One frequently cited condition of post-modernity is a growing sense of fragmentation and a compression of time and space. In media, this sensation is felt through new technology that allows constant publication.
In this new environment, the traditional journalistic concept of “deadlines” now seems quaint, with even Laurie Oakes twittering second-by-second updates from doorstops. For those of us brought up in the wire services (where our lives were ruled by the tyranny of the “snap”) it is illuminating seeing newspaper and 6pm news hacks now all caught up in the noise machine.
At some point, though, the ability to publish instantly must start to work against comprehension. While there’s nothing wrong with journalists providing running commentary on breaking news events, you wonder sometimes whether we’re at risk of losing the benefit of the long view – or even the middle view that used to rest somewhere between the immediacy of wire service snaps and the pampered perspective of magazine journalism.
What do others think?
11 Comments
Stop Murdoch · September 9, 2010 at 2:21 AM
Great Blog (so far!),
As is obvious, we take the view that the biggest problem in this country (far greater than, and inextricable from, training or business models/funding) is Murdoch.
Restoring the diversity of ownership and control will go a long way to solving the other failings simply by virtue of forcing real journalism to be properly prioritised.
For example, people are getting sick of the Murdoch infestation of the ABC (obviously being commercial partners in areas like magazine and book publishing is ludicrous).
As an aside, and simply an anectdote: 'The Tweed Shire Echo' is a small, profitable genuinely independent weekly. It comes out on a Thursday. By Friday usually every single copy has gone while the Murdoch freebies sit in large piles all week long.
We believe that is because there is a huge appetite for real journalism.
Good luck and keep it up!
Ozymandias · September 9, 2010 at 3:15 AM
“those of us brought up in the wire services”
-and those of us trained as “reporters”, back in the era of lynotype machines, who were told the most important part of the compilation of any story was the checking of facts, and the most important part of the writing was objectivity.
Mr Denmore · September 9, 2010 at 5:09 AM
'Stop Murdoch', you're right. The answer is we need more voices. And the best of those will be the ones that serve local needs.
Murdoch will defend his patch fiercely though – witness his son James' campaign against the BBC's online ventures and the effort here to undermine the NBN.
Any media initiative that ventures beyond simple blogging to publishing that starts eating into available ad dollars will come under pressure from the Holt Street Deathstar.
goonie · September 9, 2010 at 5:13 AM
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goonie · September 9, 2010 at 5:14 AM
Yep.
I come at this from the perspective of an academic. By journalistic standards, we have unbelievably slack deadlines, and our published output is tiny. But those slow and small contributions should (theoretically) be of the highest standards of quality.
Obviously, journalism is not going to work to academic deadlines, nor should it. But just a moment's reflection and the most casual research – heck, just a phone call to a subject expert to provide some perspective – would do much of journalism's published output an immense amount of good.
I think it would do the ABC, for instance, a great amount of good if it produced less material (much of which is near-duplicate anyway) but put more effort into what it does produce.
Robert Merkel
Mr Denmore · September 9, 2010 at 5:46 AM
Agreed Robert. Unfortunately though, the acreage of newsprint space and hours of empty air time are expanding as the capacity of the already overworked journos' to fill it contracts.
Hilmer at Fairfax spoke of journos as content providers for advertising platforms and encouraged a classic 'productivity' mindset that saw news as widgets, pumped out in increasing volume by fewer and fewer people.
dj · September 9, 2010 at 5:52 AM
I see the effect of these pressures in my work a lot. The reporting of a lot of science and other research is essentially barely rewritten press releases (often cut and pasted). However, to go from the sad to the farcical, when the pr guff is edited, they are often interpreted wrongly or let distortions of the results made in the press release stand, indicating that no one even bothered to read the abstract of the paper the press release was based upon.
Mr Denmore · September 9, 2010 at 6:14 AM
dj, they call it 'churnalism'. University of Cardiff did a study a couple of years back showing 40 pct of the content in major metros was spoon-fed. Not the journos' fault, just the pressures of doing more with less.
dj · September 9, 2010 at 7:15 AM
Yes, I understand a lot of these problems are systemic rather than any individual failings. A common thread in many workplaces – less people to do the same or more work.
When you deal with these information sources form another perspective (that of providing current awareness/library services) it takes you from an academic understanding reported by other people into a concrete realization of how pervasive PR really is.
Andrew Elder · September 9, 2010 at 12:32 PM
Journalists should be redirected away from the press gallery.
If you want to do a story on health policy, you can get a press release each from the minister and the shadow, and the rest of the day is your own. Alternatively, you can be set to work on reporting someone like John Mendoza or a critical care nurse in the first instance, and speaking to administrators and others and going out from there, by which time the minister and shadow will seem so remote as to be irrelevant. By that point, you'll probably have created more news than Michelle Grattan has in her 'life'.
Mr Denmore · September 9, 2010 at 11:14 PM
Agree, Andrew. Part of the problem of having a dedicated capital city, whose raison d'etre is government is that the media treats 'politics' as something that only happens in Canberra. Hence the obsession with the mechanics of poltical disagreement and not the real world consequence of politicians' decisions (or more appropriately non-decisions).