more reporting, less generalism, more beats, less objectivity

I thought this post at Naked Capitalism did a good job of pushing back against the kind of blog pessimism that I myself regularly partake in. It shows how the platinum coin idea-- on which I am agnostic, other than to point out that some of the outrage is funny, given that all human perceptions of value are made up and socially conceived-- began on blogs and spread into the national media consciousness over time. Very cool data presentation and tools in that post. For all of my pessimism I still think that there's a lot of room for smart political journalism.

How to do it, if you're a young writer on the come up? I don't have any advice for how to make money, but I do have a few ideas about what would be valuable.

1. More reporting. I know this gets trotted out a lot, but it happens to be true. There are a ton of people (like me) offering opinions, analysis, commentary, etc. What I think can really distinguish someone coming up is actual reporting-- interviewing, going to the scene of events, etc. Obviously, this is a lot of work, easier said than done, and still requires contact with old media for practical purposes. There's a lot of places you can't get access to and people who won't bother to talk to you without media affiliation. But if you want to make a direct impact on the stories that matter, that's the most direct path. Also, reporting doesn't mean giving up on commentary. I would point to Adam Serwer and Dave Weigel as two guys who, from different political backgrounds, do a good job of synthesizing reporting and commenting. Which brings us to point 2.

2. Abandon objectivity, maintain fairness. Again, this is a well-worn idea, but still important. Looking at Serwer and Weigel, you're talking about two people who don't make many bones about their ideological commitments. That's not a failure to be appropriately professional as journalists; it's instead an acknowledgement that they are human beings with human biases and beliefs. As others (such as Jay Rosen) have pointed out repeatedly, the illusion that any reporter can maintain perfect objectivity actually makes bias more dangerous, because it creates a false sense about what the news is and compels journalists to ignore their own natural inclinations in one direction or another. What's important to remember is that you can be evenhanded without being objective; that is, you can do your best to represent what the arguments of each sides are, without pretending that you don't have an opinion or that both sides are equally accurate. If you're a journalist, you're gathering facts. If you have a functioning intelligence, you're going to generate an opinion on those facts. Don't pretend otherwise, just make sure that you understand and present the strongest possible arguments for the other side.

3. We don't need more generalists, so have a beat. This one does strike me as good advice for employment and professionalization, actually. There are plenty of generalists out there writing about whatever strikes their fancy. (Like me!) To distinguish yourself in a crowded landscape, it helps a lot to have a specific focus and to know what you're talking about. Make sure you have a strong grasp on the basic contours of your beat. Going to school helps a lot, because school (it's true) is still the best way to learn things, eduhacking nonsense aside. Develop contacts within that field. Find fresh angles. If you want to remark on a larger controversy, relate it to your field. Good examples of people who have developed a particular niche and work it consistently are Dana Goldstein, who writes brilliantly on education, and Dave Roberts of Grist, who writes about environmentalism and climate change.

Taken altogether, I guess I'm saying "be like Mike Elk." Elk is a great labor journalist whose work appears in In These Times and The Nation. I don't agree with everything Elk believes, but I am in great agreement about his primary focus, which is unions and labor. Elk is an honest-to-goodness old school reporter, someone who gets interviews and follows leads and pursues neglected stories. He does it all without hiding his pro-labor sympathies and with an interest in getting the facts right. There aren't nearly enough people on the left doing the kind of work he does; there's lots of opportunities to be had there, although probably not a lot of money.

I am 100% willing to cop to this post being a lot of boilerplate. But I think it's important boilerplate. (And read Mike Elk.)

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not what you think but what you are

I criticize the vague, toothless social liberalism that is shared by the large majority of those in the media not because I disagree with the sentiments, but because those commitments are absolutely empty, abandoned with the slightest pretense. Dividing social liberalism from economic reform has always been a boon to the ruling class, and an impediment to actual social justice, as nothing will improve the lives of the oppressed without structural economic change. But even beyond that, the typical commitment to these principles-- anti-racism, feminism, gay and transgender rights and acceptance, etc.-- tends to be paper thin. And even those whose commitments I don't question have a tendency to abandon them when it suits them. I love Alyssa Rosenberg and her work, but Louis CK could spit on Emmett Till's grave and she'd find some tangled explanation to excuse it. (Here's CK making with the comedy! You see, it's funny because it's a white guy repeatedly saying "nigger.")

So take Slate, and Daniel Engber, and the charming headline "Don't Bury Mike Shanahan at Wounded Knee." You see, this is hilarious, because there's a controversy surrounding the decision to play quarterback Robert Griffin III despite his knee injury, and he plays for a team called the Redskins, and hundreds of innocent Native Americans were brutally slaughtered in a racist massacre and thrown in a  mass grave. What profound whimsy! Nothing like brutal savagery meted out in the commission of state-sanctioned genocide to tickle the funny bone! I can't wait to see Slate's headlines riffing on Kristallnacht and the Middle Passage.

Of course, Engber and all of Slate's editors would insist that they care very much about the history of American Indian oppression and the horrors of Wounded Knee. And, hey, it's just a little joke, can't you take a harmless jest, on the serious level we care about this stuff.... What you have to have the courage to say-- despite the fact that they will do everything to undermine, dismiss, insult, and belittle you-- is that, no, in fact, people who make these kinds of jokes don't actually care about what happened at Wounded Knee, and don't actually care about the unspeakable atrocities that were inflicted on this country's native people. No one who is willing to look that legacy in the face could make such a casually cruel joke.

Look, I know exactly how this sort of thing goes over. If these things matter to you in an existential way, rather than as fashion, you'll be considered a bore, and a scold. It's inevitable. What you'll encounter in your life, if you hold onto these commitments not only when they are socially acceptable but when they aren't, is people who claim to agree on the principles while they simultaneously make a thousand excuses and insist on why this particular instance is the exception. Many people who are ostensibly concerned about this stuff live in those exceptions. And if you're interested in my advice, then it's simple: if you want to work to make the world better, don't live in the exceptions. Embody the principle. No matter how often they call you joyless, or pretentious, or holier-than-thou.

I get the accusations all the time. People ask me, Freddie, why are you so self-righteous. And I say, I'm not; it's only the contrast that makes you think I am. I just happen to really believe this stuff. I actually believe it, and so there's no room for exceptions. That's all.

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well this is odd

Gawker links to the AP's reporting on the disappearance of spy private investigator Robert Levinson, and the subsequent release of photos depicting him holding a sign indicating he is "in Guantanamo." I have two things to say on the matter.

1. Taking the "U.S. government's best intelligence analysis" at face value when it implicates Iran in anything = megalulz.
2. A Gawker commenter pointed this out. Check out the photos of Levinson

and check out this "computerized depiction," far right,  released early last year

Isn't the match between the depiction and the released photos a little too perfect? I mean look at his hair; it matches down to the swirl. There's no way that's due to chance. I suppose the most likely reason is that the FBI released the real photo at left and called it a computer depiction, but I'm confused as to why they would do so. Very strange.

Wherever he is, I hope Levinson is released unharmed, and soon. It is nice to know that we here in the civilized West would never imprison political prisoners without charges or recourse to a fair judicial process. Savages.

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crappiness and its acceptance

In a typical example of the breathless fawning that passes for technology journalism these days, Gizmodo's Brent Rose writes

Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 Pro processor has been blowing us away with its speed in phones like the Nexus 4 and HTC's Droid DNA, and that's why we can't wait to meet its big brothers. The Snapdragon 800 boasts a quad-core Krait 400 CPU, that can go up to 2.3GHz per core.

To put that in perspective, the base-level Retina MacBook Pros come with a 2.3GHz processor. In other words, things are about to get very fast.

OK. Pardon me, but-- I knew better than to compare clock speeds across architectures and platforms when I was 12 years old. Understanding the limitation of clock speeds in these kinds of comparisons isn't some sort of arcane computer knowledge. It's basic information for anyone interested in computing. (For the specifics, Ars Technica provided a rundown a couple years ago.) I assure you, for a variety of tasks, the Retina Macbook Pro will significantly outperform the ARM processor. Yes, technological advancement in the mobile computing sphere has been impressive, but x86 and 64-bit processing has advanced quite a bit too. And indeed, a lot of the gains have been precisely in the realm of improving speed without improving clock speed, given the constraints of heat and conduction. And as quickly as technology can move, it also faces certain physical constraints, constraints that are particularly troubling in the confined spaces of mobile gadgetry. More processing power means more heat and more power consumption. The former is a wall; the latter just the reason you can't play a game of Snood on a modern cellphone without running your battery under 50%.

Obviously, if I overheard someone making this comparison, I wouldn't get snotty about it. But this situation isn't the same as overhearing an amateur. Gizmodo is a professional blog staffed by professional writers. Rose was presumably paid for his post. I guess it just drives me crazy that the professional Internet is still filled with so much casual, basic incompetence. I'm reminded of a Jalopnik post where the blogger wrote derisively of electric cars, as those cars have to be charged with electricity that is produced using carbon-based fuels-- which would be a relevant criticism, were it not for the fact that a standard electrical grid is far more efficient than an internal combustion engine. Sure, these are just a couple examples, but I'm constantly amazed at how many elementary mistakes there are in professional writing online. I particularly cringe when I read a lot of writing on education, my own field, because there is so much written that demonstrates a lack of understanding of basic social science principles or statistical innumeracy.

To make matters worse, Rose includes the Platonic ideal of contemporary tech journalism: "Not to gush, but seriously, phones are so awesome right now." I literally facepalmed when I read that. This is exactly what's wrong with the Internet: fanboy gushing that overwhelms the ability to be discriminating, rational, and adult. All common sense and responsible thinking gets thrown out the window for the latest round of  wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Whether it's cell phones or superhero movies or the latest Dynamic, Proactive, Market-Driven, Digital, Innovative Education Revolution For The 21st Century, nobody lets the facts get in the way of some gee-whiz story about how everything is going to be endlessly badass real soon. And the pros are often worse than the amateurs.

When blogs really began taking off, there was a hope that they'd combine the best parts of traditional journalism with the best parts of the Internet, high-quality fact finding and reporting with the openness and egalitarianism of the Web. I would argue we've seen exactly the opposite since then: so many of the systems of gatekeeping and insiderism of the old media world have been replaced by equivalents that are just as rigid, and so much of what's published today lacks the most basic accuracy or fact checking. What's galling isn't just these mistakes are made, but just how little people care that they are made. Minor factual mistakes are pointed out by commenters all the time without any correction or review. Because the world of Internet commentary writ large is flagrantly hostile to the academy, its culture is antagonistic to the schooling that could teach these writers not to make such elementary mistakes. And as time goes on and a general level of crappiness becomes the norm, the quality falls further and further. What we have online is not merely a culture of low expectations but a culture of studied apathy towards ubiquitous crappiness.

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Merry Christmas indeed

Meant to mention this around Christmas time-- as my brother details on his professional website, he made all of his Christmas presents by hand, as he always does. He made me a one-of-a-kind Guybrush Threepwood voodoo doll, which should be familiar to anyone who enjoyed The Secret of Monkey Island specifically or old graphical adventure games in general.

He also made me my first ever suit by hand, so that is probably the best gift he's given me, but this is close. You jelly?

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good luck to Sully, and to all

For awhile now, I've been expressing skepticism about the financial prospects of a lot of online media. The online advertising model seems broken for all but the most popular sites. There's an almost endless supply of free online content, and that means that while revenues have increased, rates have declined, making it harder and harder for individual sites to remain solvent on advertising revenue alone. From a simplistic supply-and-demand sense, there's just so much content, including tons of it provided by people who will willingly write for free. (Like me.) That's without even getting into the rise of adblocking extensions and add ons. Hamilton Nolan of Gawker-- a blog and a company run by a man who knows how to monetize online content, whatever else you want to say-- had a pretty good rundown of how online media is likely to go in the near future. I'm a little less optimistic than he is. I'm not sure that paid online commentary is going to be a viable career for more than a few hundred people in the future. But perhaps time will tell.

That pessimism, however, should not be seen as advocacy. I begrudge no one their career in writing, or journalism, or politics, or media, or the arts. I want a broad, diverse online media as much as anyone. And the forces that I see making paid online commentary harder and harder affect writers I love as much as those I dislike. Recently, Jacobin and The New Inquiry have held subscription drives, looking to support themselves and their writers; Digby, for my money the best political blogger there is, has held her annual funding drive. What's unspoken but apparent to me: it's hard. It's very hard to make this sort of financial stability happen. That's particularly true of a publication like TNI, which started out as a venture of people who weren't initially concerned with profitability and only wanted to make something work making. I want so much for all of them.

I say this in the shadow of a much-discussed move by Andrew Sullivan, and his (sizable for a blog) staff of seven, into direct self-publishing and metered access to his content. Sullivan has taken pains to say that it's not a paywall, and as others have noted, it's still perfectly easy to get access to the Dish's content without ponying up the $19.99 (or more) for access. Like a lot of paid content now, the model is really more of a patronage/support/charitable investment one than a traditional buying and selling model. Is that sustainable? Hard to say. As Alyssa Rosenberg points out, this sort of thing has the same fundamental limitation as Kickstarter: it's far easier for people who are already established to get funded this way, when of course the people who most need funding are often those at the beginning. But if anyone has the power, scope, and reader loyalty necessary to make this kind of thing work, it's Sullivan.

Now: I owe something to Sullivan, and here it is. In the post announcing this move, Andrew writes

The point of doing this as simply and as purely as possible is precisely to forge a path other smaller blogs and sites can follow. We believe in a bottom-up Internet, which allows a thousand flowers to bloom, rather than a corporate-dominated web where the promise of a free space becomes co-opted by large and powerful institutions and intrusive advertising algorithms. 

If you'll forgive me for being self-centered-- I can scarcely imagine a blog that is more emblematic of this commitment of Sullivan's than my own. I started this blog in 2008 at a tough time in my life. I was poor, unhappy, and directionless. (I'm still poor, but now I'm happy, and I have at least a plausible vision of my future life.) I literally started this blog at a public library, here on Blogger's free platform using Blogger's free server space, with no connections in media or journalism or commentary, no published work, and seemingly no entrance into the Byzantine and cliquish world of professional media. I had little thought of anyone reading this blog. But within two weeks or so of starting it, Andrew Sullivan had linked to one of my pieces, and from their came far more clicks, links, and attention. My readership is small, but it is committed, and while I am terrible at communicating with people who thank me for my work, their support means everything. This is still an amateur blog, one for which I have never received a dime, although I have had people buy me books from my Amazon wish list, for which I'm immensely grateful. That amateur status suits me fine, both pragmatically and theoretically. But to be in the conversation, to have the ability to weigh in and be listened to-- that's a blessing, and I owe it to Andrew and his deep commitment to equality on the level of ideas. Whatever disagreements I may have with Andrew or with the Dish as an entity, his fierce commitment to looking anywhere and everywhere for fresh voices, quality writing, and provocative opinions is a profound credit to him. When it comes to writing, he is truly an egalitarian. More than anything, that commitment, and the workload it requires, will be his enduring legacy. I can only thank him and his staff and wish them all the best.

Everyone is grading on a curve, here. Right now is the time of well-wishes and optimism; later comes the gas bill. It says an awful lot that Felix Salmon saves "The big unanswered question about Sullivan’s business model is how the economics are going to play out" for his seventh paragraph. (The economics of a new business model-- seems important!) The fact that Salmon and other professional writers are lauding this move and sound a note of optimism speaks both to their very real admiration for Sullivan and to their pressing need for a new model, one on which their professional futures rest. Into that optimism must be injected caution.

I very deeply hope that Sullivan and his underbloggers are financially secure in the coming years. My prediction, were I forced to make one, would be that he will eventually catch on with another established media venture that has the war chest to adequately fund him and his staff. That's just an appraisal based on the difficulty that any new venture like this will face. But who knows? If they pull it off, I'll be the first to applaud, and my pessimism has been proven wrong many times. Here's to the wild chance.

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#thosesavageislams

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