Thursday, July 21, 2011

Quote Of The Day

I'm not going to go on another new media rant. Been there, done that, a thousand times. My days of being the wild preacher in the wilderness, forcibly dunking people in the new media waters are behind me.

But the following quote by Forbes' Timothy B. Lee is too good to pass up. Lee is responding to John Rauch's pointed poking at us all, proposing that new media is worthless and will not stand the test of time.
I’d love to have a job at a publication that gave me weeks to work on a story, but so far none of them has offered me a job. And indeed, no conceivable economic system could offer that kind of job to everyone who wants one. The great thing about the Internet is that you don’t need a job at one of those publications to write about topics of public concern. This is understandably irritating to longtime members of the profession that used to hold a lucrative monopoly on soapboxes. But in my view the increase in freedom for everyone else is an overwhelmingly positive development.
The entire piece is worth reading.

9 comments:

Ed said...

When the fuck did you start doing this shit again?

Also: What the shitballs possessed you to lump me in with those guys at Peach Pundit? They are actually, like, knowledgeable and what not. I'm merely the token liberal even though I am not a liberal.

griftdrift said...

Every court needs a jester

Charlie said...

I prefer "every village needs an idiot"

Doug said...

Lee's response to Rauch is unresponsive.

Rauch's main point is that if the entirety of the blogosophere were wiped away, would we weep over any unsaved articles? Rauch says we wouldn't because the medium isn't conducive to great writing, but to, in essence, uninformed navel-gazing.

I know it's been your hobby-horse to attack this point of view, but I think Rauch has the better argument. There's a lot of shit on the internet, and the fact that a few flowers take bloom doesn't cover up the fact that you have to wade through shit to see them.

griftdrift said...

Damn Doug, has living in New York turned you into a cynic. Tell you what. Let's meet up at Manuels. You can ride the hobby horse in and I'll see if I can knock it over!

Charlie said...

One man's shit is another man's fertilizer.

Ed/IRE said...

Few things... I'm going to be JMPrince-ian here and kind of free associate.

So if you are going to discuss the media, not mentioning the ridiculously good work AJC has done on the APS stuff (and now it looks like they are prepping for Dougherty County) well that's a pretty bad omission. Same for their bit about Denver vs. Atlanta for infrastructure.

Here's something else I've wondered too. The AJC is one of the papers I subscribe too and in print it is great. I wonder if there's a difference between online and print stuff and how that's received.

Anyway, I'd say AJC is probably at 7.5 or 8 out of 10 right now, at their worst, which considering how little money it has, and the shrinking audience for news that is pretty good.

Oh, and I'll be sure to let JMP know about your site.

griftdrift said...

I don't see any criticism of the AJC here. In fact, if you read my re-assessment, you'd see this:

"It was as if the road from Marietta Street to Dunwoody were the road to Tarsus and the editorial staff were populated by hundreds of prostrate Sauls."

Praise for their use of Twitter. Praise for Jay Bookman and other's embracing the venue.

In fact, over the past 4 years, I've argued that items like the APS scandal ARE EXACTLY the venue where papers, particularly print, are strongest and they should follow that strength.

I'll criticize the AJC plenty. But I've also always praised where warranted. And if they were stuck in the same morass from 4 years ago, I wouldn't be back.

Now go take a ritalin and actually read what I've written.

Dammit Grift. said...

I'll take the ritalin after you... my first sentence was "Few things... I'm going to be JMPrince-ian here and kind of free associate."

I was just kind of using this as a place for me to mention the good work being done and I was too lazy to go to that reassement post.

One other thing I will say is...I was taking this somewhere and now I forget.

Real talk: I'm kinda curious if the paper reads differently qua paper or website.