Swimming upstream

MSM. A food additive? A Microsoft software package? A sexually transmitted disease? No. It stands for mainstream media and, in the blogosphere, is apparently shorthand for being old, out of touch, technophobic and protectionist, espousing values that have no place in the modern world.

Well I was a young journalist once. I was idealistic and rebellious and headstrong. But I did respect my elders in the profession, and took it as read that basic principles of journalism were not there to be challenged, having evolved over at least a century of journalistic practice. My journalistic heroes were anti-establishment; the idea that journalism was just another part of the propaganda machine that is government and commerce was an anathema to me and many of my peers.

Perhaps we were deluded. Certainly newspaper journalism has dramatically declined in quality over the past couple of decades. Instead of writing about other people and their stories, journalists started writing about their own lives. Suddenly all journalists had opinions apparently worthy of sharing with the nation.

Celebrity journalism now dominates the tabloids, and even celebrity status is being dumbed down thanks to reality TV. This is what the readers want, the argument goes, so the public gets the press it deserves.

But hold on, newspaper circulations are in freefall. That'll be the interweb then. Err, no, perhaps a factor but the disease predates the rise of the web. John C. Dvorak recently wrote the following on pcmag.com:

Joseph Pulitzer invented the idea of the journalism school before 1900. These institutions spread over time but didn't really take hold until the 1960s. By 1970, newspapers had begun to decline. Coincidence?

A sign quoting Pulitzer, posted at the Columbia School of Journalism as a kind of mantra, epitomizes the problem: "Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery."

The problem is the word "disinterested." [sic] It's the hallmark of journalism today and translates to bored and boring. Besides not giving a hoot about the story, the disinterested observer is often hoodwinked and subject to public-relations manipulations. Apparently, nobody sees this as a problem.

Mainstream media no longer commands the moral high ground if, essentially, it is partly producing the kind of content that can be easily emulated by bloggers, often to a higher standard.

Responding to a claim by Jonathan last that opinion writing is an insignficant part of journalism (no longer so in the UK?), Mithridate Ombud writes on News Busters:

If opinion writing is such a tiny and inconsequential corner of journalism, then why don't they give it up? Why do newspapers fill their pages with opinion and columnists? Why don't they just reprint bloggers? Why do they feel the need to endorse political candidates for office, thereby alienating themselves from half of their readers, if it is so inconsequential?

....Bloggers are not replacements for reporters, they are replacements for columnists and ombudsmans, especially for newspapers whose ombud is a journalism insider or is afraid to step on toes or who may not exist at all. The big problem is not bloggers who act like reporters, but reporters who act like bloggers. How many times have you read something where you know the reporter never left their desk? Where the story is not advanced? Where the sources are all online?

Why don't they just reprint bloggers? Why not indeed. Cheaper or even free content without the pretensions now associatied with the journalism 'elite'. It's already starting to happen... watch this space, and watch your backs columnists.