director of new media and technology. Viewers are also sticking around much longer than they usually do on the site, typically for 7 to 10 minutes.

Who says that quality doesn’t sell?Think again.————–*** I have long been a devotee of Frontline. I’m on record as saying that I wish all hard-news on TV were done with the depth of Frontline documentaries. But of course I know it can’t and won’t happen.Still: kudos! serious television lives!

Sluggish times lead to …successful innovation! creativity! new ideas! weird new ideas!

I’m glad Jennifer Schuessler brought this up: The continued hang-wringing about the death of reading is driving me batty. Stop! 

Schuessler notes a great contribution to the Stop the Death-of-Reading Hysterics Club [e.a.]:

[T]he novelist Ursula Le Guin joins the fray with an elegant, wide-ranging essay aimed at deflating the N.E.A.’s alarmism (subscription required). The “hedonists” who love to disappear into serious books have been a minority in every age, Le Guin argues. What is falling by the wayside in our own time is social reading—the kind we do in order to be able to have “nonthreatening, unloaded, sociable conversations” with casual acquaintances. In 1841, strangers on the train could chat about whether Little Nell was going to be written out of Dicken’s latest serial. Today, we huddle by the water cooler debating whether Tony Soprano got whacked.

LeGuin correctly notes that our taste for stories hasn’t vanished. Our means of telling and communicating stories is evolving, along with our technology and our modern and ever-evolving way of life.

While that happens … at a glacial pace, all you book people: chill! 

Lots and lots of people read! They even buy books!
Serve the audience you have.