Terror is global. Money is global. Media are global, especially the machines and wires. However, journalism, which is part of the texture of contemporary life, has to have the particulars of a people in it, and their present. We can see coming a producer revolution among the formerly consuming classes in media.'
-Jay Rosen
Jay is a press critic and writer who likes Media Dragon and whose primary focus is the media's role in a democracy. A member of the faculty since 1986, he is the current chair, and teaches courses in media criticism, cultural journalism, press ethics and the journalistic tradition, among other subjects. As Paul Taylor stated: Political stories don't just 'happen' the way hailstorms do. They are artifacts of a political universe that journalism itself has helped to construct Whose News? What Are Journalists For? Why Rise & Rise Many MEdia Dragons?
The Blog, The Press, The Media: The Power of Many: Each Nation its Own Press
Part of what I plan to say at the Alfred Deakin Innovation Lectures in Melbourne next week. I'm on my way there today, and may report in next week. Expect guest blogger Len Witt. Big wave to Blognashville.
In a state of nature there is no such thing as a free press. It has to be created-- typically, we think, by law. Therefore we have not one press in the world, (which would be a frightening thing) but one for each nation that has launched a free press, and kept that experiment going.
Laws making it legal to publish news tend to be the laws of one country. The publics gathered for news tend to be national publics, composed of many smaller, intricate and overlapping parts. It makes sense to speak of the Australian Press because it makes sense to speak of the Australian state, nation, people, political tradition, and public. There are institutions that correspond to these abstractions, and thousands of rituals bind them all together.
It dates from only 1976, but the Australian Press Council is of course one way we know the press is organized by category of nation. So is The Australian, the newspaper, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, to name the obvious. They reflect press identity as national identity. They also create it. We have no press council in the United States, by the way. It was tried once and the New York Times, among others, killed it.
Jay Rosen has written yet another brilliant essay: Bloggers vs. journalists is over. I don't think anyone will mourn its passing. There were plenty who hated the debate in the first place, and openly ridiculed its pretentions or terms. But events are what did the thing in at the end. In the final weeks of its run, we were getting bulletins from journalists like this one from John Schwartz of the New York Times, Dec. 28: "For vivid reporting from the enormous zone of tsunami disaster, it was hard to beat the blogs."
• Wait a minute, who is a journalist? [The Zeitgeist BlogHour: Romenesco: GatesKeepers Without Gate ; The Blog Transformation of Journalism ; Press As Participant ]
• · To me, phrases like the "liberal ideologues disguised as impartial journalists, who populate so many of our newsrooms" are a kind of music, sort of like chanting. We wouldn't ask about the truth content of a Sousa march, and that's how I treat statements like TA's-- the right's favorite music - Jay Rosen O'Reilly Network: A Conversation Between Dan Gillmor and Jay Rosen; PR Needs to Stand for Real Transparency
• · · Zmetro.com: Bloggers "who care about facts and ideas," and there are many of those, should be wary of the Orwellians on their own side, who are themselves engaged in propaganda-- the charge they are most likely to hurl at others. Political Jihad and the American Blog - Jay Rosen; PJNet Today: Blogging Advice from Jay Rosen: Be Complex - Be Different
• · · · Until recently, each reader who saw the holes in the occasional story he knew well was, in essence, an island; and most of those readers rested in some confidence that, even though that occasional story was problematic, the rest of the paper was, really, pretty good. Only now, the Net -- and in particular the explosion of blogs, with their outpouring of expertise in so many fields -- has connected those islands, bringing into view entire continents of inadequate, hole-ridden coverage. Reading List: Diamonds, Islands and a Meltdown ; The Theory Of Every Blog ; Guido vintage ‘61 links to another blog scoop: Another example of how bloggers can get to the truth faster than journalists employed by media outlets. Some of you may remember that Italian secret agent Nicola Calipari was killed when US troops opened fire as he escorted freed journalist Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad airport. He had just helped to secure her release after more than a month held hostage in Iraq. The US, the Italian government and Ms Sgrena have differing accounts of what happened Italian blog scoop
• · · · · Some interesting changes afoot over at BlogAds with Henry Copeland announcing BlogAds 3.0, including some new functionality and a new referral process Blog Ads to become Blog-snob ; Google to launch mobile blogging service for Blogge ; If you’re in the mood for a prickly political opinion, a salty suggestion or even a benign or humorous observation, your search need not go much further than Virginia’s great and growing collection of political blogs. Political Notebook: Politics and opinion: A blog delight
• · · · · · A Blog Revolution? Get a Grip ; A Character Blog Comes A Little Closer