Wow, you've gotta just freaking love the arrogance of the media folks...
Patterico is involved in a 'Dust-Up' at the LA Times with Marc Cooper (two friends going at it in Big Media).
They were invited to do a radio show - Which Way LA? - which you ought to listen to as well.
Patrick linked to it on his blog, and got this comment (reproduced in whole):
If you are the "competition" that the LA Times now faces for the first time, as you so ignorantly stated on WWLA (Olney caught you on that), I guess the Times can relax. Anyone who thinks even the best bloggers (which would not describe you, I dare say) are any substitute for the salaried hard work, reporting, investigation and experience of newspaper journalists is just a fool. How much of the real news on the internet comes from bloggers? By the way, that’s a rhetorical question. I can't believe Olney had someone as naive as you on the show.Comment by Sean Mitchell - 7/8/2008 @ 7:45 pm
Sean Mitchell, amazingly, writes for the LA Times.
I wrote about guys like him a long time ago - 'The Journalist In The Hat'.
And what was interesting to me was this - that while I have (violently at times) disagreed with other bloggers in face to face discussions, I always had the feeling that there was a discussion going on, a dialog in which two people were engaged and trying to understand each other's points, if for no other reason than to better argue against them. But in dealing with The Journalist In The Hat, no such dialog took place. He had his point to make, and very little that I said (or, to be honest, that others who participated, including Howard Owens, who pointed out that he had worked as a journalist) was heard or responded to. He had his points, and he was going to make them over, and over, until we listened.Or until we said 'bullshit' too many times and he walked away in a snit.
And I wrote about the core problem the Times faces
I think that newspapers - as a model for the kind of legacy information middleman that makes up the media industry - are badly wounded, but I doubt that they will die.But they will go from the 93% of the market for written news - and more important for a certain class of advertising - that they once owned to, say 50 - 60%. And more, they will lose the ability to set prices for advertising in the market, which will make the business model for the newspaper much, much tougher.
As an institution, they are going to have to change, and change a lot. I'll pat myself on the back for a moment here; I was interviewed by Harry Chandler for a job in the fledgling "new media" division of the Times back in 1995 or 6. I did some homework, and as we sat and chatted, he asked me what the "new media" Times ought to look like; I told him that first of all, it was going to have to be much leaner. About 30% of the bottom-line revenues of the Times had come from classified ads, and those ads were about to go away, I told him. And world and national competitors were going to go after their readers - the Washington Post would compete on coverage of national politics, and the BBC on coverage in Europe. Their answer was to regionalize.
He didn't like either answer, and I didn't get the job.
I still think I was right...and the institutional rigidity and arrogance that the monopoly revenues bought them are what is keeping their OODA loop two miles wide today.
Hey Sean - looked at your circulation and advertising numbers lately? Do you think the kind of nonsense attitude on display might have anything to do with it? Or are you just a helpless victim of technology, like a whaleship captain?
I've had some heated discussions with LA Times reporters in the past. Primarily in regards to their regurgitation of press releases as news. I'd have to say that I do at times feel sorry for some of them, especially the ones who have spent years covering a certain topic only to be regulated to pushing a subject like Nuclear Cannisters in Yucca to a 400 word column. That said, reporters need to stand up to their editors and let them know exactly how full of shit the paper appears to those who actually know something about the subjects being reported. Alas, I don't expect that to ever occur given the continual downfall of print media.
I'd like to think that someone's going out in person and doing reporting on the scene. I don't know how much of that newspaper reporters really do any more, but to the extent they do it, they probably have an advantage over most bloggers. When it comes to analysis of materials that already have showed up in print, at least on topics on which I have any personal expertise, it's a rare print reporter who outperforms the upper echelon of bloggers.