Point-Counterpoint
Cookie Dough:“I’m an old media guy and I love newspapers, but they were brought down by a long period of gluttonous profits when they were run as monopolies by large, phlegmatic, semi-literate men who endowed schools of journalism that labored mightily to stamp out any style or originality and to create a cadre of reliable transcribers. That was their role, crushing writers and rolling them into cookie dough. Nobody who compares newspaper writing to the swashbuckling world of blogging can have any doubt where the future lies. Bloggers are writers who’ve been liberated from editors, and some of them take you back to the thrilling days of frontier journalism, before the colleges squashed the profession.”
Invasive Surgery:“I would trust citizen journalism as much as I would trust citizen surgery.”
—Morley Safer, “60 Minutes” newsman, 2009
(Thanks to alert WORDster Terrie Claflin Martin)
(Thanks to alert WORDster Terrie Claflin Martin)
Editor’s Note: Thrilling elective surgery?
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Interesting spin from Keillor. I have a hunch that he’s on target. We still smack of that notion “that I’ll decide what you need to know,” arrogant bastards that we are.
ReplyDeletej.
Your daily messages remain a treat, like a bag of peanuts at a baseball game. Today's is especially enjoyable, even though Garrison roasts us with half-truths, sort of like newspaper columnists. Then Morley, in the next breath, vindicates us. Ahhh, words well used. At my age, nothing better.
ReplyDelete--Ed Mullins, Center for Community-Based Partnerships, Tuscaloosa, AL
Ted,
ReplyDeleteI love your point-counterpoint today. Keillor and Safer are both right. The distinction is that some trained, qualified journalists (writers) are blogging and have discovered their freedom as a result. Unfortunately, many untrained, uneducated "citizen journalists" are not blogging, they are babbling. Unfortunately, many readers are more often than not caught up in the emotional rants of the babblers and actually give those babblers reason to babble again and again.
Uneducated, uninformed, unskilled, inept citizen journalists would be gone in a flash if it were not for the fact that they have such a large group of uneducated, uninformed, unskilled, inept readers for an audience. Unfortunately that audience is growing. Education is the answer, and it always has been. All good writers are frustrated by the fact that they have to write to an audience who cannot comprehend what they read.
Have a great weekend!
David