"Ass-Welt" Journalism

Howard Kurtz is fascinating on the topic of "Blogs: Good or Evil" but I take exception to this dichotomy:

A better series of questions: What can MSM types learn from blogs, both in terms of criticism of their work and as a more freewheeling form of communication? Should reporters blog, and if so, what are the boundaries? Would blogs be more of a factor in public debate if more of their practitioners did a little research -- say, including the very old-fashioned notion of calling people up -- instead of merely pontificating?

Calling people up instead of pontificating?  AHHH!  I reject these false choices!

Let me use Google to slide behind the TNR subscription firewall and liberate Jonathan Chait to argue an alternative vision; his topic was the Democratic convention in Boston and the undue emphasis placed by the MSM on "on-the-spot" reporting:

Conveniently enough, I've developed a theory justifying my opposition to convention reporting. Here it is: Reporting as a whole, while obviously necessary, is overrated. The mania over attending news-free conventions merely epitomizes a mentality that values going places and talking to people above all else. This prevalent ethos was expressed in the ur-journalism movie All The President's Men. Protesting the assignment of the Watergate story to young city-desk reporters, a Washington Post editor notes, "I have some experienced guys sitting around," prompting a devastating rebuke from his fellow editor: "You said it--sitting around."

But what's so bad about sitting around? You can learn a lot sitting behind a desk, mining the papers for interesting factual nuggets, reading political commentary from every perspective, poring through books and reports, and using the Nexis database to compile enormous stacks of newspaper stories. Most journalists scorn this kind of research because they're obsessed with uncovering new facts, not synthesizing them.

...  Part of the problem is that journalism terminology glorifies "shoe-leather reporting," whereby you pound the pavement so often you wear out the soles of your shoes. Yet there's no widely used term of approbation for the other kind of reporting. For this very reason, my New Republic colleague Franklin Foer and I decided a few years ago to coin a phrase: ass-welt reporting. It means you've sat in your chair for so long reading books and documents that you've worn a welt the shape of your backside into your chair. I'm not saying that every news story could be reported without leaving one's desk. (Bernstein: "Woodward, look! I found a clip from 1971 in which President Nixon tells the Omaha World-Herald he plans to order his goons to break into Democratic headquarters in the Watergate Hotel!" Woodward: "I'll cancel that meeting with Deep Throat.") I'm simply saying that, sometimes, laziness can be the better part of valor.

I'm not worried that reporters currently spend too much time with Google and Nexis.

MORE:  Fine, Howard Kurtz did say "...a little research -- say, including... calling people up", (emp. added) but I still dispute the suggestion that there are not plenty of well-researched blogs out there.

Comments

[windansea]

Tony Snow on the media

“My view of the press right now is that we’re living in the Wild West, and it’s pretty exciting,” he said. “Because the old sheriff used to be ABC, NBC, CBS. Now you’ve got networks, you’ve got cable, you’ve got talk radio, you’ve got the blogosphere.

“The blogosphere has never quite gotten its due, and sooner or later it will,” he said. “But you’ve got pouring information in from everywhere. So you grab your surfboard and get on top of the wave rather than underneath it.”

[windansea]

PS...real bloggers don't call people...they Skype them

[Barry Dauphin]

One of my concerns is that too many reporters substitute "shoe leather" for doing more serious research on subjects. Talking to people is often beneficial and necessary, but it is not a substitute for thorough researching. Part of the problem involves the mechanics of news delivery and the need for deadlines with newpapers and TV. Even if there is no "news" to report, they have to say something. Whatever is produced on deadline then takes on an air of certitude instead of being understood as provisional.

[topsecretk9]

I''m not worried that reporters currently spend too much time with Google and Nexis.

Hey, Dana Priest apparently would have benefitted from this approach.

She might have learned that her Pulitzer Prize story today was a 2000 rewrite.

[JohnH]

There is a role for reporters to play in going to the scene and actually reporting what is happening there. Blogs bring together a portfolio of expertise that news media never really had, becuase the reporter was choosing whom to call. Even if the reporter calls an "expert", it is a pre-chosen expert, and the reader is still just getting the view of the world through an individual reporter's eyes.
Rathergate was the defining moment in showing the advantage of blogs, because it not only brought great expertise into play very rapidly but also allowed anyone to challenge the expertise and show the world that the conclusions that were reached were solid and unassailable.

[lonetown]

I see another false dichotomy:

Burning shoe leather or impressing your ass in your seat.

From what I see lately, reporting is merely answering the phone and printing what your told by your democrat handler.

[R C Dean]

if more of their practitioners did a little research -- say, including the very old-fashioned notion of calling people up -- instead of merely pontificating

Irony, thy name is Howie.

[Granddaddy]

Lonetown,

You're almost right, but journalists have to be much more tech savvy than just picking up a phone.

Nowadays they have to know how to use their computers to cut talking points and quotes from the DNC website and paste it into their news stories.

[clarice]

Nothing for me to add. You've all said it well.

[thepretendpundit]

Bloggers & new media pundits have the advantage of being involved in a high-speed, knowledge-building network. Blogging offers the:

1. high speed of broadcast mediums,
2. In-depth written and visual analysis of print mediums, and
3. Self-networking technology of 1,000 telelphones and cocktail parties.

And we can make up news without getting fired:

Karl Rove Named Anchor of "ABC World News Tonight"
http://www.pretendpundit.com/2006/04/of_adminstratio.html

[Dwilkers]

"Would blogs be more of a factor in public debate if more of their practitioners did a little research -- say, including the very old-fashioned notion of calling people up -- instead of merely pontificating?"

That's rich, especially considering that the media - including Kurtz - were pontificating about the Hiltzig matter and, as Patterico pointed out, not one of them called him - including Kurtz.

[windansea]

That's rich, especially considering that the media - including Kurtz - were pontificating about the Hiltzig matter and, as Patterico pointed out, not one of them called him - including Kurtz.

Dwilkers....you should email Kurtz with that!

[Dwilkers]

By the way: no. None of these news organizations has ever called me in connection with this story.

Although he apparently did receive a later call from an AP reporter, which he returned only to never hear back from the guy.

[cathyf]

As far as I can tell, "best practices" in journalism only goes as writing down what each source tells you and then spelling all of their names correctly. A communications major while in college never has to take a class beyond about 8th-grade level, and certainly they aren't required to have even that much anywhere in their K-12 experience. So many of them have absolutely no resources to realize when the thing they are repeating doesn't even pass the laugh test.

Which I suppose is what rathergate was all about. Nobody at 60 Minutes had a clue as to how giggle-inducing their "documents" are. Most still don't get it.

cathy :-)

[Lew Clark]

What the MSM absolutely refuse to face up to is the difference between news and propaganda. You need a lot of facts to report the news (and if the facts don't mesh with your preconceived philosophy, you bite the bullet and report them anyway). Propaganda needs no facts, just persuasive arguments for your preconceived biases. In fact, facts get in the way of good propaganda. Most of the MSM is now a propaganda organ where facts are poison. The blogesphere certainly has it's propaganda organs, but the speed, variety, and access allows the facts to come through. When Will Rogers said "All I know is what I read in the newspapers" he was being ironic. If I depended solely on the MSM (including FOX btw), I'd be just as ignorant, bitter, and sad as our lefty trolls.
It's no accident that blogs are being banned in repressive countries. The truth really gets in the way of the "official version".

[Old Dad]

This takes me back to my youth. I can recall when the Western Roll was the preferred method of high jumping by almost all the elites, but then Steve Fosbury came along. The howling was amazing. The flop was not athletic, it was ungainly, it would never last.

MSM, meet buggy whip.

[pouncer]

This sort of contrast is nicely illustrated in a Bill James baseball essay -- which was also a review of a David Halberstam book.

Halberstam took the "shoe leather" approach, interviewing a bunch of veteran ball players and synthesizing the tales.

James reviewed the actual stats of the games, as archived and reported at the time.

Turns out Halberstam was routinely wrong about matters -- either his sources misled him, or mis-remembered, or misunderstood, or Halberstam himself went for the more dramatic bits instead of the facts.

[Lesley]

MORE: Fine, Howard Kurtz did say "...a little research -- say, including... calling people up", (emp. added) but I still dispute the suggestion that there are not plenty of well-researched blogs out there.

Posted by Tom Maguire

TM, I agree. There are plenty of well-researched blogs out there. Based upon my non-scientific observation, some bloggers and consumers of internet news complain of gaining a few pounds given the amount of time they spend scouring cyberspace.

Guess we'll have to refer to that as "ass widening" journalism.

[Neo]

There is also the option of considering the place for blogging as the virtual "happy hour" or cocktail party where you get the word from friends and strangers.
Unfortunately, I think all too often the reporters look forward to the cocktail parties for the cocktails.

[Rick Ballard]

Lesley,

Wouldn't that be 'fundamentally broadening' journalism?

Btw - that Botticelli could certainly have been the one.

[Paul Zrimsek]

Why would someone coin the phrase ass-welt journalism without going on to coin the word Assweltanschauung?

[Lesley]

Rick 'fundamentally broadening' journalism is certainly more decorous and genteel. I like it!

I had a wonderful few hours digging through my art books attempting to find the painting you described (I was in the Ufizzi about a month ago - my daughter lives in Florence) and I ultimately recalled seeing that very painting in the Botticelli Room. I'm anxiously awaiting my moment to shine on JOM when Tom posts something about female Florentine Fashion from 1550 - 1590. Boy, I'll wow the socks off this blog.

[ordi]

OT - Didn't the left say Rove was to be indicted today?

[topsecretk9]

say, including the very old-fashioned notion of calling people up -- instead of merely pontificating?

Hmm. Would they, WAPO, be EAGER in taking and/or returning TM's call?

Sidenote: Kurtz's notion here is preposterous/insulting/naive if only because he does NOT acknowledge the reality of the "CLUB" or "CULT" (take your pick) known as journalist/journalism (particularly in politics/DC)

2 incidents come to mind

1. WH Press corp hissy fit when they were snubbed in favor of the local Corpus Christi paper

and

2. A citizen Journalist DID get out of behind the keyboard and pound the pavement and he was crushed by the snobs that think they are the only ones entitled to press passes and question opportunities _ AS WELL AS HIS PERSONAL SEXUAL LIFE AND CHOICES HUNG OUT AS PROOF HE WAS UNQUALIFIED.

[woof]

Today, I am reading a trade journal on ERP software systems and it starts with an off hand comment on "WMD"s.

Do these people really think I want to know their opionion about politics when I am researching a business solution?

An "ass-welt" was definitely involved, but not regarding research.

[woof]

Today, I am reading a trade journal on ERP software systems and it starts with an off hand comment on "WMD"s.

Do these people really think I want to know their opionion about politics when I am researching a business solution?

An "ass-welt" was definitely involved, but not regarding research.

[sad]

Somerby is likely in deep do-do again.

http://dailyhowler.com/dh042806.shtml

[beautifulatrocities]

The new owner of the Village Voice has pissed off its staff by ordering reporters into the streets to do some actual work rather than sitting around writing anti-Bush screeds. Imagine!

[Forbes]

Shoe-leather journalism? If only.

Watch any of it and it amounts to, and appeals to, emotionalism or sentimentality; how people feel about an issue, an event, a person, i.e. the President.

Have an axe to grind? Go out an do a man-on-the-street interview, edit, and produce the "news" regarding a pre-selected story. Don't like the results? Don't run the "story."

Invented news--polling--or rather OPINION polling is fit to run as "news" on the front page of any newspaper, any day of the week.

An airline crash or other tragedy? Go interview the victims' relatives. Maudlin.

Foreign affairs, domestic policy, the military? Go interview an author on the eve of publication--and provide publicity for the author's marketing campaign.

It's all on TV, or in the paper, but where do I find the news?

Howard Kurtz? Writes a newspaper column and hosts a cable TV show...to report about...the reporting of the news!

Wall St. survived the onslaught of e-brokers, will Fleet St. survive the onslaught of e-journalism? I guess it depends where you discover the value-added in the process.

[Razib Ahmed]

'I'm not worried that reporters currently spend too much time with Google and Nexis."
I am not worired either. What is important is to to understand which source to trust and which source to doubt. In real life too we do not trust every source.

[Assistant Village Idiot]

Mycroft Holmes.

[samuelatinkk]

hello
what do
you think about the last things in asia ?
bye all


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