February 14, 2005

The Guns of August

I haven't written much about the Eason Jordon controversy (aka EasonGate), but it has a lot of big media outlets in defensive mode. (See Instapundit for more comments related to this).

According to the New York Times, bloggers are just "trophy hunters." It is apparently their view that bloggers (common citizens, their readers) are an out of control lot, hell-bent on taking down whoever they can, when they can.

From their reaction, it looks as though they think that this might be a sort of Bastille Day for bloggers and soon a rash of public beheadings will ensue...metaphorically speaking, of course.

Steve Lovelady, a former editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Wall Street Journal and now managing editor of CJR Daily, the Web site of The Columbia Journalism Review, has been among the most outspoken.

"The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail," he lamented online after Mr. Jordan's resignation. He said that Mr. Jordan cared deeply about the reporters he had sent into battle and was "haunted by the fact that not all of them came back."

Some on line were simply trying to make sense of what happened. "Have we entered an era where our lives can be destroyed by a pack of wolves hacking at their keyboards with no oversight, no editors, and no accountability?" asked a blogger named Mark Coffey, 36, who says he works as an analyst in Austin, Tex. "Or does it mean that we've entered a brave new world where the MSM has become irrelevant," he asked, using blogger shorthand for mainstream media.

Are we entering a "brave new world?"

More from Jeff Jarvis:

The New York Times media beat reporters got beaten badly on the Eason Jordan story -- by [gasp] weblogs and cable news -- and so how do they react? By catching up their readers on what they missed? Of course not. They react by lashing out at weblogs.

This morning's story by Katharine Q. Seelye, Jacques Steinberg, and David F. Gallagher -- under the headline, "Bloggers as News Media Trophy Hunters" -- is another example of the disdain in which many quarters of The Times -- not all -- hold citizens' media.

I can't help but draw parallels to the current big (old) media and the beginning of Barbara W. Tuchman's classic Guns of August (a historical account of the years leading up to and the first months of WWI).

Tuchman's opening lines describe the grand procession of Edward VII's funeral in 1910:

So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the gun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens - four dowager and three regnant - and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.

You see, the kings and royalty are the old media. They come out in all of their splendor and expect everyone to be awe inspired by them. They are, as you know, a special class of citizens, and one must respect them, but the sunset is here. Instead of embracing the new media, they sit upon their thrones of power and chose to berate and belittle us. However, the "Guns of August" are here, and the very foundations that the old media sit upon will crumble underneath them clearing the way for a new kind of media.

A little too dramatic? Yes, but it is a fitting I believe. I've said it before, and I'll say it again...the media world is evolving. Those that adapt will survive, and those who choose to ignore or berate us are only condemning themselves to insignificance.

Further reading: Bill Hobbs on "The Bloggy Future of Journalism".

More - 6:56 PM: I must add one more thing on the entire Eason Jordan story. This is mainly spurred by various comments I've seen (as from Terry Heaton) saying that the blogosphere went too far with Jordan and what he did really wasn't that big of a deal.

I, personally, don't really have one opinion or the other on Eason Jordan...which is why this is the first post where I've even mentioned him. However (emphasis), what has brought me out on this issue is the Main Stream Media's (MSM as everyone is calling it now, but I think I'll just stick with Old Media) reaction to the entire situation. It's definitely showing what they really think of the blogosphere...and ordinary citizens for that matter. And *that* is what motivates me.

Comments:

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When I can start using, "I am a blogger" as a pick up line, the MSM will be dead.

Of course i would be happy just to make some money before they head under.

Posted by: cube at February 14, 2005 12:46 PM

I notice a conspicuous absence of info about Jeff Gannon/Guckert/whateverhisnameisthisweek. His destruction, and possibly that of Scott McClellan, show the power of blogging, too.

Posted by: ChristianLibrul at February 14, 2005 04:42 PM

Look. The Big Three never got used to competing against 24-hour CABLE NEWS! Now there's these "internets" out there where people in their jammies are comparing my bona fide Bill Burkett-style facts with their new-fangled electronic typewriters.
What we need to do is hang all the Eason Jordans and Dan Rathers from the closest lamp posts. I think Jeff Gannon would have wanted it that way.

Posted by: smantix at February 15, 2005 06:11 PM