- Reaction score
- 1,200
- Points
- 1,160
Orginally posted at Small Dead Animals (a great blog site) http://smalldeadanimals.com/
http://www.fredoneverything.net/GreySludge.shtml See link to read all of the article.
An Oozing Of Gray Sludge
Reflections On Our Media of Communication
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
I love the media. They remind me of a man who bangs on his thumb with a hammer and wonders why it hurts.
Every year a conclave of editors and publishers laments the decline in circulation and blames illiteracy or television or the alignment of the planets. It’s someone else’s fault. Recently I saw a story, perhaps on Wired.com, saying that the media are finally realizing that bloggers and small web-only sites are undercutting them. How very alert of them. This too is someone else’s fault. One reporter thought it was because people want bias.
Permit me to offer another explanation: People weary of the usual media because they aren’t very good. How’s that for a shattering insight? (This column is big on shattering insights.)
Why are the media not very good?
In thirty years of in the writing trades, I’ve covered a lot of things, but three in particular: The military, the sciences, and the police. For years I had a military column syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate and later carried by the Army Times papers until I was fired for political incorrectness. For half a dozen years I rode with the cops all around the country for my police column in the Washington Times. And I’ve written tech columns and pieces for technical mags like Signal forever.
This isn’t my first rodeo.
In each case the reporters I met were, with very few exceptions, pig ignorant. The military reporters didn’t know the history, the weaponry, the technology, strategy, tactics, or how soldiers work. Almost none had served. The police reporters chased scanners instead of riding regularly and just didn’t know what was out there or who cops are or why they act as they do. The tech writers were mostly history majors.
Over the years I’ve noticed several things. First, in print publications, most reporters aren’t very smart. A few are very bright, but probably through a mistake in hiring. (The prestigious papers are exceptions, hiring Ivy League snots of the sort who viscerally dislike soldiers, cops, rural people, guns, etc.) Reporting requires assertiveness and willingness to deal with tedious material under pressure of deadlines. These qualities seldom come bundled with inquiring intelligence. Consequently reporters (again with the occasional exception) lack curiosity, and don’t read in their fields.
The results are reasonably obvious to all of us, no? Is it not true that when you know a field, those writing about it clearly don’t?
http://www.fredoneverything.net/GreySludge.shtml See link to read all of the article.
An Oozing Of Gray Sludge
Reflections On Our Media of Communication
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
I love the media. They remind me of a man who bangs on his thumb with a hammer and wonders why it hurts.
Every year a conclave of editors and publishers laments the decline in circulation and blames illiteracy or television or the alignment of the planets. It’s someone else’s fault. Recently I saw a story, perhaps on Wired.com, saying that the media are finally realizing that bloggers and small web-only sites are undercutting them. How very alert of them. This too is someone else’s fault. One reporter thought it was because people want bias.
Permit me to offer another explanation: People weary of the usual media because they aren’t very good. How’s that for a shattering insight? (This column is big on shattering insights.)
Why are the media not very good?
In thirty years of in the writing trades, I’ve covered a lot of things, but three in particular: The military, the sciences, and the police. For years I had a military column syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate and later carried by the Army Times papers until I was fired for political incorrectness. For half a dozen years I rode with the cops all around the country for my police column in the Washington Times. And I’ve written tech columns and pieces for technical mags like Signal forever.
This isn’t my first rodeo.
In each case the reporters I met were, with very few exceptions, pig ignorant. The military reporters didn’t know the history, the weaponry, the technology, strategy, tactics, or how soldiers work. Almost none had served. The police reporters chased scanners instead of riding regularly and just didn’t know what was out there or who cops are or why they act as they do. The tech writers were mostly history majors.
Over the years I’ve noticed several things. First, in print publications, most reporters aren’t very smart. A few are very bright, but probably through a mistake in hiring. (The prestigious papers are exceptions, hiring Ivy League snots of the sort who viscerally dislike soldiers, cops, rural people, guns, etc.) Reporting requires assertiveness and willingness to deal with tedious material under pressure of deadlines. These qualities seldom come bundled with inquiring intelligence. Consequently reporters (again with the occasional exception) lack curiosity, and don’t read in their fields.
The results are reasonably obvious to all of us, no? Is it not true that when you know a field, those writing about it clearly don’t?