What is a Blogger?

Besides a parasite on the American body politic. What, that is not the vibe given off by some of the reaction to the Eason Jordan affair by the journalistic establishment? Alas, that means it is time for another episode of What Shall We Do with the Bloggers?

Except that Nicholas Lehman's New Yorker piece actually has a few indications that big time editors are starting to get the message, that conservatives really do have some reason to feel marginalized by the coverage they get as something less than "three-dimensional humans."

But then the Chicago Tribune's James Warren goes and blows it all to hell with an extremely telling little riff he lays on Lehman:

"There is a consensus in newsrooms, and it's distinctly left of center. I suspect an overriding majority of the newsroom voted for Kerry--though up on the executive floor, a majority voted for Bush. But people don't realize the huge amount of content out there that's pretty value-free." He picked up the Metro section of that day's Tribune and showed me the front page. "Look at this! I'm not sure how ideology plays into the governor closing a dump. … [The critics] don't realize that ninety-nine per cent of folks in journalism aren't opining or covering the White House."

Well, Jim in that particular dump-closing case Illinois's dysfunctional, incestuous politics was surely at work. Yay, you.

However, a rigid zero-risk, environmental ideology has driven such dump-closing decisions in many cities across the country. Recycling? Ideology. Three-guesses how critically recycling is covered by most papers. News judgment about what constitutes a story is not value-free, it cannot be. Bloggers see what is on the front page and ask why, why nothing about this Jordan guy in Davos? Warren's blind-spot here is huge.

Further it is just madness to suggest that dissatisfaction with the mainstream media is a top-down affair. If it were, the Tulsa World would not be trying to invent copyright law on the fly to muzzle a software engineer. In fact, local issues inflame and drive public opinion in community after community, and critics of the dominant media voices in those communities know damn well the White House does not enter into it.

Comments

[Russ D]

I think by "value-free", Warren meant that the stories have no value. Seen the Tribune lately? I get no value out of it.

[Jeff A. Taylor]

Russ, you are obviously one of the operatives Warren knows is getting marching orders from Rupert Murdoch thru the fillings in their teeth. Been to the dentist? I thought so.

[Joe Grossberg]

Warren also ignores the fact that journalists and editors decide what *not* to cover. If it doesn't interest the editorial staff, it gets scant coverage.

[Russ D]

I finally read the New Yorker piece. As a former Tribune reader, I can see first-hand why I'm a former reader: the 3 Tribune editors interviewed are full of themselves.

I'll try to be brief. Quoting Warren some more:

"We?ve done significant research with readers of the Tribune Company?s three big papers...There was an increasingly visceral distrust in us?a stated, increasing lack of confidence in the local papers...They didn?t see what we were doing as materially different from local TV news?that was depressing. People don?t associate investigative reporting with us, but with local news.... They don?t see any difference between an investigative reporter and a blow-dried idiot."

And Don Wycliff has the nerve to call some of the readers "intellectually condescending?"

The problem isn't one of bias, it's one of timidity. And the Tribune is the most timid news organization in Chicago. Of the 2 big city newspapers and the 3 big local TV news stations, the Tribune is dead last in scandal stories, stories exposing political corruption at the state and local level. You basically have to work hard to avoid scandal in Chicago; perhaps they are overly sensitive to offending anyone, including public officials.

I don't think Warren quite has a grip on what "investigative reporting is". Case in point:

My family is from the poorest neighborhood in Chicago. I now live in the only Republican ward in the city. (Amazingly, the alderman's name is Brian Doherty.) Recently my neighborhood had 6 arsons in two days. Even in the worst neighborhoods that's unheard of, you'd think it would be news. All the Trib had in the paper at the time was 8 sentences about it, and those came from the TV station, and those were basically just a press release from the police department.

You'd think the one neighborhood in the city where the Trib kicks the Sun-Times' ass sales-wise they'd send a reporter to cover such a newsworthy event. You know, knock on a few doors, interview a couple victims. That type of investigation. No expectation of exposing anything, just an attempt to do a little leg work instead of just being a mouthpiece for the police. But they didn't bother. Even when the police announced an arrest, the Sun-Times jumped on it when they found out it was a firefighter; the Trib waited until the next day when the name was released, after all the TV stations reported it. Chalk one up for the "blow-dried idiots".