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(Yet) Another kerfuffle between blogs and mainstream media

January 29th, 2006

This blog post could also be titled “The Tribulations of Tom Taulli”….    Tom (a freelance writer) has been raked over the coals for a very small error (a quote was attributed to Bob Wyman when it was from me – it turns out I forgot to put my name on the emailed comments, so his mistake was an honest one).   BL Ochman noticed it, I commented on it and Doc picked it up.   And of course, Doc is the ‘live’ web, so it’s out there in the biggest way.

Given that the focus should have been on the quality of the article (it was excellent) rather than the most innocuous of errors, so I can only assume the general angst is a reaction to Forbes’ previous article which really hammers the blogosphere.

[Ha! Just noticed Tom's post... no, he's not Jason Blair.]

This really highlights the uneasy coexistence between blogs and mainstream media.   This topic has been covered thoroughly by people far more knowledgeable than myself (see this succinct post by Umair Haque), but the more I think about it, the clearest sense of it comes from a graph from Mary Meeker’s October 2004 report (authored by the ultra-bright Benjamin Dorr at Morgan Stanley Research).

The graph shows that a news event goes through three phases:
- discovery (breaking news)
- reporting by mainstream media (including ratification, fact-checking, etc)
- post-event commentary

Blogs started in that last category.    However, as more journalists self-publish and more discovery is taking place via blogs (think Flickr), the middle is shrinking, causing some to say that mainstream media is dead.   I prefer Scott Karp’s rebuttal, which presents a different view.

My own take on it is that yes, mainstream media will get squeezed on both sides, but the curve will stretch vertically higher.    More and more discovery will take place via blogs and all that discovery will require editorial fact-checking and ratification, thus you still need mainstream media.   A second role for media is trusted commentary about what’s happening rather than just reporting (think early Dan Rather).

Of course, related to all this is the fact that reporting/journalism isn’t objective anymore, having been bought by monster media. That has skewed everything and ought to be dealt with in another missive.

Anyway, my three cents…. (and I’ve been dying to use the word ‘kerfuffle‘)

Entry Filed under: Blogging