I would tend to agree with you Tom.
The "fun" side of this discussion is that most of the opinions are
factual, yet as with the press, many of them will not be true once
these changes have passed, especially those with a spoonful of fear
factor.
I can remember the uproar in the Docklands when the newspapers moved
from Fleet Street.
I am still looking forward to the day when a collection of great
journalists decide to work together, putting their skills online
beyond the grasp of publishers and "big business". I think we can all
agree that the "old" model of organised news prompted via vested
interest is becoming stale in what I hope is a better educated and
intelligent world. That is the beauty of sharing online..... with or
without compensation.
Not to stir up a huge nest, but I must also point out that for over a
decade now the business community has watched the internet with a
mixture of greed and confusion. At the same time, the speed of
evolution has taken most by surprise. The BBC still suffers from this,
in many areas.
The current Banking crisis is a great example. The velocity within the
market has allowed those with the knowledge to do some incredible
things, whilst the majority of Boardrooms/Governments have sat back in
wonder. Very soon, the generation at the top will be actually net
literate, which will save us all!
Meanwhile I am certain that quality will win eventually.
In my sphere of the music industry, there are actually many more
Artists now making money from performing and selling their music....
and they are mostly becoming enlightened by the fact that it can be
done without interest from the major record labels. No amount of
economic structure or business models can stop someone who is prepared
to generate an audience through hard work. Although the antique system
does try its hardest. I think it is a very exciting time for
journalists..... I get my reports delivered by email from all over
the world..... they mostly turn up on the TV news about a month later.
I no longer have to buy a week's fish and chips paper covered in
adverts to read some anonymous twaddle, a very British past-time, to
find some interest.... still it is also true that the journalists who
I read do not ask me to contribute to them as yet. I will be happy to
in future..... but I won't be paying the middle man again if I can
help it.
Regards
Rich
On 17 Mar 2009, at 09:58, Tom Morris wrote:
On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 11:15, Rob Myers <r...@robmyers.org> wrote:
That would be disastrous. In the UK this would preclude investigating
anyone who has anything to do with the state in order to avoid
endangering the university's funding. And in general it would turn
journalism from the investigation of truth (or at least matters of
popular interest) into just another academic postmodern solipsism.
Say what you like about academia, but one of the things I most enjoy
about reading academic journals is that there are absolutely no
mentions of booze-addled Premier League footballers, Pete Doherty or
Amy Winehouse's crackwhore antics, endless speculation about "what the
government will announce" or coverage any of these seemingly
surname-deprived people I see on the front of magazines (Cheryl,
Paris, Britney, Nicole, Kerry, Katie, Peter etc.). I've never seen an
academic journal attempt to incite the barely literate into attacking
paediatricians.
They also don't spend much time arguing about whether mediocre
comedians should be fired because stupid people were offended by a
phonecall. They don't spend much time bidding for ghoulish 'death
rights' on a talentless Big Brother star. Nor do they print churnalism
produced by PR flacks and endorsed by shady quacks and
pseudoscientists. If someone claiming that gravity is just a scam by
aliens, they don't put on the pretense of balance.
In all the academic journals I peruse, I've yet to see Barley-esque
blog posts about "finding oneself" by jet-setting of to India printed
there for reasons only of nepotism. None of the academic journals I
tend to read are managed by marketing arseholes who spend their days
reading shitty blogs filled with dumbed-down, Digg-friendly top ten
lists about SEO and "viral social media". They don't find the need to
get Gravity theorists and Intelligent Falling theorists in equal
measure for 'fairness' or 'balance'. They also rarely ever need to
uncritically print Number 10 or White House press releases for fear of
losing access.
Academic papers which don't clearly define what they are talking about
tend to get rejected, while the media are free to use moronic
generalisations like "the public sphere" (a term so broad that it
covers absolutely everything except hiding under a duvet all day) or
"political correctness gone mad!". They don't waste tremendous amounts
of money sending outside broadcast units out to stand around outside,
say, a school to illustrate a report about that school.
The difference between academia and the media is that while academia
publishes the odd postmodernist screed every so often, the media
actively practice the philosophy. Who gives a shit about the truth
when you can print lazy churnalism and get page views? Who gives a
shit about the scientific types who will get their panties in a knot
about it? That just gets us more page views, and who are they to say
they have the Absolute Truth (scoff!)? Who gives a monkeys about
living up to our old-fashioned belief in getting the most important
issues of the day summarised for the consumption of readers when we
can fill our pages with Jade Goody, endless Diana speculation and
articles about how social networking sites cause cancer. There's a
reason why journalists are generally considered to be on the same
level of trustworthiness as those no-win-no-fee lawyers with TV
adverts, PR gurus and investment bankers. And academic journals tend
to cover the things I'm interested in at a depth much greater than
that of even the "intelligent" media - the number of times I've
cringed as someone on Radio 4 has tried to "summarise the history of
Western philosophy... you've got about thirty seconds!" on otherwise
excellent programmes like In Our Time. There are things you can't fit
into a 500 word column or a half-hour slot.
As for actually getting academics to become journalists, it's
impractical, but not because of the state funding issue. The state
already funds the BBC and Channel 4, who produce reports critical of
the government. And those in universities have published research that
is critical of the government. So long as you set the system up right,
with checks and balances, I'm not sure why there would be a problem.
Of course, those trained up to be professional researchers might have
no special knack for doing what journalists do. Certainly, more niche
beats like science, technology, religious affairs, reviews of
literature, maybe international relations will be supplemented and
maybe replaced by academic bloggers. And a good thing too: almost
everything I read in the newspaper about anything I know about turns
out to be wrong in some way. The same is no doubt true for things I
read in the newspaper about things I don't know about. The other thing
that will probably happen is that there will be less redundancy in
reporting. In terms of radio, I listen to a few BBC podcasts, and
supplement them with a few NPR shows from the US, and even a show from
Australia. I'm not sure why the BBC don't syndicate some of these
programmes - probably because they fear getting angry letters from
people saying that they don't like listening to Ozzie accents.
--
Tom Morris
http://tommorris.org/
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