Why The New York Times Should Stop Using The Term 'Newspaper'
from the bad-advice dept
I'm probably biased since our blog is our primary communications vehicle here at Techdirt, but I thought Mark Cuban's suggestion that mainstream media outlets like the New York Times should shun the word "blog" to describe their work was pretty silly. Cuban thinks mainstream media outlets should make up a term like "RealTime Reporting" to describe their blog-like products. The Times's Saul Hansell makes the essential point: "blog" describes a medium, like "column" or "newsletter." Calling something a blog doesn't imply anything about its level of quality. To the contrary, one of the advantages of blogs is that people can subscribe to them on an individual basis. This allows them to make fine distinctions. Not only are readers perfectly capable of distinguishing between the New York Times blogs and 15-year-old girls on LiveJournal, but readers will also learn to distinguish among the blogs on the Times itself. If some of the Times's blogs are brilliant and the others are mediocre, readers will figure that out and the best blogs will get more traffic over time. Another way to illustrate how silly Cuban's line of reasoning is is to put the shoe on the other foot. The New York Times company publishes a "newspaper." There are thousands and thousands of bad "newspapers" out there, from the National Enquirer to those free weekly papers that get tossed in peoples' front yards. So by Cuban's logic, the Times should avoid the word "newspaper" in describing its product to avoid associating itself with the riff-raff. Perhaps it should begin describing it as "PaperBased Reporting" instead.
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Filed Under: blogs, mark cuban, newspapers
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Are you stupid or something?
In most cases reading newspapers makes real sense. News collected and edited by professionals. All blogs can do is raise a ignored issue and let the media correct itself.
Any day I would trust NYT than any of the blogs!
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Re: Are you stupid or something?
Your argument is based on the simple misunderstanding that "blog" means "unprofessional." Now, in most cases, this is the fact. But, there are a lot of groups that take blogging professionally and cover legitimate topics that are as far from the unprofessional, online journal blogs that most think of.
The simple fact that you're reading Techdirt, and then try shoving in their faces that they're not handling it professionally, makes you the idiot. Or, the clueless.
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New Your Times
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New York Times
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Maybe I'm just too old, but...
I guess "blog == editorial" to me.
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However, every time I see Mark Cuban's name on something on the Internet, it's always followed by a pile of fail. You can take whatever he says and pretty well be assured that the opposite is true. I'm not sure why Techdirt or other blogs I read care about what he says. He's so consistently wrong he should just be ignored. He's Dvorakian.
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Re: jonnyq
Typewriters used to be in Dvorák style, but people learned to type too fast with them and the keys would jam. So they introduced a grossly inefficient one so this wouldn't happen. People go so used to it, that it isn't the norm. Stats show that people are 10% faster with this layout. So don't you mean Qwertian?
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Re: Re: jonnyq
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Re: Re: Re: jonnyq
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mark cuban
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They've got it backwards
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feh
Tim, I fully agree the NYT should cease calling itself a newspaper. Not because of the dearth of worthless rags out there that use the same term, though. More because the NYT should really be called an extremist propaganda forum. Truth in advertising and all that; people should know what to expect before they shell out their money.
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Re: Tim
Highly amusing and oooo so true.
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the wrong Dvorak
I think he means the _Useless_ John Dvorak
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Re: the wrong Dvorak
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Cuban story
Mediocre...as in Techdirt? Ah, now I understand.
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I Can See The NYT's Point
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Re: I Can See The NYT's Point
Er... it's not the NYT's that made the suggestion...
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Nope, no reortin goin on here pardner, as pinch laughs out loud...
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What's with all the NYT hatred?
It seems like most people who "hate" the NYTs do so because they heard some pundit declare the NYT as supporting one particular party, even though there's little evidence to suggest that's the case. While I don't think the NYTs does the greatest job covering certain subjects, it's ridiculous to believe that the paper is officially biased in one direction or the other. I've yet to see anything that suggests that's true.
It would be nice if people would stop taking talking points from the likes of talk radio and TV and start thinking for yourselves.
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I agree.
I think it's funny that the Times has the nerve to complain about declining sales as American Journalism falls into an Abyss of fluff and meaningless editorial opinion. It is for that reason that I agree with the writer of the article. I think they should call themselves something different. How about "Pointless Waste of Pixels and Bandwidth?"
It's got a ring to it, don't you think?
You see, that way, all you have to do is see the word, associated with the Fourth Estate, and know that their "Pointless" branded blog serves little journalistic value. Doing something like that would be a remarkably useful service to the rest of us.
But what do I know?
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