Nicholas Lemann on Citizen Journalism · 612 words posted 08/03/2006 04:17 PM
Nicholas Lemann has posted Amateur Hour, a lengthy rebuttal of the idea that blogging can be equated with journalism. I don’t agree with everything he says, but the article is thoughtful and worth reading.
In a nutshell, Mr. Lemann argues that the phenomenon of “citizen journalism” is over-hyped (duh); and that real journalism may be distinguished from blogging in large part because “real” journalists have access to those in power and the resources to report stories of breadth and nuance for a duration exceeding self-funded bloggers. Finally Mr. Lemann claims that bloggers tend to narrowcast and can’t possibly reach across “the usual bounds of geography and class”; this last assertion is especially rich coming from The New Yorker, for gosh sakes.
Dismissing narrowcasting out of hand misses the point. Let’s look at a real life example: the dust-up between John Gruber of Daring Fireball and Brian Krebs of the Washington Post over an alleged WiFi security hole in MacBooks, with follow up here and here. Krebs’ reporting on the security issue sucks.
It’s not entirely his fault though: specific, thorough, and accurate technical reporting is hard to get right, and the difficulty is compounded by writing on a deadline for a general audience. But that’s the point: Mr. Gruber doesn’t have to make concessions to audience or calendar; his brand of writing—delightful, verbose, detailed, technically accurate, and occasionally tendentious—should shame most technical reporters in the mainstream media.
He’s not alone. Mr. Lemann offers a roster of pabulum: Barrista of Bloomfield Avenue, Backfence.com. This prose apparently won an award:
Among the many definitions of “hero” given in The American Heritage Dictionary is “A person noted for special achievement in a particular field.” Reston is a community of creative people, so it seems only right that our heroes should be paragons of creativity. Therefore, I’m nominating Reston musician and freelance writer, Ralph Lee Smith for the post of “Local Hero, Creative Category.”
Well.
If Mr. Lemann’s point is that most citizen journalism is written in a folksy style best consumed in rocking chairs by invalids, he’s probably right. But the same can be said for traditional media.
Here’s a better sample of real citizen journalism: Argentina on Two Steaks a Day, which compares favorably to any travel writing on Argentina the New York Times has published recently:
The classic beginner’s mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day. You will be tempted to just peck at it or even skip it altogether, rationalizing that you need to save yourself for the much larger steak later that night. But this is a false economy, like refusing to drink water in the early parts of a marathon.
Mr. Lemann does have his finger on one vital point though: mainstream journalists have better access to the powerful than do citizen journalists. But that’s not the fault of the citizen journalist. When I caught Apple phoning home via iTunes earlier this year (and this was original reporting, not an opinion piece), Apple refused to respond to my queries and nearly shut the story down by asserting, anonymously, to a mainstream outlet that “Apple doesn’t do that.” (Apple eventually changed its behavior as a direct response to the story).
The New Yorker, or the Times, or The Atlantic, or any one of the innumerable arborescent pamphlets may yet produce the definitive debunking of citizen journalism and the value of blogging; Amateur Hour is not it.
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Incidentally, Mr. Lemann is author an exceptional book on the African-American Diaspora: The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America. You can buy it from Amazon to support this site. Citizen journalists gotta eat.
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3. On Sep 7, 09:35 AM Luke Lea said:
Lehman’s thesis is a non-starter. There is good and bad journalism in the blogosphere just as in the established media. The best in both places is comparable. For instance, at the moment one of the best journalists in America, Steve Sailer, is forced to post much of his most incisive (but politically incorrect) social commentary on his blog. A number of mainstream journalists visit the site and crib from it. I guess that makes him a journalists’ journalist.
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1. On Aug 4, 03:14 AM Maciej Ceglowski said:
I object to your characterization of my post (‘Argentina on two steaks a day’) as any kind of journalism. Compare the very high quality NYT coverage of culture and dining in Buenos Aires at the same time to see the difference, both in tone and quality of information.
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