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Like me, Spencer took umbrage at Howard Kurtz's article about AOL's Politics Daily. The piece is primarily a vehicle for poorly disguised new-media bashing. Let's go to the tape, shall we?
"I don't know what the future of print is -- I hope it survives -- but we're all having to hedge our bets a little bit," says Deputy Editor Carl Cannon, a veteran of six newspapers who was hired after Reader's Digest eliminated the Washington bureau he headed. Cannon, too, talks about maintaining "cherished" values: "Not everything the old media did was right, but some things were right: getting both sides of the story, making sure the quotes are right, and using official documents instead of rumor."[David] Wood, a veteran of Time and the Los Angeles Times, says he relishes the chance to mix straight reporting with personal observation, such as in this dispatch from Afghanistan: "Civilian-world is casual, easy, a place filled with friends and family and many choices. Maybe I'll amble down to Starbucks. Nah, Caribou this time. War zone is a hard, unforgiving, chaotic place of fewer choices, where friendships have to be earned. Seen from civilian-world, it's daunting. But intriguing."Now, look, for the umpteenth time, the distinction between old media and new media is not practice, it's venue. Plenty of blogs have been getting both sides of the story, making sure quotes are right, and using official documents instead of rumor -- in fact, blogs have pioneered the art of sharing official documents and primary sources with readers. Plenty of newspapers are full of bullshit. For whatever reason, the New York Times doesn't have to justify the Weekly World News, but Talking Points Memo is somehow responsible for every insane conspiracy blog on the internet. For such a fundamentals-focused reporter, Cannon sure doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. And you just have to appreciate the delicious irony of having Kurtz bash new media -- even as, Spencer points out, new media is doing serious Afghanistan reporting -- and a few paragraphs later quote Wood about how much he likes including banal personal observations in his stories. Believe it or not, everybody knows that there is a difference between life at war and civilian life, and that the former is much more difficult and dangerous. It's always good that there's another venue for long-form reporting, so huzzah for Politics Daily. But the comments in this article reflect a certain desperation: When there was a hard line between newspaper reporters and web reporters, it was easy for the former to keep a false sense of superiority. But now that these former newspaper reporters need to compete online without any arbitrary distinctions in presentation, it's much harder for them to maintain their over-inflated sense of importance.
-- Tim Fernholz
