| Internet publishing has earned a low reputation. There is no denying that. But only as a generality. When one gets into specifics, there are any number of excellent websites that exceed the level we see from professional journalists - off the top of my head, look at fivethirtyeight.com and their election predictions. They beat pretty much every single one of the pros.
And let's not pretend like everything in print is worthwhile, shall we? It's pretty pretentious to say this a few days after the featured story in your newspaper was Bruce Springsteen's new song. I'm sure a few fanatics appreciated the spotlight, but seriously - that was the determination of the single most important story of the day? Really? Really?
Farmer is wrong, as well, when he claims there are no editors online. There are as many editors as your writing has readers. If Farmer slips up, someone taps him on the shoulder and he fixes it before anyone sees it (theoretically). So we don't actually know how often he screws up. Me? I throw stuff out here and you guys tell me every single time I screw up. Every time.
The internet is - get this! - interactively edited. Blogs and bloggers that consistently get things wrong fall off like dead skin cells from the corn on your toe. Those who stay around, and who build a reputation, generally get it right. Yep, I still make mistakes. Mea culpa, I'm still homo sapien.
What the internet offers is immediacy. For a newspaper to print something, the have to check, double-check, perhaps call an expert. Here, we check, double-check, and sometimes just shrug and ask if anyone knows the answer. And you know what the amazing thing is? We get the answer more times than not.
Because blogs do not function as a gatekeeper of knowledge. We are a simple portal. We link all over creation because we know that other people know more than us and are better at explaining it. So jump through a blog and read it from the horse's mouth, so to speak. A printed page can't offer that.
This does not mean that blogs are better than newspapers. It just means that newspapers are not better than blogs. We're apples and oranges.
We couldn't function here without professional reporters chasing down stories. Most of us have other jobs and all of us have other responsibilities. No one wants the Ledg to succeed more than bloggers. And the Ledg should learn to work with bloggers rather than vilify them (and some of the editorial staff works very well with bloggers, so it isn't like everyone is out to get us).
I'm not that hopeful of Farmer's leadership, though. In his words: What I do on that will largely be driven by events, by how they affect the public and what in our best judgment is the position we should take.
Being driven where the wind wills is never a plan for navigation. Yeah, it will get you a change of scenery - but so will hang-gliding in a hurricane. I'm still not going to recommend it. How will one determine what is the "position we should take" if they have no firm stance from which to view it?
I voted for George W. Bush in 2000, largely because I don't believe in giving any one party more than eight years in office. And he represented change at the time. I thought it was needed.
Well, that worked out fine, didn't it? Change for the sake of change is always a bad idea. It's simply a guarantee to kill the good along with the bad and the indifferent. Even in a cesspool. |
