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Jewish World Review Oct. 14, 2002 /8 Mar-Cheshvan 5763
Dave Shiflett
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com -- A recent survey shows that employees visit Internet news sites during business hours more than porn sites, shopping sites, and online gambling Meccas. This is said to be a bad thing. Indeed, the survey called the sites "time burners." That is a wretched
slander. Employees who are reading the news as it unfolds are surely up
to something more useful than loitering around the water cooler, dissing
the boss and analyzing his mistress's recent bun-tuck.
But two things are
not in doubt. One is that these sites are addictive. The other is that
they have dramatically changed what is broadly called journalism, especially
the opinion-writing branch. I speak from experience.
Several years ago I made a conscious effort to go rustic for motives of
the utmost purity: To escape the media-driven droning of Washington. I
had watched political obsession destroy the best minds of my generation.
Many awaited the pre-dawn plop of the Post on their doorstep with
the same yearning an adolescent boy takes to that fabled peephole into
the girls' shower.
Yet as the sheep
graze nearby, I find myself fully in the grips of News-Flow Mania. This
is a debilitating condition. Where there was once hope of thinking the
long thoughts of middle age, reading the great books of antiquity, and
of escaping the tyranny of the morning headlines, there is now a rechecking
of events on the hour, sometimes more often than that. The stories are
almost always of no real importance: Gunmen invade Sikh Temple in India!
Mother beats child in Indiana parking lot! Pig rescued from swollen creek
in Texas! It's raining like hell in Dresden! What explains this
addiction? Perhaps it is a belief that the more you know the better off
you are, no matter how puny the knowledge. It is also true that when you're
scrolling a news site you're not working, and slacking is also its own
reward. Looking on the bright
side, this has been good for many writers, and perhaps especially for
those in the opinion-mongering business. The Internet is awash not only
in instant news, but instant commentary as well. And these days, anybody
can be a commentator, and it sometimes seems most people are. This is a stark departure
from the way things used to be. When I got into the newspaper business
in the late 1970s, it was understood that opinion writers would contemplate
a subject long and hard before unleashing their learned thoughts. Rushing
to print was very poor form, suggesting a hysterical cast of mind. It was also understood
that the opinion writers were supposed to be wizened old hacks who had
paid their dues as reporters before ascending what was then known as the
"ivory tower." Many of us started as copyboys, running dispatches
from the wire machines to various editors. From there we moved to a weekly
or semi-weekly, where a kid reporter covered town councils, county commissions,
and whatever was happening down at the cop house. Cop-house reporting
included copying the names, addresses, and offenses of the recently arrested.
For many reporters the names meant nothing: We often didn't stay in a
town long enough to know many people, save for various municipal officials.
But a helpful clerk might point out that Mr. Schmo, who blew a .22 on
his breathalyzer examination, is the high-school vice principal, while
Mrs. Kelly, who was bagged last Saturday night for disturbing the peace
(with the help of a skillet), has a close connection with Commissioner
Ryland, who was seen skulking off into the night just before the cops
arrived, bearing a skillet imprint on the side of his head. This was generally
the best-read feature in the paper. This grunt work was
often boring, but it taught young reporters how things worked: Who was
screwing around with who and where it got them, the importance of attending
charity barbecues, how city and town budgets get put together, which legal
notices are worth reading, why the mayor refused to cut the ribbon at
a particular store's opening (the proprietor was suspected of poisoning
the mayor's dog), and the countless other small dramas that make up life.
Thus informed, a hack could base his opinions on some knowledge of the
real world. Or so went the theory. When I got fully
into the opinion business (in Reagan-era Washington), many thunderbolt-tossers
had little if any practical journalism experience. This was no doubt in
part due to the highly ideological tenor of the times, and town. Writers
tended to come from a politician's staff, think tank, or had cranked out
a book or two. They were strangers to the daily deadline, the courthouse,
and the cop house. They simply had ideas and the belief that constant
repetition of these ideas would change the world around them. Some wrote well.
Lots didn't. Now the opinion racket
is greatly transformed. Writers don't worry so much about daily deadlines;
they're thinking about hourly updates. Anyone who began a piece with "it
is my considered opinion" would be e-mocked within an inch of their
life. Many opinions have been considered for every bit of seven minutes,
if that. This is especially true on some of the blogs, where a writer
might post half a thought, go to the can, and come back to finish the
job. The blogs have also
done away with another fixture of old-time journalism: the editor. I have
known many editors through the years; many were menaces. Malevolence informed
their every editorial decision. All had a highly developed talent for
removing any hint of literary flair. Any line that might cause a reader
to even consider cracking a smile would be pulled from the page and beaten
with a hatchet. But from time to time an editor will keep a writer from
embarrassing himself, and in this regard their absence is sometimes keenly
felt. Many of sites have also done away with another standard feature
of old-time journalism: the paycheck. That's an advance many of the old
press barons would hold in the highest possible regard. Despite all shortcomings,
however, the news net has established itself as a powerful drug. Someone
will no doubt come up with a way to help us hopeless dopes break the habit.
Meantime, word has it that a she-wolf has eaten a baby in Tibet. Here
in Virginia, we are outraged while Gibbon, Virgil, and Kierkegaard
rest unmolested on the shelf.
06/21/02: Harmonic Convergence: Shunned by suits, traditionalists join self-recording revolution
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