As an avid reader of Small Dead Animals, you should be aware that that is not the only ‘news’ that I read – I read the two national papers, my local paper, McLeans and a score of professional journals. What blogs bring are a sense of reality to the media because, for the most part, they are run by people who have real lives, in the real world rather than the very isolated newsrooms of capital cities. So the next time Mitchel Rapheal once again decides to include Justin Trudeau in his column (when JT has actually done something in his life I might be interested in seeing his picture – no I take that back, I will never have any interest in JT), maybe the editors should have a little chat with him and ask him if he has been outside of Ottawa recently. Or maybe editors should make it mandatory for their reporters to live and work in other communities.

There are doubtless several means, e.g., deny access, run a campaign of disinformation.

No, the elite don’t have to resort to these primitive means anymore. It’s hit on a winning formula…give people a 1000 different versions of the same thing and call it variety and choice and when people “choose” any of those, claim it’s giving people what they want. Along with a generation of people so wrapped up in their individualism (which is nothing other than widespread conformity) and egos so fragile that any criticism of their “choice” is viewed as a personal attack (elitism, as it were), you’ve not only got an audience that will adopt whatever position the elite wants you to, but that’ll believe it’s come to that conclusion based on a judicious examination of all possible alternatives and will defend it vigorously.

It’s pure genius. Whether the ruling elite is aware of what it’s doing is something I’m not quite sure about. They’re surprisingly out of touch with reality and whenever this topic is brought up, it’s dismissed as “too simplistic.”

What blogs bring are a sense of reality to the media because, for the most part, they are run by people who have real lives, in the real world rather than the very isolated newsrooms of capital cities.

“Real lives?” Everyone’s life is as real as yours, Maureen.

sf,

“archangel: despite your patronizing, Kody is right far more often than you are, so hopefully someday you will move to the right, where sanity dwells.”

that’s exactly what I’m saying — he’s too far right. He’s so far right he is in danger of falling off that flat world you and he occupy. But it was honourable of you to defend him, nonetheless.

May you both be redeemed some day.

And, yes, I am deliberately being patronizing, owing to the appalling self-righteousness Kody displays.

And you would be well served to understand the difference between offering opinion and proselytizing.

sf People have not changed, it is technology that has changed, just as it changed the day the printing press was invented.

I don’t like the tone of historical inevitability in my earlier comment but I think it’s important that unlike TV or radio, the information we pass around on the Internet is not under any central control.

It depends on telecommunications equipment and the power grid, which is centrally controlled. But that amounts to an on/off switch, and thus is too crude, even for government purposes. Several governments have been successful in filtering and altering the content, but only on a very limited basis. They will get better at this, and they might try to use economic crisis as a means to control the media.

Read Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash for an interesting take on things that I hope is not too prescient.

is it just me or is this infinately depressing? let’s remove sole control of the trading of information from the sweaty clutches of the professionals – direct democracy right. But i almost prefer being manipulated by the self-interested prof , than listen to the cacophony of shrieking voices that insist that they alone represent the silent majoriy. The squeaky wheel… sorry if this comes over as elitist.

Ti-guy
Can’t fault your logic- but what’s a citizen to do? As Orwell pointed out in animal farm revolution frequently disappoints. Maybe we should stop voting as it only encourages them. whoops we’re already doing that. Only leaves one other obvios choice… join em.

I think the biggest problem that faces traditional media is that their business model was based on “priviledged access” to people and technologies that was outside the reach of the average joe (I don’t agree with the notion of “ruling elites”). With the drop in the cost of technology and the easy access to worldwide locations via the internet, this privilege has disappeared. And this really is a problem that all multi-media based industries are facing.

The question of whether or not blogs can fill this purpose adequately is still an open-ended question, but I think that it boils down to quality of writing and content, and whether the blogger actually can dedicate the time to achieve this quality of service and information. Could some people stand to make a living off blogging as a news source? Perhaps. If you can do it via YouTube, then why not? Just a matter of knowing who your audience is and keeping them.

Austin

I despair at the decisions made by the elite who rule our nation’s media.

Not only does Maclean’s seem to have stopped moderating blog comments on the weekend (oh dear), it seems that CBC is infringing on our fundamental human rights to watch Doctor Who unedited:

/showmescifi.com/2008/12/13/doctor-who-journeys-end-editted-by-cbc-in-canada/

Hopefully I’ve finally figured out how to post a link without running the gauntlet of moderation…

Steve w
Dr Who is edited?
does this infringe our charter?
Damn, i knew that charter challenge programme would come in handy someday.

Making the comparison with my own line of endeavour, poetry, I’d say there is no guaranteed happy ending here.

There are two factors: circulation and public interest.

In terms of the circulation of poetry, it used to be that every little hamlet would welcome traveling minstrels — bards, rhapsodes, choreographers for the village dance, whatever they happened to be called. They were the source of narrative and ritual entertainment.

Then, along came literacy. Now you could suddenly read poems yourself (or have them read to you) — no need to wait for the bard to come around, and no need to pay him when he did because you already had your poetry in written form. The printing press was the next cataclysm. In the Elizabethan Age, our most productive period, there might have been, oh, 20 practicing poets and translators (sonneteers don’t count) in England and Scotland. In the Dark Ages, when the population was a tenth the size, there were probably 200. Even with the ballooning of the population through the addition of America and the Commonwealth, there were probably never more than 50 serious poets operating at the popular height of poetry — say, 1860.

So easy mass circulation can seriously reduce the number of practitioners of an art form; and now it’s happening to reporters — like it happened to poets and, to a large extent, musicians after the advent of vinyl. If the public is interested in news as such, it is not going to pay for a slight difference on the same report from Shanghai — so a dozen China bureaus close.

The other, potentially more serious, problem is the decline of public interest. If the public gets so hooked on opinion, so that all 6 billion people can comment on the same piece of news about Britney Spears or Barak Obama and feel that their thirst for “what’s happening” has thereby been satisfied, the news will wither away. That’s pretty much what’s happened with poetry — the journalistic equivalent would be a million little “news sites” where unpaid and untrained citizen reporters post word of what they heard somebody say at the mall yesterday. It sounds insane, but it takes generations for old habits (in this case, curiosity about fact; in the case of poetry, a taste for formal language) to die off. The cause and effect (decline is a vicious circle between the two) would be a rise in existential solipsism; and the frightening thing, to me, is that this has already been on the rise for years, the inevitable handmaiden of materialism and nihilism. So, over the long term, i.e. the next 50 years (2 generations), perhaps reportage and even professional analysis are doomed to dwindle to a parody of their former selves — unless we can find a new basis for anti-materialism, anti-nihilism, anti-consumerism. At the moment the only rationale for calling people to lead a more spiritual, more civic, more curious life seems to be self-interest, i.e. “Look in the mirror, for God’s sake” — and that hasn’t got mass appeal.

I like the idea of a central depot, where, for $1.95, you can pick three-yes any three, columnists articles from a list of twelve. Or, to avoid the pain of having your credit card studded with three pages full of tiny little numbers, you can have unlimited access to five columnists PER DAY! Wow, for only $29.95 a month, you can receive up to 150 in-depth opinions from a variety of columnists covering the spectrum from left to right.

Those who aren’t picked often will, sadly, need another line of work. Those that are picked regularly stand to make quite a bit of money. Too bad about publishers.

Also on the central depot will be press releases sent by whomever wants to, at no charge to the reader.

Perhaps another section where for $49.95 per month, (or $2.95 for three) investigative reporters would investigate, and report, on issues of the day.

Kady O’Malley, of course, will have her very own subscription service. She will continue her liveblogging gig for a year or two until she becomes so rich she could buy Parliament Hill. She will include advertisements on her service, but only from Blackberry.

Jack, yes that timing thing is nasty, not only in predicting when the market will turn around, but apparently also when stocking up on the works of great artists and poets. Alas, it seems they only hit the jackpot after they die.

I tried explaining this to my daughter but she’s still convinced she wants to be an artist. I suggested maybe a video game designer, or quelle horreur an architect.

I wish you the best of course. As Keynes famously said, in the long run, we’re all dead.