Here is an interesting critique of the argument I made yesterday concerning blogs and newspapers. Blogger “False Data” suggests two advantages that newspapers have over blogs:
One point Kuttner seems to make, with which I agree, is that depth is expensive. Most of what I write here is opinion, because opinion is cheap. You won’t find many really in-depth articles because I don’t have the time to research them. If you paid me a salary to do it full time, that might change, but as it is I–like many bloggers–am sharply limited in how much time I can devote to this project. While Lee bridles at the term “amateur,” I am exactly that: blogging doesn’t put food on my dinner table, so I have to budget my time accordingly.
Two other points Kuttner raises are civic-mindedness and, implicitly, journalistic integrity. Journalists take classes on journalistic integrity, though there are some cases where I have to wonder whether they’re universally effective. Blogging is a new enough medium, run by people who generally lack journalist training, that it’s still grappling with issues like disclosure. For example, Joel Spolsky writes about being approached to do product reviews and being allowed to keep the product, raising a potential conflict of interest. It’s possible a popular blog could support its author full-time, but that author may quickly find herself at sea and losing credibility without a commitment to integrity, full disclosure, and balance. Similarly, without that commitment, civic-mindedness can quickly become punditry and nothing more. The other side of the problem can happen with the bloggers doing fact gathering that Lee mentions: their main incentive to be fair and balanced is reputation, but how do you track the reputations of millions of amateur reporters in the field around the world?
I’ll consider each of these below the fold.
I think the fundamental problem with this is that it gives current newspapers too much credit. Some traditional print publications do indeed offer both depth and credibility, but these traits are far from universal.
In terms of depth, I think a strong case can be made that the opposite is true. Take tech policy, the issue I know best. I doubt you could find any print publication in the world that covers tech policy as thoroughly as we do here at TLF–at least outside of academia. And we’re hardly exceptional. If you look over at our blogroll, you’ll see dozens of sites, most of which cover tech policy issues in equal or greater depth. And there’s depth in terms of both quantity and quality. Obviously, there’s far more material available online than there is in print. But you’ll also be hard-pressed to find any mainstream print outlet that regularly prints articles on tech policy that can rival one of Ed Felten’s multi-post analsyses of a computer security issue, or the lengthy analyses Ars Technica does of technical issues that have a policy angle.
In contrast, while there certainly are some good in-depth news stories out there, what you’ll often hear from print journalists, in particular, is that they never get enough time to delve deeply enough into the issues they cover. For example, I blasted the Wall Street Journal a few months back for its shallow reporting of copyright issues. I actually had a chance for a lengthy chat with the guy who wrote that editorial a few weeks later, and he told me that he only had a couple of days to do the research that went into that story. I can’t really blame either him or the Journal for this, given that they do have to produce a couple of editorials a day with a relatively small editorial staff. But I think it’s far from obvious that the depth of reporting on blogs is inferior to those of traditional newspapers.
I think part of this is the long tail in action. The average blog post is almost certainly of lower quality than the average newspaper article. But because there are so many more blogs than newspapers, and because there is such a great diversity of bloggers, the best blog posts are often better than the best newspaper articles. And blogs are good and getting better at rapidly raising the profile of the best posts, so that the best posts get wide exposure.
What about integrity? Here I think the argument that newspapers have the advantage is even more dubious. It’s true as Joel Spolsky writes, that there are corrupt bloggers who produce glowing reviews of products they got for free. I’m sure similar things happen in politics and public policy. But I don’t think you can argue with a straight face that nothing of the sort happens in print publications. For example, when’s the last time you read a really negative product review in a mainstream computer magazine? Might that have something to do with the fact that most of the products reviewed also purchase advertising in the magazine?
I think reporters that cover politics are prone to a similar, albeit more subtle, form of corruption. The most valuable currency for a reporter who covers politics is access to the decision-makers who make the news. If you piss off a national politician or senior government official too much, he or she (along with their staff) will stop inviting you to events, returning phone calls, providing information on background, etc. Hence, there’s a strong temptation to handle interview subject with kid gloves. Bob Woodward is the poster boy for this style of journalism. In 2002 and 2004, when critical coverage of the Bush administration could have actually made a difference in the direction of policy, Woodward wrote a pair of books that spoke glowingly of the president’s leadership style and glossed over the problems with his management style. Only in 2006, when Bush is unpopular with almost everyone, could Woodward bring himself to write a critical volume.
Although everyone is doubtless prone to this sort of thing to some extent, I think the problem is likely to be much less severe with bloggers, most of whom don’t have to worry about how writing overly critical blog posts will affect either their employers’ advertising revenues or their own careers.
Maybe this reflects ignorance on my part, but I find it pretty implausible that formal ethics training has a significant effect on journalists’ integrity. On the margins, it probably improves it slightly by reminding journalists that they should report conflicts of interest, refuse gifts from the subject they cover, etc. But fundamentally, either you’re committed to doing your job with integrity or you’re not.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
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