WSJ Writer: All The Failings Of Print Journalism Are The Fault Of The Internet
from the pshh-obviously dept
We've seen this before. Whenever something happens that people don't like and they need a quick repository upon which to place heaping amounts of undue blame, they always seem to choose the internet. Who do we blame for murders? Ghost stories on the internet, obviously! Why is that batshit celebrity's reputation in the pooper? C'mon, all the thetans point to it being the internet's fault, of course! Your South American government is experiencing a bit of the old rebellion-time amongst the citizenry? Yo soy internet (ed: Tim, you never took Spanish in high school, did you?).
But, typically, when somebody swoops in to blame the failings of one thing on a more internet-y thing, there's at least some tangential relationship. Those ghost stories were on an internet site after all, and that celebrity's antics were as well. And it's not like rebellions don't actually use internet services to coordinate protests. But what Edward Kosner of The Wall Street Journal managed to cobble together is truly amazing: high-profile failings in print media recently, notably the Rolling Stone University of Virginia rape story debacle, Newsweek getting the inventor of bitcoin wrong, and the traditional print media's complete failure to report on the known rape accusations against Bill Cosby, are the internet's fault too, even though the screw-ups themselves were within the print media. Confused as to how this could be? Well, Kosner's thesis essentially amounts to: this internet shit is, like, totally fast, and print media is trying to print really fast too, which is why they're screwing up.
To prove how completely unhinged this piece is, take two sections and put them side by side. Take, on one hand, the accusation that print journalists failed to report on Bill Cosby:
And the vastly experienced author of a new 500-page biography of Bill Cosby managed to blow the lead: to leave out detailed accusations by more than a dozen women that the beloved comedian had drugged and raped or otherwise sexually molested them.And put it alongside his assessment of the real problem:
Quite simply, print editors and their writers, and especially the publications’ proprietors, are being unhinged by the challenge of making a splash in a new world increasingly dominated by the values of digital journalism. Traditional long-form journalism—painstakingly reported, carefully written, rewritten and edited, scrupulously fact-checked—finds itself fighting a losing battle for readers and advertisers. Quick hits, snarky posts and click-bait in the new, ever-expanding cosmos of websites promoted by even quicker teasers on Twitter and Facebook have broadened the audience but shrunk its attention span, sometimes to 140 characters (shorter than this sentence).Got that? Traditional print journalists failed to report on the splashy story of Bill Cosby's accusers because they're trying to compete with the splashy internet journalists and...wait...what? I'm confused as to why Kosner would offer such a complete counter-example to his entire thesis. It must be a print journalist's thing. I'm just here to be splashy and sarcastic, so let me just say that Kosner is a buffoon and then put this cute picture of a cat in for good internet-y measure.
God bless this guy's stupid little furry face.
Here was a story made to go viral—doing journalistic due diligence on it might blunt its sharp edges and sap its appeal. As it happened, the Rolling Stone piece was undone by old-school reporting by the Washington Post, which has the resources to do its job only because it is being subsidized by the Internet billionaire Jeff Bezos of Amazon, who bought the paper from the Graham family last year for $250 million.Phew, thank god for that internet guy and his filthy, splashy, click-bait-y money, otherwise we wouldn't have had any journalism this Christmas, Virginia. The internet, it would appear, much like beer, is both the cause and solution to all of journalism's problems. It created the crappy Rolling Stone piece, then it fixed it too. It's almost as though the internet isn't really the controlling factor here, only the occasional trappings of lazy journalism. Sometimes that happens on the internet and sometimes it happens in print. All this is really driven home by Kosner's concluding paragraph, which appears to have been written as though all the preceding words had never been uttered.
The new, disruptive pressure of digital publishing on what has come to be thought of as traditional journalism isn’t going to ease anytime soon. Those who are owners or workers in legacy publishing have to understand that they can survive the onslaught—and perhaps eventually thrive—only by maintaining the rigorous standards that once made these publications not only respected but trusted by their readers and advertisers. Desperate times call for disciplined journalism.In other words, the failings described above are all to do with the journalists in those instances failing their own standards, not because of the scary, super-speedy internet. Come on, WSJ, you guys have editors over there, yes?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: competition, ed kosner, edward kosner, get off my lawn, internet, journalism, print
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
My forehead is gonna hurt so much after reading this.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Until you realize it's looking up at a kitten killer who's about to smash it in the head. "Please don't kill me Mr. Kitten Killer!"
Perception is everything.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
When a phone was just a phone
Dial up AOL
That's a long record of failing for them to blame elsewhere
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Controlling the Message
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
citation needed
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Wait, am I just passing the blame? Crap...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Stop blaming current society's ills on past society.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
It's that damn internet!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I was taught
By it's very nature, print journalism cannot compete in terms of producing news instantly. But print journalism can do other things better than anyone else when it really wants to, namely actual long-form journalism.
Perhaps they'd be better off to avoid losing their collective minds trying to compete against people playing to their weakness and instead compete by playing to their strength.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: I was taught
Long-Form journalism is completely independent of the medium used and I can easily argue that the Internet is a better medium for long-form journalism. Ink and paper on the internet is infinitely cheaper than print.
The problem with is that the people running print have gotten accustomed to the way the business is run with huge overhead and silo roles for their journalists. Since incoming ad dollars are shrinking, it seems like getting smaller and more specialized is the way to go.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: I was taught
The difference is that the existing print companies already have the mechanisms needed to effectively do actual long-form journalism. The vat majority of the online alternatives do not.
But I'm talking about potentialities, not actualities. The print media effectively gave up doing actual journalism a long time ago (before the internet could even begin to pose threat). This is, in my opinion, the chief reason that they're in trouble now.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Print journalism does not understand the internet
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Mr. Kosner was must have cut those "History of Journalism 101" lectures
The sweetest irony? That those who tout their formal, traditional journalism educational credentials could forget their own profession's earliest history... and its darkest moments.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
paywalled
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: paywalled
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
New and disruptive technology?
And TV news has also been quicker to report news stories than printed media. Is this also "new and disruptive technology"? I wasn't around in the 1950's, so maybe that's what TV was considered back then.
Here's an idea for them: instead of blaming all the bad things (radio, TV, the Internet, etc), concentrate on adding value to the news so people will want to buy the newspaper. Sure, newspapers and magazines may not be the first to report on something, but they can take their time and do better in-depth analysis.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Uhh...?
"Traditional long-form journalism—painstakingly reported, carefully written, rewritten and edited, scrupulously fact-checked [...]"
Do we live in the same universe? Does Kosner spend half the year in some strange, surreal parallel reality where Newscorp and the Daily Mail don't exist?
I gave up on print journalism over a decade before I learned to use the internet, because it's a load of crap. They've been referred to as modern-day courtiers to government and it's true. Regurgitating and chewing on state-authorised press-releases is basically all they're good for.
I got better value-for-money and value-for-time reading the news on BBC teletext (simple news summaries via the TV, about the length of three tweets).
Now we have the internet, print journalism is yesterday's joke.
Edward Kosner: a name to remember, and an opinion to be forgotten, as quickly as is humanly possible.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
editorial fluff
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
In those two quotations are the root of newspaper's failings. No one wants to print the story that pisses off their advertisers. Doesn't matter it's newsworthy and the public should know. It matters more if we piss them off they won't give us money anymore.
The second is the total lack of holding public officials accountable. Investigative reporting is dead in all but name. The government doesn't want this story printed and the paper agrees not to. Snowden anyone? This is part of why this country is as corrupt as it is. Public officials have little fear of being exposed for their wrong doing.
Instead we get dumb criminal news, syndicated news, but little or next to nothing with actual meat in it. I am still trying to figure out why I should pay for day old news when I can get up to the minute news on the internet. There is no longer a competition factor with newspapers and no longer a valid reason to go see them since they can't get their facts straight and can't tell it the way it is.
I'm sure the buggy whip makers had a lot of issues with society at the time when they were adopting the automobile.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The internet is to blame, the internet is to blame
Man that really is a shame but it is to blame, blame, blame
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
More Top Longform Resources
[ link to this | view in chronology ]