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Pot calls kettle black in ongoing feud between print and Web journalists
Posted on June 17, 2008 by Douglas Bell
The July-August issue of The Atlantic includes a piece by lead features scribbler Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down) on the recent goings-on at the Wall Street Journal. In it, Bowden writes a predictable lament regarding the demise of long-form, responsible journalism in newspapers. The cause? The Web, of course, and Web-enabling buccaneer capitalists like Rupert Murdoch. All of which is fine, after a fusty Luddite fashion. But when Bowden gets up on his hind legs and announces that the Web “has yet to develop institutions capable of replacing print newspapers as vehicles for great in-depth journalism, or conscious of themselves as upholding a public trust,” I tend to get a little pissy. My debunking, after the jump.
Here is Bowden’s central point:
The Web gives voice to opinionated, unedited millions. In the digital world, ignorance and crudity share the platform with rigor and taste; the independent journalist shares the platform with spinmeisters and con artists… When all news is spun, we live in a world of propaganda.
Um, this as opposed to former New York Times bigfoot Judith Miller selling out her “public trust” for a couple of dinner dates with Scooter Libby? Or the National Post sandbagging op-ed writers so the Aspers don’t catch too much flak at synagogue? Or The Globe and Mail rolling over for big oil? Etc.? Etc.?
The idea that print ever ascended to some Edenic realm of integrity and talent—and moreover that the Web is the apple on the tree tempting us to fall into a pitful of horrible people like your humble blogger—forces me to answer in kind:
SHUT! UP!
• Mr. Murdoch Goes to War [The Atlantic]
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frustratedink June 17, 2008 at 10:08 a.m.
I guess Mark Bowden has never flipped through such publications as the Toronto Sun, New York Post and the myriad of British rags that have made a name for themselves in uninformed opinion. True, the Internet is really the world’s biggest bathroom wall where anyone with a pen can express their ill-informed opinions, but then the publications that I have mentioned above are little more than the toilet paper in that bathroom.
jade_lee June 17, 2008 at 2:50 p.m.
I agree.
Lit_200 June 18, 2008 at 3:55 a.m.
Doug Bell does a (very) little (honest) reporting now and then but most of his grist, by a huge percentage, is the (previously) printed word.
He makes a living by sucking boils on the ass of the fourth estate. Which is OK by me as long as he stays sharp and relevant.
Barbara_in_BC June 18, 2008 at 1:07 p.m.
Doug Bell had an earlier item about The Atlantic and its trashy Britney cover article. Turns out that it wasn't a big success with usual Atlantic readers:
http://www.foliomag.com/2008/atlantic-s-...
Atlantic’s Britney Bombs at Newsstand
Now-infamous cover sells 24,000 single copies—half as many as usual.
Back in April, when the 150-year-old Atlantic plopped Britney Spears on its cover, it faced a backlash—albeit an expected one—from subscribers, bloggers and assorted media critics, some of whom criticized the magazine for "selling-out," pandering to capture a slice of what Portfolio dubbed "The Britney Economy."
Turns out the magazine wasn't selling out at all. The Britney cover tanked, according to figures submitted by the Atlantic to the Audit Bureau of Circulations Rapid Report filing system late last month. The magazine sold approximately 24,000 copies at the newsstand, some 21,000 less than March and nearly 30,000 less than its January/February issue. The magazine sold 40,900 single copies of its April 2007 issue, per ABC. (During the second half of 2007, each Atlantic issue sold, on average, 57,000 single copies at the newsstand.)
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