Just wondering
John Carroll, professor of mass communication at Boston University and senior media analyst for WBUR-FM, recalled how he was “flame-broiled on the Internet” for missing the satire in a blog he cited on television. Carroll chose not to fire back, but acknowledged he might have made a mistake.
“What I decided to do – and I don’t recommend this – was not to respond because I thought there is just no bottom to that well,” he said.
“You’ll never win getting into spitting matches with these people. And they have a lot more time on their hands than I do.”
Please share widely!
Carroll behaved most decently of anyone in that whole brouhaha. He did admit his mistake. I don’t know why he remembers differently now.
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p>Anyway, I’m constantly amused by the notion that “bloggers” are this special breed apart — people with special powers, or special malice, or whatever. Bloggers are jes’ folks. We are three guys with a website — well, actually thousands of people with a website, at this point. And the variety of viewpoints among bloggers probably roughly scans with that of the public at large. I don’t see why this is so mysterious.
No, really. The bloggers (not: readers/lurkers) who stick around either (a) have really thick skin, or (b) are getting enough positive feedback to stay around. That feedback could be ratings, responses, attaboys, whatever. In any case, I do think there’s been a sort of evolutionary process that’s taken case, where only particular types of people blog.
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p>In terms of spectrum, sure. But it seems pretty clear to me that the left part of the spectrum has far more representation than the right part, just as the radio spectrum has far more representation on the right than the left does, Air American notwithstanding.
He admitted his mistake in misunderstanding the post, and further admitted his mistake in trying to ignore the conversation, rather than join it. He handled himself well, all told.
And, just for the record:
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p>Wasn’t me.
you friend them because you want to stalk their profile and they are either not in your network or are private. DUH. Leave it to old people to not get the interwebz.
I never knew you were 1337.
was pwnd!
you friend them because you want to stalk their profile
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p>I think John understood that quite well.
Carroll was right about you people.
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p>He screws up a story and misquotes David and you had to call him on it. It’s just like you.
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p>Now he creates his own fantasy revised history, with unicorns and rainbows and you had to post what actually happened again. He’s right, there is no bottom to this well. I hope you can live with yourselves.
Of Carroll not “getting” blogs.
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p>Even dKos is very very forgiving to mea culpas once they sink in (does anyone else remember the Clinton/Obama wars? Or a million other times the progressives were angry about one Dem politician or another?). They are quite susceptible to reason, yes, even on dKos.
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p>The fact is, John Carroll himself could have, if he wanted, spent 10 minutes posting something here, on dKos, or any number of places with his explanation personally, if he’d really wanted to try and interact (yes, interact) with the bloggers.
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p>However, there’s two problems with the trad-med: they think we’re competition (please!), and they are territorial. The second is that they take what a few people say and extrapolate that the whole thing is a noisy mess not worth engaging. Let’s say Carroll did post on dKos. There would have been the 10% of the jerky “you suck” comments, but valuable discussion still would have taken place. But it’s the 10% that sticks in their minds. They think they should be treated with deference (and by they, I mean the lot of them, the trad-med, not Carroll personally, necessarily).
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p>Hate to say this, Carroll, but the future of news and media includes blogs – influential ones, even, ones that can do some of the job of keeping the fourth estate alive. You would do well to try to understand and even work with them. Hell, in college journalism courses everywhere, blogs are one of the things taught by in-tune professors. (I know, I’ve talked to classes about blogging.)
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p>Carroll on facebook? Ya know, maybe there’s hope for him yet.
It’s the top-down scenario of traditional news, versus netroots and ground-up models. (Witness my own experiences dealing with the Lowell Sun.) That’s what the trad-med are seriously scared about. Having to be accountable for the things you say to the rabble, instead of just to an editor.
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p>There are good reasons that both models are important, but to treat the second with derision is, honestly, job suicide in my opinion.
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p>By the way, half of the big bloggers actually were, or are, journalists. I find it amusing that bloggers are attacked for being “these people” that are impossible to deal with, when you have people like Josh Marshall doing blog work that crosses right into real, golly, honest-to-goodness hard news.