tablesaw | Not Funny, But Whatever.

Adam Cadre is, among other things, a programmer, a comic-book writer, and an accomplished novelist. He's been reading through the complete writings of Mark Twain and writing about each book in his Calendar which is very similar to a blog but isn't quite one, I don't think. The latest entry, inspired by Twain's Christian Science clarified something that's been tugging at my mind, about politics and the media and Jon Stewart.

I was watching The Daily Show, particularly the film about presidency of the past four years. It's online in a few places, go search if you haven't seen it. But what struck me was, it wasn't funny. Oh sure, there were some moments of hilarity, like Bush stating hesitantly, "I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah." But I didn't see the same comedy punchlines that The Daily Show usually aims for.

I wasn't upset, but I was unsettled. And I think it's because I started to realize, right there, that somehow a fake news show has become one of the only sources of real journalism left.

But, go read Cadre's essay. It's worth your time. And while you're at it, add

adamcadre to find out about updates when they happen.

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This is, as you might imagine, a big topic in the journalism communities. The pat explanation is "media conglomeration and the pursuit of profit over good reporting," but I suspect it also has lots to do with plain old laziness and the way the staff at major media organizations are not living in the same middle-class world as most of their customers. I don't mean just money, but also who you interact with--the American media is concentrated in NYC, DC and to a lesser extent LA, which has got to skew your worldview.

That said, I feel obligated to point out that nobody, in any era, has ever been completely satisfied with how the media does its job. And it's easy to talk about the decline of "real journalism" without having to define that too closely, or pursue it on a daily basis.

I found that last paragraph really interesting, because I am a student journalist. A few weeks ago, one of the more articulate professors gave a two-day lecture on the history of journalism, and said the exact same thing you did - about how journalism used to be good and noble in the past, and things have declined now, is all a myth. In every age, people were dissatisfied with the way the media performed their job, and that journalists as a whole, refuse to have "real" journalism defined because then it would curtail their activities.

I am curious about how I would feel once I am no longer a student.

good points, and very plausible. now i'm thinking about yellow journalism (http://www.google.com/search?&q=%22yellow+journalism%22), a term that evidently dates back to the turn of the 20th century.

what's left unanswered, though, is: how bad-off IS mainstream journalism? it's all well and good to say that people have always been unhappy with it, that reports of its "decline" are exaggerated and misleading, and so forth. but what if it has always sucked?

Did you mean "but so what if it has always sucked"? Because I assume that was your point: how bad-off mainstream journalism is now is an issue regardless of whether it's worse than it used to be or not.

But one of the things that struck me about that lecture was the point that the role of media keeps evolving. The whole idea of journalists going in and uncovering secrets and revealing all - that came about only in the early 20th century (I think - or very late 19th, much after the Civil War). But I will go and check out that url you mentioned now.

To answer your question cynically, if it has always sucked, too bad, because that's all people have. :} If it has always sucked, let's hope that we're always striving to improve, eh?

Stressed out, overworked and underpaid. :} (If you're in LA and interested in an internship, I can probably hook you up.) To answer your question more seriously, I think when you're on the floor actually trying to do a competent, fair job, you'll see what I mean about laziness--got a deadline looming? Just parrot both sides without investigating their claims! That said, there is a fine line between reporting the news and analyzing it, and I believe most journalists want to do a good job and have a horror of finding out they've been subconsciously imposing their own bias, so maybe they tend to err too far in the other direction and not analyze at all.

Also, when people who don't know shit about meeting a daily deadline start telling you "the media suuuuucks! they are biased because they don't cover my group/interests in depth! real journalism is dead!", you will want to kill them. (I hasten to add that this is not directed at

tablesaw. More like all the morons on the media blogs I read.)

about how journalism used to be good and noble in the past, and things have declined now, is all a myth

My high school history teacher used to call this "euphoric recall"--the idea that the past was somehow better than today. It doesn't just apply to journalism, of course. People have been predicting the imminent decline of Western civilization for decades if not centuries, yet here we are. As you've probably learned in journalism history courses, the idea of the media as an objective watchdog is actually relatively recent--100 or 150 years ago, newspapers were blatantly institutionally biased.

Not Funny, But Whatever.

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Not to sound like a parrot repeating lessons,

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this reply accidentally took on an EPIC length