May 9, 2006
Blogs Vs. MSM
I wrote this in response to the Don Surber post The Truth About Newspaper Circulation
Don,
Why does blog vs. MSM have to be binary either or? They both have strengths and weaknesses. Do I have to read only one and not the other?
Why make a comparison between the hits the top 770 newspapers get and those one top blogger gets? Shouldn't you be comparing either the hits of the top newspaper to the top blogger or the top 770 newspapers with the top 770 bloggers? If 770 newspapers get more than 365 time the hits one blogger gets, does that mean the top blogger gets more than twice the hits of the average top 770 newspapers? Wouldn't that be an amazing statistic?
Don, what's with "blogs have no credibility"? With whom? You? Do you have any data (the plural of anecdote isn't data) to base this on? Frankly, there are blogs that have no credibility with me, and there are those who have a great deal of credibility. There are a few MSM outlets left that have a great deal of credibility with me, but most have little to none. Can I generalize from my opinion to what the general public thinks? Not without data. For what it's worth, my memory of the last survey I saw on this subject said that only 19% of people surveyed thought that newspapers were usually reliable.
There are some blogs out there doing far better analysis than most of what I read in the newspapers. Not opinion in the sense that most opinion pieces are written: I present only the facts that support my position, but a real exploration of what's going on and an honest attempt to make sense of all the messiness of the real world.
There are blogs out there doing original reporting - who's provided better basic eyewitness reporting in Iraq than Michael Yon (or Michael Totten in the middle east)? We get better basic eyewitness reporting of protest demonstrations in blogs all the time. Blogs finally got Dan Rather off the air, and Captain Ed brought down a government. The sad truth is that at the moment the best blogs are bringing clarity and the best newspapers are bringing FUD (and the worst bloggers are far worse than the worst papers).
For me, there are certain structural problems with the MSM (what is news, the news cycle, that sort of thing), but they pale in significance to what I would consider the real problems of the MSM today: bias, arrogance, poor judgement, and quite frankly just lousy quality. These are quite fixable problems if the MSM can just realize what the problems are - and I fully expect with the MSM moving to the net the outfits that correct them will thrive and those that don't will disappear.
I want a reliable press who can report the facts, provide the context,and help me understand what's happening in the world. I'm not getting that today, and I'm unhappy about it.
