The New Yorker, Blogs, PJNet and the Future
Last night I went to my, I swear, last, panel discussion on Blogs and Journalism. This one sponsored by the Atlanta Press Club. Also I finally got around to reading The New Yorker article, Out of Print, talking mostly about the desmise of newspapers. Here too, I swear, I will not read another of those “death of newspapers” articles again. Besides, if you have been a reader of the PJNet.org, there was not much new in that article.
I only want to go to panels and read articles that search for, and have suggestions for, providing new ways of ensuring that we will have high quality, ethically sound journalism in the future. I want it to be better than what we have now and had in the past.
For example, in the article the author Eric Alterman laments that with the fall of newspaper journalism we will have:
…the loss of a single national narrative and agreed-upon set of “facts” by which to conduct our politics.
My question is who has agreed upon the set of “facts” to which Alterman alludes. White, middle class, educated me probably, but what about all the poor and disenfranchised ethnic minorities that make up this country? Do they agree with that single national narrative? Did they get to participate in how it was written? I would argue, given that the newsrooms writing the narrative are still overwhelmingly white and certainly 100 percent well educated and middle to upper class, that a single national narrative might not be such a great idea in a pluaristic society.
We might be better off, when we find a way to pay for it –and I am trying to find a way with my Representative Journalism concept — to have many people writing from across the spectrum from many places as we collectively try to find a national narrative that belongs to all of us.
March 28th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Boy, was that a navel-gazer last night. Yawn. Remind me to swear-off panel anything. Apparently the suits were disappointed that the blogerati in attendance last night were not more fiesty. Hell, we were just bored out of our minds with beating the same ‘ole same ‘ole discussion into the ground. Their inability to seize a moment that started years ago is not my responsibility. And I sure didn’t start messing around with social media anything to “perform” for a bunch of deadly dull croporate suits on cue.
March 29th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
[...] PJNet – Blog – The New Yorker, Blogs, PJNet and the Future “My question is who has agreed upon the set of ‘facts’ to which Alterman alludes. White, middle class, educated me probably, but what about all the poor and disenfranchised ethnic minorities that make up this country?” (tags: media msm newmedia) [...]