I don't do political commentary. This piece--a departure from my normal work--will demonstrate why...
When I say brief, I mean 56 words. Here's it is:
A Brief Theory of the Republican Party: 2012
In so far as a political party in the United States can "decide" anything, the party decided not to have the fight it needed to have between reality-based Republicans and the other kind. And so it is having that fight now, during the 2012 election season, but in disguised form. The results are messy and confusing.
Given the state of our political discourse, one should expect to be misunderstood with a theory like this. There is no way to prevent that, but I will try to qualify some of the key phrases.
1.) When I say "reality-based Republicans" I mean those who recognize the danger in trying to make descriptions of the world conform to their wishes. By the "other kind" I mean those who don't. Or: members of the Republican coalition who exhibit certain behaviors F.A. Hayek wrote about in 1960. This quotation was dug up by Chis Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science. It is from Hayek's essay, "Why I am Not a Conservative."
Personally, I find that the most objectionable feature of the conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge because it dislikes some of the consequences which seem to follow from it – or, to put it bluntly, its obscurantism. I will not deny that scientists as much as others are given to fads and fashions and that we have much reason to be cautious in accepting the conclusions that they draw from their latest theories. But the reasons for our reluctance must themselves be rational and must be kept separate from our regret that the new theories upset our cherished beliefs. I can have little patience with those who oppose, for instance, the theory of evolution or what are called “mechanistic” explanations of the phenomena of life because of certain moral consequences which at first seem to follow from these theories, and still less with those who regard it as irrelevant or impious to ask certain questions at all. By refusing to face the facts, the conservative only weakens his own position.
2.) Readers will want to know what I have in mind when I refer to "members of the Republican coalition who do not recognize the dangers of trying to make descriptions of the world conform to their wishes." These four examples capture the tendencies I'm talking about, but it's the tendencies I'm talking about, not the examples! Still, here they are: The Birthers, a relatively "fringe" group who had a nice run for a while, though they were ultimately put down; global warming denialism, which is fast becoming a mainstream Republican position; the debt limit fight in the summer of 2011, which House Republicans started (so it's difficult to say that was "fringe...") and the claim that President Obama is actually a socialist, which is so common on the right as to almost sound banal these days.
Now it's not just that those things happened. It's that the people willing to believe that Obama wasn't born in the U.S.... that global warming isn't happening and the evidence for it has been faked by scientists with a political agenda... that the Congress could refuse to raise the debt limit and thereby send a message about fiscal discipline without wreaking havoc for the U.S. economy... or that the President isn't a mainstream liberal who believes in a vigorous role for government within an economy dominated by the private sector, but rather a full-on socialist who would if he could dismantle the system of lightly-to-tightly regulated capitalism that presidents of both parties have supported since the close of World War Two... these people vote, they volunteer, they donate money, they form organizations that are part of the fabric of the Republican party, they get elected to office, they hold hearings in Congress to make their points, they talk on the radio and try to influence other Republicans, they attack reality-based Republicans as apostates-- and in all these ways they loom larger and larger within the party.
3.) For a representative figure among reality-based Republicans I would go with David Frum, the former speechwriter for George W. Bush and a conservative who cannot stomach what has happened to his party. But rather than become a Democrat or claim some sort of ideological conversion, Frum has taken up his pen, as with: When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality? There he writes:
Few of us have the self-knowledge and emotional discipline to say one thing while meaning another. If we say something often enough, we come to believe it. We don’t usually delude others until after we have first deluded ourselves. Some of the smartest and most sophisticated people I know—canny investors, erudite authors—sincerely and passionately believe that President Barack Obama has gone far beyond conventional American liberalism and is willfully and relentlessly driving the United States down the road to socialism. No counterevidence will dissuade them from this belief: not record-high corporate profits, not almost 500,000 job losses in the public sector, not the lowest tax rates since the Truman administration. It is not easy to fit this belief alongside the equally strongly held belief that the president is a pitiful, bumbling amateur, dazed and overwhelmed by a job too big for him—and yet that is done too.
Frum again:
Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country dominated by a strong Christian religiosity. Within it, Christians are a persecuted minority. Outside the system, President Obama—whatever his policy errors—is a figure of imposing intellect and dignity. Within the system, he’s a pitiful nothing, unable to speak without a teleprompter, an affirmative-action phony doomed to inevitable defeat.
Because he wouldn't stop with this kind of thing ("a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts...") Frum was dismissed from his position at the American Enterprise Institute, a leading Republican think thank, and dropped from further appearances on Fox News, though the network never announced or explained that decision. Frum is also a despised figure in the conservative blogosphere, where it is assumed that the reason he talks this way is that he wants liberals to love him. My point is that Frum is willing to have the fight that the rest of his party did not want to have.
4.) F.A. Hayek is an intellectual god within the conservative moment. David Frum was a good soldier and solid citizen who worked in a Republican White House. My purpose in quoting them is to underline that what matters about the flight from reality within the Republican coalition is that it's an internal struggle. What liberal college professors like me think about it is irrelevant to the outcome of that struggle. What happened to David Frum matters; what I say about it does not. Reality-based Republicans will either realize the threat to their existence and fight it out with the other kind of Republican, or... they won't. So far they haven't. That's a mistake. It's bad for the country, it's bad for the political system, it's bad for the Democrats (because it breeds complacency and arrogance in the opposition) and it's catastrophic for the Republicans as a governing party.
5. So I'm not saying that the Democrats and progressives are the ones who are in touch with reality, while conservatives and Republicans are not. (But I guarantee you some will read it that way.) I'm saying that the tendency toward wish fulfillment, selective memory, ideological blindness, truth-busting demagoguery and denial of the inconvenient fact remains within normal trouble-making bounds for the Democratic coalition. But it has broken through the normal limits on the Republican side, an historical development that we don't understand very well. That is, we don't know the reasons for it, why it happened when it did, or what might reverse it. (We also need to know the degree to which it is a global phenomenon among conservative parties in mature democracies, or an American thing.) Political scientists: help!
6. Mitt Romney, the favorite to win the Republican nomination for president in 2012, is a reality-based Republican who cannot run as a reality-based Republican because he thinks he cannot win that way. Jon Huntsman's campaign is the proof of that calculation. All the candidates, including Romney, have to make gestures toward the alternative knowledge system, with its own facts. Overlaid on this pattern are the normal tensions between more ideological conservatives and what the press calls moderates, the usual conflicts among the libertarian strain, the corporate Republicans and the social conservatives. Journalists feel comfortable talking about these. They have no acceptable language for discussing reality-based Republicans vs. the other kind. So they don't. The result is a confusing mess.
Last week I participated in a one-day conference at Stanford called the Moby Dick Project. It originated with this blog post by Ben Huh: Why Are We Still Consuming News Like It's 1989? The conference was an attempt to think through why the user experience for news still sucks, and to get started on solutions.
The 75 or so people who were there were a mix of technologists, designers, start-up people and journalists. In the group I was placed in, we had an a geek who worked at the Center for American Progress, a journalism professor, the founder of a small online education firm, someone from Crosscut, a news site in Seattle, and the principal of a start-up that provides analytics to publishers.
The event was held at the Design school at Stanford. There were no speakers, no panels. A working session, it was called. Facilitators from the school forced us to move at a rapid pace from a statement of the problem to brainstorming solutions to sketching something that could be built and trying it out on other groups. At the end of the day all the groups presented their solutions. There were no breakthroughs, but it was better than a future-of-journalism conference where participants sit around saying, "Interesting... how would you monetize that?"
One of the problems that arose again and again (and the reason for this short post) is something I have spent a good deal of time on since I wrote National Explainer three years ago. The news flows to us without the context we need to understand it, or even to understand why we're getting it. In fact, this problem came up so often ("we need to know the context!") that Ben Huh, the organizer and master of ceremonies, banned use of the term unless the speaker could specify what was meant.
As it happens, myself and a few colleagues (Matt Thompson of NPR, Tristan Harris of Apture, Staci Kramer of paidcontent.org) organized a South by Southwest event on the future of context in 2010. (See my post for additional background.) In the preparation for the SXSW event and the discussion after, I was forced to think through the different meanings we attach to "context" when we complain about it being missing in the news system as it stands. I think there are three big ones:
1. Background knowledge. The knowledge needed to understand the news that is being reported now. This is analogous to pre-requisites in a college course: the stuff you need to know to "get" why an item of news is news. If you don't understand what a Collateralized Debt Obligation is, you are not going to understand the new report issued on the role that CDO's played in the financial crisis. A typical solution to this problem is an explainer article, an FAQ, or Wikipedia.
2. The story so far. This is vaguely similar to 1.) but not the same. The story so far is what's happened since before you started paying attention to the story. Or: where we are in the narrative. Analogous to joining a college course in week 5: you need to know what happened in weeks 1-4. That's different from pre-requisites. If there has been a committee investigating the financial crisis for a year and it finally fell into fighting over how to prevent another crisis, there is a "story so far" there. For many big stories, a majority of the users are coming in the middle of the movie. A typical solution to this problem is a timeline. You can see a "story so far" button here.
3.) Related material. Not the most evocative name, I know, but the best I could think of. This is context in the sense of the phrase, "the larger context." Not the news, the longer narrative into which it fits, or the background knowledge needed to get it (categories 1 and 2) but the different points of view that develop off the news, the deep historial context (financial bubbles in the history of the U.S., for example) the discussion of implications and consequences, the arguments emerging as the battle of interpretations gets underway. Analogous to "for further reading" in a college course. A typical solution to this problem is quality curation and a linkfest.
It helps to keep these straight, otherwise the cry for more context gets confusing because people are talking about different things using the same term. How to provide these different kinds of context is obviously an unsolved in the news system as it stands.
There was one other meaning of "context" that came up during the Moby Dick discussion, but it is relatively technical. When parts of an article (headlines, key quotes, summary paragraphs) are lifted out of the original frame they are in and float around the system, frame-free, we sometimes talk about their "original context."
To conclude this, a little quote from my National Explainer 2008 post...
In the normal hierarchy of journalistic achievement the most “basic” acts are reporting today’s news and providing current information, as with prices, weather reports and ball scores. We think of “analysis,” “interpretation,” and also “explanation” as higher order acts. They come after the news has been reported, building upon a base of factual information laid down by prior reports.
In this model, I would receive news about something brewing in the mortgage banking arena, and make note it. (“”Subprime lenders in trouble: check.”) Then I would receive some more news and perhaps keep an even closer eye on the story. After absorbing additional reports of ongoing problems in the mortgage market (their frequency serving as a signal that something is truly up) I might then turn to an “analysis” piece for more on the possible consequences, or perhaps a roundtable with experts on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer.I thus graduate from the simpler to the more sophisticated forms of news as I learn more about a potentially far-reaching development. That’s the way it works… right?
Wrong! For there are some stories—and the mortgage crisis is a great example—where until I grasp the whole I am unable to make sense of any part. Not only am I not a customer for news reports prior to that moment, but the very frequency of the updates alienates me from the providers of those updates because the news stream is adding daily to my feeling of being ill-informed, overwhelmed, out of the loop. I respond with indifference, even though I’ve picked up a blinking red light from the news system’s repeated placement of “subprime” items in front of me.
"Twitter invites casualness, yet it demands extra care." -- Science writer Carl Zimmer.
Yesterday I made a serious error on Twitter. Here is what happened.
TechCrunch ran this story: AOL Asks Us If We Can Tone It Down. It said that a writer for TechCrunch, owned by AOL, had gotten an email from someone at Moviefone, also owned by AOL, asking for changes to a review of a movie that ran at TechCrunch. The writer for TechCrunch, Alexia Tsotsis, included the email in her post, leaving out the name of the person who had sent it. I saw the TechCrunch piece in the afternoon, and I wanted to send it out over Twitter, but I also wanted to say something about why this little incident was vexing to AOL. It took me a few hours to figure out a way to do that. Around 4:20 pm I posted this:
Techcrunch: AOL Asks Us If We Can Tone It Down. http://jr.ly/7yyq Problem for AOL is the Moviephone guy doesn't know he did anything wrong.
So far so good. Well, almost. I didn't actually know whether the Moviefone person was a guy. And I misspelled Moviefone. These were like little warm-up errors for what came next.
A few hours later I was making dinner for my kids. They were doing their homework. While I waited for the meal to cook I was glancing at my laptop, and on Mediagazer I saw this post from film writer Scott Weinberg, whom I do not know.
Wow, I thought to myself. The story is a few hours old and he's already gone! AOL must be serious about creating a cultural divide between editorial and promotion. Just before serving dinner, I posted this to Twitter:
Looks like that Moviephone guy who told Techcrunch to tone it down is already gone from the company. http://bit.ly/ehNlfX
Looking at it now, I recognize that I put "looks like" in there because in fact I wasn't sure of the causality. What I should have done is ask myself: well, Jay, what is the connection between Scott Weinberg leaving Moviefone and the Tech Crunch story he linked to? Do you even know? This I did not do. Instead I served dinner and watched a documentary on Nile River crocodiles with my kids. Big mistake. Because I didn't see this when it went up:
Which is definitive proof that I was wrong. I also hadn't seen that Jeff Jarvis (65,000 followers) and Henry Blodget (27,000), among others, had passed along my erroneous, "Looks like that Moviephone guy is gone" post. My screw-up spread a lot faster because of that.
All this became clear to me when I sat down at my computer more than an hour after posting the misbegotten Tweet. There were people denouncing me for drawing an incorrect conclusion, and mocking me for claiming to be a journalism professor but failing accuracy 101. And they were right. So I set about correcting myself, first to my subscribers, then to Henry Blodget, Alexia Tsotsis and Scott Weinberg, to whom I apoolgized. You can see that flurry of correctives here. (Thanks to Philip Aittkin for collecting them.)
A few reflections: This was the most serious error I have made in 15,000 Twitter posts. I've screwed up before, of course, usually by passing along something I should have been more skeptical of, or by making a factual error in a statement I should have checked. This was different. It involved a person's reputation and a false charge. And I was the originator of an error that others were passing along. Lucky for me, Scott Weinberg graciously accepted my apology (thanks, Scott!) while Blodget, Jarvis and others quickly noted the correction. Repairs were made within an hour or two, but still: it should not have happened.
My mistakes: Doing more than one thing at once. Moving far too quickly from an inference to an assertion. Failing to fact check myself. Failing to ask in the first place: what do you actually know, Rosen? Usually, I write a Twitter post and let it set for a while, even if I've checked it and it's perfect. Here, I didn't do that.
Perhaps another, less conscious factor was involved: the urge for quick narrative resolution, as in: "Wow, he's gone already? That was quick!" I definitely remember thinking that a fast resignation or firing would make the story more interesting to Twitter subscribers who had read the first link. In this sense I wanted it to be true. Which is what people mean when they call a story "too good to check."
Another little lesson: most of the time I benefit from being a professor of the subject I Tweet about, and from having NYU in my handle on Twitter. But if you seriously screw-up, those advantages flip around and make the mistake worse.
This whole story was a bit snakebitten. Tech Crunch had to back off from its headline the next day because it too was wrong. (Which I also should have noticed.) AOL hadn't asked TechCrunch to tone it down. Moviefone had. "I kinda feel like we owe AOL an apology," wrote Paul Carr. "Moviefone is no more a representative of AOL Corp than we are. As such, the headline could just as accurately have read “Moviefone asks AOL to tone it down."
I think it's clear what that theme is. So I present the following without comment. Matthew Franklin on Twitter.
Sep. 7 @johnvacy ah come on you conspiracy theorists. U get more depth in political coverage from the Oz than any other paper.
Sep. 26 @oneplanetmikey So Gamut exists only as a counter to the Oz? Absurd. I like Gamut. But your Oz conspiracy theory is pathetic
October 1. @Pollytics Also sometimes wrong, not based on facts and often motivated by hatred or irrational conspiracy theories.
October 2. @thewetmale agreed. This is why people who attack Oz journos as tho we r all part of some conspiracy r wrong.
October 2 @thewetmale fair enuff. But the oz' harshest critics constantly misrepresent, verbal and fall for the great conspiracy theory.
October 3. @silvermullet Correct. Time to dump the bullying, bile and conspiracy theories.
October 6 @jayrosen_nyu You don't really buy into the big News ltd conspiracy theory do you? Don't you know how newspapers work?
October 6: @beardoc There is nothing for us to fear dude. That's just a conspiracy theory. What do I care? why would I care?
Finally, Matthew Franklin, October 6: Actually, I don't go for conspiracies and am not into attacking critics. U don't know me, do u
UPDATE, Dec. 6: There were some replies from the account of Matthew Franklin.
Dec. 5 @jayrosen_nyu happy to stand by those comments. They weren't discourteous. Pity u won't engage on issues.
Dec. 5 @jayrosen_nyu I only urge u to engage on fact. If anyone calls u on that, u attck them.
(I had asked Franklin, "Would such be an example of the courteous, unassuming reply to criticism you urge upon me?" with a link to the post you are reading now. You see, to Matthew Franklin a post like this is an "attack," just as normal criticism of the Oz is a charge of conspiracy. There, now I have commented.)
It happened in a Q and A with readers of The Guardian. I am posting it to here to provide a place to comment, since it is clear from my Twitter feed that not everyone agrees. My own view is that he should have provided a serious, by which I mean a morally serious, response to JAnthony's question. That he did not disturbs me.
What do you think?
JAnthony
Julian.
I am a former British diplomat. In the course of my former duties I helped to coordinate multilateral action against a brutal regime in the Balkans, impose sanctions on a renegade state threatening ethnic cleansing, and negotiate a debt relief programme for an impoverished nation. None of this would have been possible without the security and secrecy of diplomatic correspondence, and the protection of that correspondence from publication under the laws of the UK and many other liberal and democratic states. An embassy which cannot securely offer advice or pass messages back to London is an embassy which cannot operate. Diplomacy cannot operate without discretion and the protection of sources. This applies to the UK and the UN as much as the US.
In publishing this massive volume of correspondence, Wikileaks is not highlighting specific cases of wrongdoing but undermining the entire process of diplomacy. If you can publish US cables then you can publish UK telegrams and UN emails.
My question to you is: why should we not hold you personally responsible when next an international crisis goes unresolved because diplomats cannot function.
Julian Assange:
If you trim the vast editorial letter to the singular question actually asked, I would be happy to give it my attention.
In the December issue of Harpers (a magazine I have been published in, though it was years ago) the acerbic and frequently brilliant cultural critic Thomas Frank has an essay about the collapse of professional journalism's economic foundations. His piece is also about the cluelessness of journalism educators and the satanic mills that some call "content farms." Frank's general thesis is that the failure of the business model in journalism has been met by a "cognitive failure" among people like Jeff Jarvis and myself. We are too impressed by the wonders of technology--or too stupid--to notice what is happening.
This might be the worst time ever to attend journalism school. And yet if you cast about in those high places where the flame of the profession is supposed to be guarded, you will discover that almost no one has an idea for tackling the big problems in a way that stands a chance of preserving journalism. The looming catastrophe has merely furnished an opportunity for repeating, in an ever-higher register, the management theory cliches of the past two decades. Years from now, only a handful of professional newsgathering organizations may remain, but you can rest assured that the leaders of the nation's J-schools will still be talking about the need to "listen to the audience," trilling wondrously that we must "embrace change," and writing ecstatic little odes to "entrepreneurship."
And:
So powerful is our desire to believe in the benevolent divinity of technology that it cancels out our caution, forces us to dismiss doubt as so much simple-minded Luddism. We have trouble grasping that the Internet might not bring only good; that an unparalleled tool for enlightenment and research and transparency might also bring unprecedented down-dumbing; that something that empowers the individual might also wreck the structures that have protected the individual for decades.
Of course, Frank doesn't have a solution, either. (Not his fault; no one does.) It's odd, though, that he would go after Jarvis for introducing entrepreneurship into J-school, since the point of that exercise is to turn at least some journalists into owners rather than hired hands. Maybe Frank thinks that's hopeless, and what we really need is state funding for journalism. If so, he doesn't try to make that case. In fact there's not a word about what should be done. Whereas Jarvis has written tens of thousands of words about what should be done.
I would provide a link to Frank's essay so you can assess the argument for yourself, but it is not online. Harper's doesn't believe in that. Only subscribers have online access. The December issue is out; the November issue is the one available for download at harpers.org. This is a print magazine.
Now when Frank's eye falls upon me, he is not entirely unkind. He says that I am intelligent and energetic and that I can be "satisfyingly vicious" in my disdain for newsroom curmudgeons.
But put Mr. Rosen face to virtual face with a master of the new-media world--say, Richard Rosenblatt, CEO of Demand Media--and a more conciliatory man seems to take his place. Mr. Rosen had been calling Demand nasty names before interviewing Mr. Rosenballt online in December of 2009, and this was his opportunity to smite the villainous organization. Here was his most direct question:
Someone who follows my work and knew I was interviewing you told me to ask you this: Do you love the Web? The implied question there is: if you love the Web, then why are you doing this, running these content farms...
Do you love the Web. Because if your love was true--if your heart was pure--you couldn't possibly do such a thing. This is the sentimental check-and-balance, that safety catch that is supposed to protect us. All it will really protect, of course, is the Web itself.
Here's what I think. Thomas Frank could only write that because he is not writing on the web, and his essay will never appear online the way that essays in, say, The Atlantic will. Were he writing on the web, he would have to link to my interview with Richard Rosenblatt, and readers who are alert would find his characterizations misleading.
And that's being polite. But you be the judge: Frank says I was conciliatory toward Rosenblatt. Well, was I? He says my most direct question was: "Do you love the Web?" Was it really? He implies that I am squishy and sentimental in coming face to face with Demand Media. Am I? Here are five other questions I asked Rosenblatt, which the readers of Harpers will of course never know about:
1. ...As I understand it, the mission is to make a ton of money on the Web by using data mining to understand demand and then cutting costs in this way Roth described. Do I have it wrong?
2. Here's what I think Demand Media has right. It's important to know what people are interested in. It's good to have tools that tell us what they wish to know. Using that knowledge to guide production is innovation, too, which we need-- precisely because production is so easy and cheap and the tools are so good.But here's what I think bothers a lot of people, and leads to a description of your firm as a "content farm" or "factory." I read about the 11 people - and 15 different roles - involved in the production of articles and video in Demand Studios. I get your idea that "quality is based on relevance." But if you're trying to match costs to the available revenue for a given piece of content, what happens when editorial quality requires costs greater that what's available in search revenue? And who's watching out for that point?
(Rosenblatt didn't answer me when I asked him that so I asked him again.)
3. Okay I got that but I am not sure it answers this part of my question: ...if you're trying to match costs to the available revenue for a given piece of content, what happens when editorial quality requires costs greater that what's available in search revenue? And who's watching out for that point?
4. Does the description of your company as a "content farm," content mill, factory (or even digital sweatshop) seem to you inaccurate or point missing in some way? I mean I know these are not nice terms or polite descriptions but are they wrong headed?
5. When you're trying to build trust in an editorial brand, you pay those costs when they exceed available revenues, which I talked about. But it seems to me that Demand isn't trying to build trust in that way, it's trying to create content that meets demand, stays relevant and grabs the available search revenue. Why doesn't Demand Media create the bulk of its content under the Demand brand, like Reuters, say?
Read the interview. I say Thomas Frank could only write what he wrote because he is not writing on the web. What do you say?
UPDATE, Dec. 17, 2010:
John R. MacArthur, the publisher of Harpers, decided to respond. He reveals the correspondence one of his editors had with me about this post. His column is (literally) an anti-Interent screed:
Somehow, the passion that drives successful political crusades is attenuated when it’s reflected on the computer screen. All those millions of eyeballs glued to Facebook do not a revolution make, or even a reform movement. The energy devoted to the Net is an astonishing waste. This is time that obviously could be better spent talking to a friend or a child, reading a good book, or marching in a political demonstration.
Included in his indictment is a re-telling of the events in this post-- and my half of the correspondence I had with one of MacArthur's editors. Now it is so like Harper's to leave half the exchange out, and, though MacArthur's column was placed online, to refuse to link to this post even though it is directly referenced by MacArthur, and even though linkless publishing is the issue under discussion, as it were. This is what his column says:
Among the most insistent Internet salesmen in my world is Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University. In keeping with the “democratic” Web, he promotes so-called “public journalism,” which some editors take to mean journalism ordered up by readers instead of assigned by editors.
Tom Frank gently mocks Rosen in this month’s Harper’s Magazine for being too easy on Richard Rosenblatt, CEO of a content mill called Demand Media. Rosen objected — in his blog. But what really made him mad was that “Frank could only write that because he is not writing on the Web. . . . Were he writing on the Web he would have to link to my interview” with Rosenblatt, which would show how “misleading” were Frank’s “characterizations.”
Since we at Harper’s are not free content/free traders (you have to pay to read the magazine online), we asked Rosen to write a letter to the editor. His reply: “Harper’s has decided it doesn’t want to be part of the Web, and for that reason I don’t want to be part of Harper’s. Which is sad, all around.” Now, there’s the democratic spirit at work.
Actually, I haven't worked on public journalism for ten years; it was a pre-Web development. But we no longer expect Harpers to be well informed. So you have the full context, here is the exchange:
From Harpers:
Dear Mr. Rosen,
My name is Justin Stone; I edit the Letters section of Harper's. Your post in response to Tom Frank's article addresses the possibility that an essay written for print is (or can be) fundamentally different from its web-published counterpart (e.g., in its link-less argumentation). I like your idea, and I think it would be especially interesting to the readers of an essentially print-only publication—those who you point out are unlikely to find your blog. A letter may also be an opportunity to tackle Frank's misrepresentation of your interview with Rosenblatt. In any case, please let me know if you're interested.
Cheers,
Justin Stone
Harper's Magazine
From Me:
Harpers has decided it doesn't want to be part of the web, and for that reason I do not want to be part of Harpers. Which is sad, all around. Good luck.
On Twitter this evening, I asked: "Why did Marketplace allow David Frum to suggest that TARP began with Obama?" Listen to it. Now you tell me: Is that not highly misleading?
I wanted people to know that I had strong feelings about that show even before someone sent me the Frum clip, so I followed up with this:
I hate Marketplace. It is the worst show on public radio. I time my morning shower so as to miss it. I refuse to be interviewed by them too.
Which prompted people who follow me on Twitter to ask why. A representative comment from Dwight Silverman, tech reporter for the Houston Chronicle: "Interesting. Why do you dislike it so much?" And from Nick Bergus, "Is it style? Substance? Point of view? Please explain the source of this hatred."
Okay, I will.
Marketplace, produced by American Public Media, is a few minutes of business news sandwiched into NPR's Morning Edition and a longer report intended for All Things Considered. The Morning Report is the one I listen to, unless I can't stand it and run for the shower.
The problem with this report is that it cannot decide if it wants to be the audible Wall Street Journal or Adam Smith for Dummies, a business person's show, or a show for people who only know about business from the consumer or lay person's side. Deciding on this is too hard a problem for the mush minds at Marketplace, so it tries to be both. It wants to impress us with some taken-for-granted knowledge and also treat us like morons who don't know their interest rates from their Nielsen ratings.
That is what I hate. I would rather 1.) listen in on a sophisticated conversation that is sometimes over my head, or 2.) have a show that is specifically made for me as a consumer and occasional victim of big business. What I do not want is a program that splits the difference. But that is what Marketplace is. It is controlled by a weak and condescending idea: You're don't know crap about business... oh and by the way Japan's Nikkei index climbed .7 percent to 9,582.22.
Mostly, however, Marketplace wants to be brief. Brief is the program's real ideology. And that is a weak, condescending idea. You're busy, Marketplace tells us. A person on the move! You don't have time to actually understand this stuff. But you feel you need to know about it... and you are soooooo right. We bring you people who do understand these subjects. They can acquaint you with them painlessly (briefly) so that when someone in your circle mentions the discount window at the Fed, you can say to yourself: I've actually heard of that. (Hey, is it really a window, or is that like... a metaphor?)
This is what Marketplace Morning Report is about: arming us not with "knowledge of," but "acquaintance with." (The distinction originates with Robert Park.)
Another thing I hate about Marketplace is how fake it is willing to be. Take the almost daily reports from correspondent Stephen Beard in London. Marketplace would like us to think that its hosts are having an informal conversation with Mr. Stephen. Instead of asking him for a report, the way a grown-up news show would, it conducts a little dialogue, a 45 second Q & A, with Beard. But Marketplace doesn't trust dialogue. Uncontrolled, it may not be brief enough! Listen closely, and you realize that host and correspondent are reading from a script. They're faking it. The producers figure you're too stupid to know the difference between a conversation and actors reading their lines.
And anyway, you won't care because you are rushed, on the go, a busy person who can't be bothered to learn the details. Like which American President actually began the TARP program.
Corrected to reflect the difference between the morning and after-the-bell versions of Marketplace. --JR
UPDATE: Marketplace issued a correction, at least on the Web it did. Reads as follows:
CORRECTION 9/16/10: David Frum's commentary about voters blaming President Obama and other politicians for a bank bailout that he believes saved the financial system omitted when the TARP lending program to banks began. It began before President Obama took office and has continued under his administration.
This is adapted and expanded from the Inaugural Lecture I gave to the incoming class at Sciences Po école du journalisme in Paris, September 2, 2010: their first day. You can find reports on the speech in English here; in French here and here (with some video.) It was given to French students, but it is really intended for anyone studying journalism today, or attempting to re-learn it.
Typically when people like me—a professor of journalism who is deeply involved in the digital world—advise people like you—students just starting their careers in journalism—we say to you things like:
You need to be blogging.
You need to understand search engines.
You need to know Flash and perhaps HTML5.
You need to grasp web metrics like Google analytics.
You need to know how to record audio or edit video
You need to “get” mobile. ("Mobile is going to be big!")
And all of those things are true. They are all important. But I want to go in a completely different direction today. Ready? You need to understand that the way you imagine the users will determine how useful a journalist you will be.
A shift in power
It turns out that the original title I gave myself, The People Formerly Known as the Audience and the Audience Properly Known as the Public, is a problem, because the word for “public” in French is the same as the word for “audience.” We have to work around that.And to help I have a clip from a movie I want to show you. It’s from the 1976 film Network, which is about a crazed television newsman named Howard Beale who begins to act out his craziness on the air.This is probably the most famous scene in the film. (It takes five minutes to watch.)
What is this scene “about?”In my reading of it, the filmmakers are showing us what the mass audience was: a particular way of arranging and connecting people in space. Viewers are connected “up” to the big spectacle, but they are disconnected from one another. Or to use the term I have favored, they are "atomized." (See Audience Atomization Overcome.) But Howard Beale does what no television person ever does: he uses television to tell its viewers to stop watching television.
When they disconnect from TV and go to their windows, they are turning away from Big Media and turning toward one another. And as their shouts echo across an empty public square they discover just how many other people had been "out there," watching television in atomized simultaneity, instead of doing something about the inarticulate rage that Beale put into words. (“I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the streets. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad!”)
The reason I showed you this clip is that it makes vivid for us a great event we are living through today: the breakup of the atomized "mass" audience and a shift in power that goes with it. What would happen today if someone on television did what Howard Beale did?Immediately people who happened to be watching would alert their followers on Twitter.Someone would post a clip the same day on YouTube.The social networks would light up before the incident was over.Bloggers would be commenting on it well before professional critics had their chance.The media world today is a shifted space. People are connected horizontally to one another as effectively as they are connected up to Big Media; and they have the powers of production in their hands.
The public becomes thinkable
This kind of shift has happened before. And now I want to take you back 250 years, to events in France and England that gave birth to the modern public.
Before there was a public that could be informed by the press, before there was anything like “public opinion,” before there was any political journalism at all, politics was considered the king's business, le secret du roi. It was owned and operated by the king, and secrecy about everything that happened in government was the normal state of things. There was publicity too, but not about what was actually happening in the halls of power. In the words of Jürgen Habermas, it was “publicity that is staged for show or manipulation,” rituals in which the majesty of the crown and the glory of the nation could be vivified or put on display.Absolutism gave ownership of politics to the crown; and that included virtually all information about affairs of state.
In 1764, for example, the King of France ruled it illegal to print or sell or peddle on the street anything about the reform of state finances—past, present or future.It’s not only that there was no freedom of the press.That was true, but more than that: The king’s mystery was not considered the people’s business. The whole idea that the affairs of the nation belonged to the people of that nation had yet to be accepted. Without an idea like that (today we would call it "the public’s right to know...") the very practice of journalism is impossible—in fact, unthinkable.
But by 1781 Jacques Necker, finance minister to the King of France, had published the first ever public record of the state’s finances, the Compte rendu. Three thousand copies were sold on the first day. Most historians say he failed to give a true picture of how deeply the crown was in debt, and that he hid the cost of borrowing.But simply by publishing the Compte rendu Necker helped to raise the curtain on a new idea: public confidence required transparency. Public opinion could not be ignored. There was a public "out there," and even princes had to appeal to it.
So what happened between 1764 and 1781?The answer to that is complex and worth a book in itself. Fortunately we have one: Jurgen Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Here I will simply list some of the factors responsible for the shift:
* The growth and spread of printing, which was bound up with the market for printed books. This meant, for example, that what was illegal to print or sell in France could be published in Holland and smuggled in.
* The rise of the periodical press. Newspapers and pamphlets—some legal and restrained, some clandestine and unrestrained in their rhetoric—spread the concept of public discussion of public affairs. This was difficult to contain.
* Closely related to that were the literary salons in which discussion of what was read became normal, providing a template for public opinion as commentary on what is in the press.(In England this role was played by taverns and coffee houses.)
* The emergence of international capitalism, which created what Habermas called the “carrier class” for the public sphere, the literate bourgeoise: merchants, traders and businessman who were not impressed by “publicity staged for show or manipulation,” but who might buy French debt if they were persuaded that the government could repay it on time.Necker no doubt had these people in mind when he published his record of state finances, and when he called public opinion “an invisible power that, without treasury, guard, or army, gives its laws to the city, the court, and even the palace of kings.”
* The spread of enlightenment ideas, in which reason was supposed to be sovereign, not the king and his court. Public opinion, when it was praised by people like Necker, meant reasoned, settled opinion, not the violent swings in mood that frightened so many aristocrats.
* The search for other sources of authority beyond divine right and despotism. Necker worked for the King of France. He was trying to find a way to reform and legitimate the continued authority of the crown as it came under increasing attack in the last decades of the ancien régime. That is why he called public opinion a “tribunal,” and said “princes themselves [must] respect it.”
This complex shift from one constellation of ideas to another was put into words by the historian Keith Michael Baker: “From the public person of the sovereign to the sovereign person of the public.”Something like that has to happen before journalism can even be conceived. In fact the rise of the periodical press, the emergence of the public as an actor in politics, and the power of public opinion such that even princes have to respect it, are not so much parallel developments as three aspects of the same event. Together, they made modern journalism thinkable.
The people out of doors
In England during the same period, a similar event occurs. If we could listen in on Parliament in 1750 we might hear a phrase in common use then, “the people indoors.”It referred to the members of Parliament themselves when they were gathered in session.In what way did this small and elite group represent “the” people of England? Not through popular election; that didn’t really happen until the next century. Parliament thought of itself as the people because the King had to consult with Parliament and when he did he was consulting with the whole nation.
This was a fiction, of course, but it was the ruling fiction at the time. “The people indoors” were quite aware that they were not representative of the whole population.That is why they also referred to the people “out of doors,” another phrase in use at the time.This meant everybody else.The king didn’t have to consult with them.Nor did the people out of doors enjoy freedom of speech or freedom of the press.In fact, it was illegal to publish what was said in Parliament or to attack the King in print.
For the “people indoors,” freedom of speech was protected within the halls of Parliament itself.A member could call the king's policies foolish and not be held to account, whereas a printer who put that sentiment in a pamphlet could be arrested the next day.I am not going to go into the whole story, which involves the printer and politician John Wilkes and the right to report on debates in Parliament (established in 1771.) Suffice it to say that in England, too, politics as the exclusive possession of the king, his ministers and Parliament gave way to a much more open system, in which the newspapers could report on what was happening, a literate public could discuss it and public opinion could form.
Ignoring the public became harder, gestures toward transparency more common. Rights fundamental to the practice of journalism—politics as the people’s business, freedom of speech and of the press, the right to record what was said in Parliament and publish it in the newspapers—began to be established, though it took a long time for them to be secured.The people out of doors grew up and became the public, the one that has a right to know. These things have to happen before there can be a profession of journalism worth joining.That is why I am telling you about them.
The engineering of opinion
I am conducting this tour at the level of ideas. But one could also say ideals.The all-inclusive public that is fully informed about what is happening… and argues about it in public settings…. so as to form an independent and reasoned opinion… which is then listened to by the people in power… this has never been a description of how public life in a competitive democracy actually works. The fight has been to make it truer and truer for more and more people. That fight goes on. When we compare the reality to the picture, we can tell where we are, and perhaps where we need to go.
Meanwhile, there are endless complications to weigh. For example, the same tools that make an informed public possible allow for manipulation and propaganda on a national scale.As we enter the modern age this becomes very obvious.Let’s jump ahead to Paris in 1919 and the Peace Conference that ended World War I.Something new was seen at Paris.At previous international conferences intended to conclude wars and settle borders, the diplomats would negotiate in secret and emerge weeks later with a result which was then conveyed to the home countries as a more or less finished product. In Paris a new pattern was seen. The American delegation was accompanied by over 150 newspaper correspondents. They shocked the diplomats by demanding entrance to the opening session.
Even when their demands were resisted, the reporters were a factor in the event. Word of what was being proposed by one country or discussed by several would find its way to the correspondents, who would put it into their dispatches, which were then telegraphed to the home country to be published the next day in the newspapers. Over the same wires (but traveling the other way) came word of public reaction once the news was published. This increased the pressure on the statesmen in Paris, who in Britain, France and the United States (the victors) had to face the future prospect of elections and no-confidence votes. Just imagine how simple it would be for the editor of a tabloid newspaper to take fragmentary word of what was being discussed in Paris and use it to sell papers in London. As public opinion becomes more powerful, the incentives to engineer it also grow.
In the twentieth century we have the rise of the modern mass media—cinema, radio, television, followed by cable—all of them huge industries that are intimately connected to state power. So much so that the way you make a revolution in the twentieth century is not by storming the king's castle but by taking over the broadcasting tower.The idea of the informed public and public opinion as the final court of appeal never got extinguished, but it had to compete with a related formation:the mass audience and the business of appealing to that.
The journalists formerly known as the media
But today the mass audience is breaking up. This makes new things thinkable. And that’s why I wrote my 2006 post, the People Formerly Known as the Audience:
The people formerly known as the audience wish to inform media people of our existence, and of a shift in power that goes with the platform shift you’ve all heard about. Think of passengers on your ship who got a boat of their own. The writing readers. The viewers who picked up a camera. The formerly atomized listeners who with modest effort can connect with each other and gain the means to speak— to the world, as it were.
Today I want to introduce a companion idea. Because the people formerly known as the audience have arrived, the journalists formerly known as “the media” are here, too. And this is what you—the next generation of professional journalists—have a chance to define for the rest of us. The digital revolution changes the equation. It brings forward a new balance of forces, putting the tools of production and the powers of distribution in the hands of the people formerly known as the audience. And so you have the opportunity to become the journalists formerly known as the media, carrier class for a new understanding of the people “out there” on the receiving end of what journalists make.I say “new,” but it is really just another chapter in the long struggle to make good on the idea of a public that knows what is happening because it pays attention, informs itself and argues about what should be done.
Let me try to sharpen what I mean by “the journalists formerly known as the media” by calling on one of my favorite lines in all of media studies. They originate with Raymond Williams (1921-1988) a writer and sociologist in the U.K. who was well known for his studies of mass media.“There are no masses, “ Williams wrote in 1958, “there are only ways of seeing people as masses.”To illustrate, Williams compared the way local newspapers addressed their readers—as inhabitants of a common world of homes, schools, jobs, streets they walked, politics they could participate in—to the way those same readers were addressed by the mass circulation dailies and tabloids that sell throughout the U.K.
Seeing people as masses is the art in which the mass media, and professional media people, specialized during their profitable 150-year run (1850 to 2000). But now we can see that this was actually an interval, a phase, during which the tools for reaching the public were placed in increasingly concentrated hands. Professional journalism, which dates from the 1920s, has lived its entire life during this phase, but let me say it again: this is what your generation has a chance to break free from.The journalists formerly known as the media can make the break by learning to specialize in a different art: seeing people as a public, empowered to make media themselves.
My advice...
Now I will explain what this phrase—seeing people as a public—means to journalists for your generation. Here are some of its implications.
1. Replace readers, viewers, listeners and consumers with the term “users.”What do we call the people on the other end of the journalism transaction? My suggestion is to be less platform-centric; rather than naming them for the tool you are using to reach them, just call them the users, a term I borrowed from the way Dave Winer employs it. Users is a more active identity, it works for all platforms, and as I said earlier: the way you imagine the users will determine how useful a journalist you will be.
2. Remember: the users know more than you do. I adapted this from Dan Gillmor's famous declaration: "My readers know more than I do." It means that, in the aggregate, the people on the receiving end have more knowledge, more contacts, more experience and more good ideas than a single journalist can ever have. This was always true, it was true in the 1950s, but the Internet allows those people-—the ones who know more than you do—to actually reach (and teach) you with that knowledge. Look at it this way: The most valuable thing the New York Times owns is its name and reputation. The second most valuable thing it has: the talent and experience of its staff. The third most valuable thing the Times "owns" is the knowledge and sophistication of its users. And if it cannot find a way to get some of that flowing in, so as to improve the editorial product, then it will have failed to capitalize on an immense strategic advantage. And I am convinced the editors of the Times know this.
3: There’s been a power shift; the mutualization of journalism is here. This is Alan Rusbridger's idea: "the mutualised news organization." He's the editor of The Guardian in the U.K. What he means is...
We bring important things to the table – editing; reporting; areas of expertise; access; a title, or brand, that people trust; ethical professional standards and an extremely large community of readers. The members of that community could not hope to aspire to anything like that audience or reach on their own; they bring us a rich diversity, specialist expertise and on the ground reporting that we couldn't possibly hope to achieve without including them in what we do.
We bring important things to the table, and so do the users. Therefore we include them. "Seeing people as a public" means that.
4: Describe the world in a way that helps people participate in it. When people participate, they seek out information. Information providers would do well to recognize this connection. As I told The Economist:
My own view is that journalists should describe the world in a way that helps us participate in political life. That is what they are "for". But too often they position us as savvy analysts of a scene we are encouraged to view from a certain distance, as if we were spectators to our own democracy, or clever manipulators of our fellow citizens. Weird, isn't it?
As a writer for The Economist said after this was published: "Perhaps 'political' is unnecessarily limiting. More generally, it is the job of journalists to describe the world in a way that helps us participate in all life—political, local, civic, cultural, etc." Correct.
5: Anyone can doesn’t mean everyone will. Students of social media and behavior on the Net are highly aware of the one percent rule, which has been observed in a wide variety of online settings:
It's an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will 'interact' with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it... So what's the conclusion? Only that you shouldn't expect too much online. Certainly, to echo Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come. The trouble, as in real life, is finding the builders.
My way of putting this is, "anyone can doesn't mean everyone will." But the fact that "anyone can" is still important because you can never predict who will accept your invitation. Knowing this rule helps us keep our expectations in check. Seeing people as a public doesn't mean deluding ourselves about what they are willing to do. It's important to neither under-estimate nor over-estimate what the people formerly known as the audience are up for.
6: The journalist is just a heightened case of an informed citizen, not a special class. Journalism isn't like brain surgery, or piloting a Boeing 747. A professional journalist knows how to get information, ask questions, tell stories and connect isolated facts. These are not esoteric or specialized skills, just heightened versions of things any smart citizen should be able to do. We see this most clearly when citizens have a chance to substitute for reporters and ask questions of candidates during debates. They generally do as well as or better than professional journalists. That is a clue.
7: Your authority starts with, “I’m there, you’re not, let me tell you about it.” If "anyone" can produce media and share it with the world, what makes the pro journalist special, or worth listening to? Not the press card, not the by-line, not the fact of employment by a major media company. None of that. The most reliable source of authority for a professional journalist will continue to be what James W. Carey called "the idea of a report." That's when you can truthfully say to the users, "I'm there, you're not, let me tell you about it." Or, "I was at the demonstration, you weren't, let me tell you how the cops behaved." Or, altering my formula slightly, "I interviewed the workers who were on that oil drilling platform when it exploded, you didn't, let me tell you what they said." Or, "I reviewed those documents, you didn't, let me tell you what I found." Your authority begins when you do the work. If an amateur or a blogger does the work, the same authority is earned. Seeing people as a public means granting that without rancor.
8: Somehow, you need to listen to demand and give people what they have no way to demand. The Web effortlessly records what people do with it. Therefore it is easy to measure user behavior: what people are interested in, what they are searching for, clicking on, turning to... right now. What should a smart journalists do with this "live" information? I just told you: you should listen to demand, but also give people what they have no way to demand because they don't know about it yet. In fact, there is a relationship between these things. The better you are at listening to demand, the more likely it is that the users will listen to you when you demand of them: pay attention! You may not think this is important or interesting, but trust me... it matters. Or: "This is good." Ignoring what the users want is dumb in one way; editing by click rate is dumb in a different way. Respect for the users lies in between these two. Get it?
9:In your bid to be trusted, don’t take the View From Nowhere; instead, tell people where you’re coming from. Treating people as a public means refusing to float "above" them. Instead of claiming that you have no view, no stake, no perspective, no (sorry for the academic term) situated self, try to level with the users and let them know where you are coming from. As David Weinberger puts it. "transparency is the new objectivity." You may find that trust is easier to negotiate if you don't claim the View from Nowhere, but instead tell them where you're coming from. (Here's my attempt to do exactly that as a critic.)
10: Breathe deeply of what DeTocqueville said: “Newspapers make associations and associations make newspapers.” Alexis De Tocqueville, a Frenchman, visited the United States in the 1830s. Among the observations he made was: "newspapers make associations and associations make newspapers." What I think he meant was: wherever people have a common interest and wish to discuss it, there lies an opportunity for a smart journalist. Today one of the things that is fast changing our world is the falling cost for like minded people--people who share the same interest, problem or fascination--to locate each other, share information, pool what they know, and publish back to the world the results of their interactions. The Net makes this act increasingly common. For example, people with a health problem that medical science has been unable to treat will find each other over the Net and begin to discuss their condition. They're an association. Smart journalists will pick up on this and realize: there's a story there. Want to be useful online? Find a previously atomized group that shares a common interest and create a space for their association.
I conclude: The struggle to make the fiction of an informed and engaged public more factual—that is, realer—continues on. When technology and markets change, new things become thinkable within that struggle. And so journalism itself has graduated to the next stage of its development. Bonne chance!
