You’re also right that there are plenty of crackpots with blogs. But the idiotic “birthers” who seem obsessed with the Obama citizenship myth aren’t just being propelled by bloggers. There are plenty in the mainstream media goading them along as well: Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, etc.

What I’m writing about in this article falls somewhere in the middle. I’m writing about feature stories and about non-timely news. This is where I think traditional journalism is just manufacturing stuff, and I think it’s lame.

But breaking news? And actual journalism. I concede that you are correct! :)

I respectfully disagree. You put too much trust in blogs which are more often than not, just opinions. Because blogs tend to be on a equal footing, you get things like the perpetuation of myths like Obama’s citizenship and 9/11 conspiracies. Somewhere in all the opinion, actual facts get lost. Without traditional media, you wouldn’t journalistic gems such as this:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lisker22may22%2C0%2C121834.story

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-kingdrewpulitzer-sg,0,1507651.storygallery

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers6-2009may06,0,3038809.story

You’re just not going to get journalism like this in blogs. There’s no money for it.

Blogs certainly have their share of faults, but as long as readers remember to take the content with a grain of salt, blogs can be a great place for learning and discussion (and cursing damn it!)

Watching most mass media interviews with bloggers, or reports on “blogging” makes me want to hurl. Bloggers are treated as newbie journalists and their ideas are condensed to bullet points that barely scratch the surface and usually mis-represent the true intent.

I recently wrote about why learning about personal finance from blogs is preferable to mass media for me. Some of the main points from that post:

- Learning about specific situations of specific people is much more useful than the “average” case. Even though it’s specific, it really does hit the “98%” you talk about, because most averages of mass media are really … exceptions. Curious how that works…
- Blogs provide unparalleled accessibility to the writer, and therefore accountability to write about truthful experiences.
- Blogs build community (actually, I did a plug for the GRS forums because I think it’s a fantastic example). Community results in better and more authentic learning.
- Blogs encourage the “collective answer.” Even though factual bits and pieces may be wrong, the community usually points out the errors and picks up where the blogger left off.
- Interconnectivity encourages bloggers to fill in missing information that hasn’t been written about, and to present alternative points of view.
- Authority isn’t established by the paper or mass media website you write for, but by the community respecting what you have to say.

So, like you, I say goodbye to old media, with no regrets.

P.S. For fear of coming off as spam, I won’t share the link but it’s easy enough to find on my blog’s recently popular list.

Happy to find your personal blog, J.D. Some useful and inspirational reading here.

Two kinds of journalism can potentially be very different – the “NEWS!” (what/where/when, a superficial coverage of major issues) and the in-depth topic exploration (who/what/why is X, with varying levels of depth and potential to be biased by the reporter/editor’s lens).

http://gipscorp.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/media-moguls-1200X849.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership

It was eye-opening stuff when I researched back during the election season.

This is how it sounded in the interview: Mrs. K stayed home and raised her two daughters, now they’ve gone to college and she has too.

How it actually is: Mrs. K has a Ph.d in Linguistics and had a career as a professor before having children at the age of 40. Now that the younger is in college, she’s decided to brush up on her skills so she can give more advanced private lessons than the beginner Latin lessons she’d been giving before.

The way it was played it was “isn’t it fantastic for this woman to be able to get the education she’d given up by staying home with her kids?” Mom was quite annoyed with that. She said they should have ditched her interview if it hadn’t played to their story–there were other women using the program who would fit it fine.

You think that it should, because everyone puts such a social premium on being current-events-savvy, but once you move away from that, you realize that you barely even notice that you’re missing it. Occasionally at work someone will bring up some new congressional act that you hadn’t heard about, and you realize when you buy groceries that you have no idea who the celebrities are that supermarket tabloids write about, but otherwise, the news hardly makes a difference.

Take “swine flu” as an example — this has been a big enough deal that I have heard it mentioned a few places, but if I hadn’t? It wouldn’t have made a difference. I didn’t get it, no one in my family got it. Had we never heard the news articles about it, it would have been business as usual and made no difference in our lives at all.

The news industry is *exactly* like the advertising industry — it’s built around convincing you that the thing it’s selling (itself) is important and will make you a better person for having bought it. In reality, news is no more important than other piece of junk being advertised on TV and sold at Walmart. Like the junk at Walmart, certain items are useful to certain people, but filling your life with more of it isn’t inherently better.