Tomorrow's TIME Magazine: Are Bloggers 'Killing' Old Media in Campaign Coverage?

In this week's issue of TIME magazine, arriving in print and online tomorrow, columnist James Poniewozik uses the passing of Tim Russert to highlight the decline of the Old Media and the rise of the New Media, described as "bloggers and YouTubers: a diffuse army of the uncredentialed, uninhibited and -- most terrifyingly -- unpaid. In Russert, the press lost its most authoritative mass-market journalist, just as it is losing its authority and its mass market."

Poniewozik explains: "It's too simple to say that the new media are killing off the old media. ...What's happening instead is a kind of melding of roles. Old and new media are still symbiotic, but it's getting hard to tell who's the rhino and who's the tickbird."

He cites "two of the biggest stories of the Democratic primary: Barack Obama's comments that working-class voters are 'bitter' and Bill Clinton's rope-line rant that a reporter who profiled him was 'scumbag.' Both were broken by a volunteer for the Huffington Post website, Mayhill Fowler."

Traditional reporters, he observes, "were aghast at Fowler's methods... But mainstream media had no problem treating the scoops as big news... The case against Fowler, in other words, was about process and credentials, not content... Fowler's stories prove that one reason sites like Huffington have an audience is the perception that Establishment journalism has gotten better at serving its powerful sources than its public."

Poniewozik goes on to mention other ways the boundary between new and old media has become "porous," before concluding, with another Russert reference: "Maybe we'll remember this election as the one when we stopped talking about 'the old media' and 'the new media' and, simply, met the press."

Greg Mitchell's new book is So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq. He is editor of Editor & Publisher.

Comments

[ebanks84]

It's called TELLING THE TRUTH for a change. Americans are sick of tired of the SPIN they receive daily from the msm and they're MAD AND NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!

Wherever we can find THE TRUTH, that's where we go and heck with the rest. This world is so unreal that if you believe what you hear and see on the BOOB TUBE than you are a lost soul. The real world is out there to be explored and we're tired of being held back by those lying POWERS-THAT-WERE!

If they ever decide to come to our side with THE TRUTH, they will be welcomed. Otherwise, stay where you are and we will keep going right past you.

[geg6]

These idiots in the MSM don't even know their own history.

Apparently they've never heard of the earliest bloggers in America, the pamphleteers of the Revolution. Bloggers are the exact same thing with a different delivery method. We haven't had this sort of citizen driven media since the Revolutionary era and I, personally, cannot think of a more positive development than the decentralization of information that this represents. It's the epitome of free speech, with all its messy but necessary anarchy.

[RobinSeattle]

Well, when the White House press corps basically is just the administration's glorified steno pool and columnists and politicians are golfing buddies, more and more, you have to go to blogs to get something resembling unvarnished truth. Or at least the truth spun in a different and, often, more incisive, way.

The other problem is that tv is subject to the tyranny of the clock, which results in important issues and events getting devolved down to oversimplified pablum.

And too much coverage of Britney and Russert and other fluff.

[SNusbaumer]

The decline of traditional media and the rise of the new media are being overstated. I was just on the campaign trail for 5 months-plus and i can tell you all the campaign staffs went bananas over the A-Teamers and could care less about the bloggers. Of course they may be wrong, or maybe the demise of big media is wrong. I suspect we will see the continuing merging and the traditional media will simply have a stronger online voice and the other online crowd will cease to be hip.

[ebanks84]

Sometimes, some people can't see for looking also.

[bmora]

If so called "traditional journalists" cannot do their jobs, then I am perfectly satisfied to never read a hardcopy of an article ever again. Let the Corporate Media burn to the ground.

[TheEmptinessOfTruthiness]

Yep, they have only themselves to thank.

They've become akin to Intelligent Designers -> start with a forgone conclusion and then work to unearth "facts" supporting that conclusion.

[ebanks84]

Yeah. Whatever happened to the Woodward & Burns type reporters. Did they die a death in this country or what? Are they not being taught the true journalistic mantra anymore ... fine a story and report it. I don't believe we have REAL REPORTERS any longer. They all take their "scoops" from the internet, one from another, and redress it to be their own.

[PaulPeete]

As an OfftheBus volunteer and HUFFPO Blogger, I see the need for and power of citizen journalists. When the media outlets are corporate owned and ideologically predisposed to particular political agendas, citizens must act (pre-Iraq invasion MSM failed us, letting Bush bamboozle us).

As in ages past, when pamphlets written in secret and circulated against royals was effective in spurring public action, the bloggosphere has emerged as the vox populi. Matt Drudge can rightfully be credited with kicking this movement into high gear. One important distinction is the ability to identify bloggers through IP addresses and google traces makes anonimnity very difficult, a fact that those in totalitarian states should beware of.

Where else can luminaries and unknowns battle on equal footing with nothing but the power of persuasion and truth to determine the outcome?

[Maxiesid]

Well, if the mainstream press is emulating Mayhill Fowler's type of yellow journalism (or was this just another way to get that 'bitter' comment back into the public eye?) then it deserves to die. Good riddance, and hopefully Mayhill's reporting career will go right along with them.

[InofTouch]

So gose the HuffPost?

[DavidHealy]

I think it's called speaking truth to power.