David Simon, the co-creator of HBO's The Wire and former Baltimore Sun crime reporter, speaks eloquently during a PBS interview by Bill Moyers on the demise of print journalism over the past 20 years and the loss of "1st generation reporting". (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeNc5y7lpYA&t=8m10s)
It's certainly uplifting to see that online journalism has something of a light at the end of the tunnel. It's just my personal experience, but I find the shift towards "long-reads," particularly by The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and other similar publications, to be a great boon to the people of the world. Is it so hyperbolic to say that "1st generation" journalism is as important to society as democratic government? I don't think so.
Either way, I'm glad that Salon has published this data to show that there is another way (a better way?). If you look at all the lemmings that simply followed the "quick-hits" journalism that Kerry Lauerman is talking about in this blog post, no one 5 years ago had the guts to turn the model upside down. I'm very glad and grateful that we are making progress to getting to a point where "1st generation" journalism can be found -- and will be sought after -- in online media.
Totally agree. Salon, The Atlantic, and New Yorker always have very good content. I never read the print version of Atlantic, but ever since they did a complete transformation to web, I've realized the quality of their journalist is really quite outstanding.
If that which the newspapers and television news agencies did was "1st generation reporting", what would actual transmission of newsworthy information be? 0th generation?
I mean, for instance, providing a live video feed or a riot, or videos taken by those in attendance, rather than a reporter talking about the event hours or days later. The video of Gaddhafi being killed, not the reporters seeking to let people know what happened without risking giving offense to any viewers?
It's not particularly relevent to Salon, but I'd prefer to see 'news' be reduced to uncommented raw feeds of actual video, with absolutely minimal editing. Show people what is happening. As soon as you 'explain' what is happening, regardless of intent, you introduce all sorts of biases and preconceived notions and the like. I would certainly like to see the continuation of long-form well-researched journalism of the past, which takes the raw news items and correlates them, provides context and meaning, etc, but I think that should be separate from 'news' reporting. It is article writing, which has been important in society for ages. Even though it was originally created due to the technological limitation of not being capable of finding original raw material, it does add significant value so it makes sense to keep it.
However, any medium like this responds to social trends. Society has been trending anti-intellectual for over 50 years with no sign of slowing. People do not want to stop and think, they do not want to be exposed to news that jars them out of their comfort zone. They do not want to read about ideas different from their own. They certainly do not want any analysis of the ideas they do hold as true, they see that as attack.
A big help to long-form journalism would be moving away from the concept of central agencies that employ these reporters. What do those agencies provide? Nothing. They used to aggregate reporters together, give them access to technological resources, editors, etc. All of that can be done by some software with an Internet connection. Take the entire revenue of one of those large agencies, and provide it directly to the reporters (they can contract freelance editors online without much trouble). See what kind of quality gets produced then.
I agree with some parts of your argument, but I really think that there is just too much content out there to consume. If you had "raw feeds of actual video, with absolutely minimal editing," I think you'll find yourself overwhelmed with information.
The job of the newspaper editor is to condense the material down, and like you say, correlate and aggregate it to form a narrative that is easier to consume. Sure, I'll concede that the majority of news editors choose to showcase worthless information -- particularly on television -- but you have to understand that it's a capitalist economic model and the newspapers are only delivering what the consumer wants.
"1st generation" reporting to me means a journalist who goes out and gets the interviews and video feeds. Do you think there were pre-existing "raw video feeds" out there for the Enron executives, the survivors of the Japan earthquake, etc.? "1st generation" reporting comprises the effort it takes a good journalist to identify which parts of the story need telling and going out and getting them. Yes, there is inevitable bias -- but we have to be able to take it with a grain of salt and make up our own mind based on potentially multiple narratives of the same story.
(Also, just to touch on this... I think you're underestimating the value of the news agencies. They provide resources to make quality reporting a viable economic model. In addition, they provide a name behind which the journalists' sources can trust. Would 'Deep Throat' have divulged his knowledge to Bernstein and Woodward if they had not been reporting for the Washington Post? Obviously, we'll never know the answer to that question, but I personally believe it's an important consideration for any potential source.)
The problem is that there are thousands of hours of video uploaded to the internet per minute. You can't watch them all, so you have to select what you watch. You need meta-information to select which videos to watch. That meta-information is inherently biased -- after all "which video is important" is an opinion, not a fact.
In other words, you're subjected to the editing process no matter how "raw" your news is. You can reduce it somewhat, but you can't eliminate it.
If you just show the raw data, don't you replace the reporter's biases and preconceived notions with the viewer's? You're certainly not going to get any "analysis of ideas they do hold as true" without any analysis at all.
Bill Simmons started www.grantland.com for the express purpose of having a place for long-form sports pieces on the web. I've found articles on the site to be hit or miss, but I enjoy the Bill Barnwell pieces on gambling and the occassional Chuck Klosterman piece.
It's certainly uplifting to see that online journalism has something of a light at the end of the tunnel. It's just my personal experience, but I find the shift towards "long-reads," particularly by The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and other similar publications, to be a great boon to the people of the world. Is it so hyperbolic to say that "1st generation" journalism is as important to society as democratic government? I don't think so.
Either way, I'm glad that Salon has published this data to show that there is another way (a better way?). If you look at all the lemmings that simply followed the "quick-hits" journalism that Kerry Lauerman is talking about in this blog post, no one 5 years ago had the guts to turn the model upside down. I'm very glad and grateful that we are making progress to getting to a point where "1st generation" journalism can be found -- and will be sought after -- in online media.