The News Object

Belmont Club points out what I earlier pointed out, but has been lost in the crowing over the "fall of the MSM (MainStream Media)." Specifically, that "the news networks still generate, via their reporters, the bulk of primary news." He then goes on to say that where the media fails is not in generating, but in analyzing news.


I think he's right (big surprise). I also think that the media is going to be transformed, but in a different way than perhaps many bloggers think. Lileks believes that we're heading back to the future: the days when each city had a handful of honestly ideological papers going back and forth like the waves. It's a good analogy, but I'm not ready to declare that "TV is dead." Those certain of their own superiority have been saying that "print is dead" for decades, who believes them? What may happen is a shift more subtle, a change in the division of labor. Reporters will "cover" the news, and provide the facts, but the recitation of it will become dryer, less prone to speculation and analysis, and less willing to jump to conclusions for fear of having to put Florida back in the Undecided Column.


On the other side, the blogs, who are empowering a people traditionally barred from entering the national public discourse, the Experienced, or People who Know What They're Talking About. The CBS story was debunked by a handful of guys with some experience in the field of document creation and technology, helped by others who had spent time in the merry land of military bureaucracy. Sure, the TV news uses "experts" all the time to lend credence to their story, but the TV format hardly ever allows someone to speak at length, and with supporting reasons, against the story. Now the kind of talk we hear at dining room tables makes it into the global dialogue. An important step indeed.


TV remains TV, the moving picture, the nearest thing to "being there." Watching the Towers fall three years ago told us all more than fifteen hundred warnings about Islamism from Instapundit or Andrew Sullivan. That isn't going to change. What is going to change is the degree to which the TV is accepted without question. No blog seeks triumph. We seek only balance.




UPDATE: Added to this a point I forgot to make before, and the link to my earlier argument. I also wanted to cross-reference this post with the fact, as noted on Instapundit, that John Kerry has been avoiding a press conference since early August. Surely, if the Old Media were such a prop to his campaign, that wouldn't be the case?


Don't be discounting them as useeless juuuuuust yet, boys.