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September 29, 2005Awright, take a chill pill!There is quite a testy little storm a-brewin’ between CBS’s new media blog, Public Eye, and blogfather Hugh Hewitt. This comes on the heels of the little brouhaha between Public Eye and Jeff Jarvis. I am not trying to take sides, here, but I must point out to CBS that their child, Public Eye (PE) has now been caught fighting twice in one week. Tsk. Tsk. A new kid on the block will never make friends that way! At the heart of both fights is the question: What - in these changing times - defines a journalist? While a journalist can also be a blogger, is it out of the question for a blogger to be a journalist? Can some bloggers morph into that fabled classification of “journalist?” G.K. Chesterton was a journalist who wrote prodigiously - he never stopped writing - novels, treatises, polemics, opinion columns, dialogues and debates and poems. No one today doubts that he was a journalist, yet I am quite certain that were he alive in this era, he’d be a blogger, and a BIG one in every way. Being fat and unphotogenic, he would very likely come up more from blogs than from any sort of mainstream venue. And yet he would still be (and would very likely completely identify as) a journalist. The Hewitt/CBS dust up started when PE posted what it did say up front was a far-from comprehensive, very subjective list of “journalist/bloggers” that seems to simply have not been as well thought-out as it could have been. Before trying to compile such a list, I might have contacted a few bloggers and sounded them out on it, and perhaps built the piece into an exposition on the manner in which journalism does, in fact, seem to be inexorably morphing and transitioning into something new. But then, I am a simple cavewoman with no particular dog in the fight, whereas both Public Eye and Hewitt have strong feelings on the subject. CBS is the former Tiffany-standard for news reportage, and it is quite natural for them to want to hang on to that “premier journalist” crown, even if it is a bit tarnished. With their blog-experiment at Public Eye, they’re a little like a Miss America with two hours left on her reign, gamely trying to go along with a program that will eventually render her own crown obsolete and irrelevent. Hewitt and the blogs are like the 50 contestants all parading around with vaselined lips and duct-taped swimsuits, working their talent competitions and looking for any advantage because the field is - for once - crowded with folks who are just thatgood. Seriously talented people want to be taken seriously, especially when they are as educated and able as the “standard bearer,” and Hewitt took some offense at a post by Public Eye’s Brian Montopoli. Reading Hugh’s initial reaction to the PE piece, I at-first took him to be amused by its incompleteness and glaring omissions. But a transcript of his subsequent interview with Montopoli indicates that no…far from being amused, Hewitt was vexed and loaded for bear. In reading it, I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for Montopoli, who seemed taken quite off guard by Hugh’s grilling…Hugh is an attorney, remember…and at one point he came off like a cross between Perry Mason and a dyspeptic John McLaughlin: HH: Well, I didn’t write this. I think this is a silly exercise in naval gazing. But Brian, let me ask you a couple of specifics. Is Michael Barone a journalist? BM: Um, yes. HH: He has a very fine blog. BM: Right. HH: It’s not on your list. BM: And someone pointed that out in comments. And as I said, there are probably people that we should have put on there that we didn’t, which is why we have the comment feature, and… HH: So you would agree that was an oversight. BM: Yeah, I think it was. HH: Okay. Jack Kelly, Pittsburgh Post Gazette columnist, also a blogger at Irish Pennants. Oversight? BM: I’m not familiar with his work, but if he’s a columnist at the Post Gazette, and also a blogger, then yes, he probably should be on the list. HH: James Lileks, columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Newhouse News Service. Columnist and blogger? Should he be on the list? BM: Sure. Now why didn’t you tell me this in comments? We would have added them. HH: I don’t comment on other people’s blogs. I do my own blog. I’m not going to help you guys get an audience. No one’s reading your thing. I’m giving you the most people you people have gotten yet. BM: That’s just mean, Hugh. HH: Let me ask you about Michelle Malkin. BM: Hugh, let me ask you a question. HH: No, no, Brian. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. BM: All right. HH: I’m running the show. Michelle Malkin, columnist for World Net Daily, syndicated, also frequently on television, blogger extraordinaire. Is she a journalist blogger? BM: I think of her as a blogger primarily. HH: But I mean, so what’s to distinguish? Why is she not Michael Barone? Or is this just Brian Montopoli’s view of the world, which is in fact, then, not objective, and not journalism? BM: Well, I mean I used the word subjective in the post. So, I’m not sure why you’re hammering me for it not being objective. HH: Well, because a journalist, since you’re allowed to put this out on CBS’ website, that says here’s a list of journalist bloggers, I don’t have a definition. I really am just going to indulge my own subjective opinions, I think you’re proving my point about media, which is there isn’t any objectivity. This is all just subjective, and CBS… BM: I think that’s a bit of a stretch, and let me explain why. We merely wanted to allow our readers to have some idea of exactly what was out there in terms of journalists who blog. HH: Now, now. Brian, how silly is that? First of all, all these people…not all of them, but I am going to guess 70% of them are center-left. Maybe 80%. I see you have noted the Corner. BM: You mean all the Fox News bloggers that we’ve put there? HH: I’ve seen the Corner that you noted, but let’s run through it. Matt Yglesias, James Wolcott Tap, Noam Schieber, Scott Rosenberg, Hit and Run, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Craig Crawford, David Corn, an Altercation magazine journalist. The only one on that list of magazine journalists is the Corner who is center-right. Among newspaper journalists, I don’t see anyone who would qualify as anything remotely as a righty… BM: Hugh, I don’t know how to say this any other way. When you say you’re writing a subjective post, and then put out a subjective post, it’s very difficult to defend why it’s not objective. I mean, it said in the post that it’s subjective. I said name people you think we left off the list. It was merely a way for our readers to go check out some mainstream media people who are also bloggers. We thought they would be interesting. BM: Again, I’m not speaking on behalf of CBS. I’m speaking on behalf of Public Eye, which is… HH: And so, Public Eye is a production of CBS. 25 blogs… BM: That’s like telling the New York Times’ public editor speaks on behalf of the New York Times. I’m not Andrew Hayward. HH: You’ve got 30 different blogs listed here. 25 of them are center-left or hard left. You’ve excluded obvious center-right people like Jack Kelly and Michael Barone. I don’t think intentionally. You’ve designed the rules to exclude people like me and Michelle Malkin, because you don’t like us, and then you purport to be objective… BM: You’re on our blogroll, Hugh. How do you say we don’t like you. And another thing. I e-mailed you, asking you to do a critique of our website. We have this outside voices feature. Jonathan Last is doing it. You never got back to me. HH: I don’t want to do anything for CBS. You guys are like…you’ve got the Plague. BM: Well, at the very least, you could have written me back. Here I am on your radio show. HH: I might catch what you have. If you have…If I end up working for you, I’m going to end up being identified with CBS, which has a terrible reputation, because of punk stunts like this, Brian. BM: You’re saying if Hewitt critiques CBS in a critical way on our website, which is what we wanted you to do… HH: I’m saying I’m not going to help you guys make money. BM: …it would have ruined your credibility? You would have been kicked out on the street? BM: Are you suggesting that the people I put on the list are somehow endorsed? Because I mean… HH: Absolutely I am! Egad! I think Hugh had a point, and he made it, but again - Montopoli’s post did contain the proviso that the whole silly exercise was subjective and non-comprehensive. While this interview probably made for very good radio, both men came off as being a bit defensive. Which, given the tenor of the times, is not surprising, but it is regrettable. The problem is, PE, while trying hard to be a “blog” is a weird hybrid just now - it hasn’t quite figured out that there is a loosey-goosey quality, a free-wheelingness to blogging that is very distinctive, but that needn’t preclude serious writing or -as evidenced by Michelle Malkin and Brian Maloney’s dogged work on Air America’s misuse of public funds (a story the mainstream media simply does not want to look at) real investigative journalism. One can’t help feeling that on some level - subconsciously, perhaps - PE feels like it is slumming it a bit, and is looking down its nose at the company it finds itself forced to keep. As much as I like Public Eye - and I do like it - their “journalists stand here and bloggers stand there” vibe is detectable, and nothing demonstrates that better than these two battles the blog has now engaged in, with Jarvis and Hewitt, and today’s piece on Hewitt entitled “We Got Them Mad! We Got Them Mad! We Got Them Mad!” which really seems to go out of its way to distinguish just who the “them’s” and “we’s” are. And…I’m sorry, but it also seems kinda juvenile. That said, bloggers like Jarvis and Hewitt…and yeah, me (although I am the least interesting) tend not to hide their disappointment in much that is mainstream journalism, today. Thus, there is a mutual lack of respect that feeds the defensiveness on both sides. One of the things I most like about blogging is that I have my space, and I have my say. I have never battled another blogger, even if he has attacked me, because my feeling is - hey, everyone’s entitled to their opinion - no one says we all have to agree. But I have gone head-to-head with people who have shouted at me in my comments section, and I can tell you that there is a way to engage in discourse on the blogs - a tone of polite detachment, a willingness to crack a joke at one’s own expense, an ability to concede a point without giving up one’s integrity, so that neither one has to lose face. Maybe that’s not how every blog works, but I think it’s how the best ones - the ones I want to read - operate and grow. Right now, Public Eye has a nice format and excellent writing, but it is missing that tone…and it is causing Hugh Hewitt to growl “give me my propers” in a way Aretha never could. I think Public Eye will really begin to succeed when it can lighten up a little, when the crew can be proud of their “mothership” which is the venerable Columbia Broadcasting System, but also be able to mock it, and themselves, from time to time - as the folks at The Corner at NRO do. The Corner folks came into their blog, however, knowing who they were and who their audience was, while Public Eye is trying to find its way even as it is unspooling from a somewhat fractured bobbin, which may give it a rather defensive spin. No pun intended. Okay, pun intended. Perhaps Public Eye would lose some of its formality and stiffness if it were to fill out the blogcrew - currently thick with “journalists” - with a few “non-journalist” blogging types who are able to let fly. It needs a voice or two who are less “Buttondown-J-school-with-suspenders” and more “I’m posting this from my pub…” After all…once upon a time, all the best journalists were doing their writing from the pub. UPDATE: This is turning into quite a shootout. Meanwhile SCA have some thoughts on all of it. Also, Jeff Jarvis is commenting, suggesting that Dick Meyer deserves some respect for entering into these debates in various comments sections (I agree), and he has some further suggestions for CBS. http://theanchoressonline.com/2005/09/29/awright-take-a-chill-pill/trackback/ 25 Responses to “Awright, take a chill pill!” |
September 29th, 2005 at 10:07 pm
You know, Anchoress, this attitute permeates among some of the bloggers on the scene. They seems to split the blogosphere into two groups. One is “the serious blogger” (which of course, includes them) and bloggers who “ought to stick to other people’s comment boxes”.
So when Hugh sallies forth with a “I have a bigger blogging weeine than you”, I just sit back and smile. As you stated, there’s a lot of talent out here and the king of the hill only gets to stay there until someone bigger comes along and pops him or her off
September 29th, 2005 at 10:13 pm
Homerun post. Only you could make Chesterton work in a post like this.
Your take on blogs, blogging and bloggers is particularly relevant- if for no other reason than blogs are ’shaking themselves out’ as it relates to the free market of thoughts and ideas.
In fact, a blog being backed by major interests has proven not to be an advantage. It’s about quality, content and having to fight for that reader, every day. No airwave franchise or monopolies involved.
On a level playing field, the same rules apply to all.
September 29th, 2005 at 10:15 pm
Well the Public Eye place still has a view that the format is more important than the message, they will continue to have this problem until those writing there move past that.
September 30th, 2005 at 1:40 am
To me, Public Eye is the MSM coming on the scene and appointing itself as THE expert on which bloggers are journalists–legitimate. As is usual with MSM people, they are blind to their leftist bias and subjective standards.
September 30th, 2005 at 9:24 am
Evon is right. However, I do sympathize with Montopoli a bit..
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There is a hidden set of rules in the blogosphere that takes some time to learn. No one gives you the rulebook, it’s an OJT kind of thing. And, to make it just a bit more difficult, there are different rules at different blogs.
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Montopoli stepped on a mine when he tried to add some “whose #1″ kind of thinking to bloggers. No one out here seems to think that way, accept in a truly objective, count the numbers kind of way we see at TruthLaidBear.
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I’ve stepped on a couple of mines too, so I can understand Montopoli’s confusion. He wrote something to try and be one of the bunch, then got hammered by the King of the World.
September 30th, 2005 at 10:11 am
Dawn Patrol
Welcome to the Dawn Patrol, our daily roundup of information on the War on Terror and other topics - from the MilBlogs, other blogs, and the mainstream media. If you’re a blogger, you can join the conversation. If you link…
September 30th, 2005 at 4:31 pm
Cloistered Wise One:
Many good points above, but you are focusing on a target to puny for intellect. On the small points: a)The “list” issue is trivial and a sideshow. Only a contored and malevolnet reading could begin to portray it as some kind of Public eye “seal of approval” deal.b)PE took Hewitt seriously by including him in the permanent blogroll and inviting him to formally contribute. c) PE is neither fish nor fowl; it is a work in progress, and our intention is to communicate — not to be a great blog by blog standards or a great sanitized blogproduct by msm standards. Some of our long pieces have been well reported and argued. Some stuff has been funny, kinda.
Here’s the big issue raised in the Affair Hewitt: how does listening happen?
To really see the difficulty, I suggest you and your erudite community read the e-mails bwtween Hewitt and I: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2005/09/29/publiceye/entry891642.shtml.
My flaws are myraid and they glow in te dark. But I pleaded with this man to read and listen with a fraction of the openess he demands — and that did not happen. Why? Explain this to me.
In so many ways blog foster dialogue and listened; in so many ways, blogs foster narcissism and community-born blinders. Blogging combined with “isms”, I feel, have become great barriers to civil, open communication.
So again I hope you and yours go to Public Eye — at cbsnews.com — and comment there.
Dick Meyer
September 30th, 2005 at 4:51 pm
Mr. Meyer: The problem is not openness. Hewitt isn’t hot because you won’t dialogue.
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He’s hot because you seem to think it is your place to rank blogs when you’re new and unknown. I have seen this done before, and to a person, I have never seen a blogger take it lightly. Their comments usually start with “Who ARE you order the universe?”
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From this post, I see you have not learned your lesson. “.. in so many ways, blogs foster narcissism and community-born blinders. Blogging combined with “isms”, I feel, have become great barriers to civil, open communication.”
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Now, I am new as well, so take it from me: you are in no place to draw these large conclusions as yet. You may never be… How about you start commenting on events, and anything else that interests you. But, commenting on blogs in a blog looks notoriously like reporters interviewing other reporters and calling it news.
September 30th, 2005 at 4:52 pm
Dear Anchoress,
RE Chesterton: You are right on (as usual) calling Chesterton a journalist. Chesterton stated that in everything he wrote, whether it be apologetics, poetry, or murder mysteries, he considered himself a journalist.
September 30th, 2005 at 7:31 pm
“Cloistered Wise One:”
WTF kind of backhanded crack is that? Are you looking for yet ANOTHER conflict, Mr. Meyer, because it’s good for “ratings” (no such thing as bad publicity)?
“Contored and malevolnet” (sic)? Projecting a bit?
October 1st, 2005 at 12:45 am
I roared with laughter at the interview. Not without some shame, but I did. I think Hugh might have been reacting to what he perceived as an attempt to filter blogging content just as the news filters content now. No one who likes blogs wants that. The blogs are a way to escape those constraints.
As for The Public Eye, it has promise but so do thousands of other blogs. I’ll check it a few more times but it has a lot of competition out there.
As for this:
“…in so many ways, blogs foster narcissism and community-born blinders.”
Isn’t this at least as true of print journalism? You have a few thousand people writing for the big papers, and they interact mostly with each other. There is a groupthink of a sort that dominates the field.
People just got tired of the bad reporting, flimsy analysis and poor work ethic involved in far too much of print journalism. There are wonderful print journalists who do very quality work, but that is no longer the standard.
There is a lot of factual and news content in blogs, but there isn’t much groupthink. The environment is too competitive.
One thing about blogs is that they can drive a lot of readers to particular articles, columnists and publications. This is leveling the playing field in print journalism as well. In the long run I think the blogs will greatly improve journalism by rewarding journalists who do their job well with more attention. In the meantime, I suppose it’s a shock to suddenly find the peasants on the platform with you.
October 1st, 2005 at 10:07 am
I didn’t read the words “Cloistered Wise One” as any kind of crack, backhanded or not. It says to me that Mr. Meyers has read the Anchoress’s intro, particularly the words, “Usually an Anchorite was rather a mystical and wise sort of person, steeped in prayer” and has fashioned a compliment out of her self-deprecating followup, “Whether I am wise or holy is for The One to decide - I make no claims for myself…” The chippiness of the Hewitt interview seems to be contagious, and spreading to the comments section.
October 1st, 2005 at 11:12 am
Beth:
“Cloistered Wise One” was meant as a compliment and a teeny token of levity. I’ve got a real strong hunch the Anchoress knows that.
Timmy:
May I humbly suggest you read whole sentences, even whole paragraphs, before before reaching conslusions doomed to be contorions? As I have said ad nauseum the infamous List was just that, a list, not a filter, endorsement, value judgement, inquistion, hit list, love letter or blessing. And clause you quote from an earlier comment was part of a sentence that pointed out something potentially band and something potentialy good about blogging. I may be fairly new to blogging but I am not new to public writing. So as the Cloistered Wise One advises, chill.
October 1st, 2005 at 11:39 am
You are right, Mr Meyer. Your list says nothing about the Blogosphere, it says everything about you. I have all I need not to give you another moment’s consideration. Afterall, I already know the Left. Seriously folks, did you expect the Communist Broadcasting System to give you a different product? Really? Did you expect Mary Mapes to draw a different conclusion after reflecting on the raTHergate content, even though she collected 12 years of facts that disputed it?
October 1st, 2005 at 12:07 pm
I am sorry to see the entire discussion become even more devalued. It would have been nice to see substantive discussion.
What a waste.
Tallyrand said, ‘Speech is faculty given to man, to conceal his thoughts.’
It doesn’t always have to be so.
October 1st, 2005 at 3:24 pm
[...] See Public Eye. They’re nice people; I’ve met them. But they’re publicly struggling with finding not just their voice and reason for being but also their attitude and their place in this new media world. They’re being at once thin-skinned and prickly. The Anchoress says they need to take a chill pill. The problem is, PE, while trying hard to be a “blog” is a weird hybrid just now - it hasn’t quite figured out that there is a loosey-goosey quality, a free-wheelingness to blogging that is very distinctive, but that needn’t preclude serious writing or -as evidenced by Michelle Malkin and Brian Maloney’s dogged work on Air America’s misuse of public funds (a story the mainstream media simply does not want to look at) real investigative journalism. [...]
October 1st, 2005 at 7:07 pm
Indeed, I completely “got” Dick Meyer’s “wise cloistered one” gag and thought it amusing. I appreciate that some here would defend my honor - I really do - but in this case cowboys and cowgirls, I suggest you holster them guns and have some firewater to unlax!
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I think Meyer deserves some respect, not further derision, for registering in at this very small and humble blog to get some dialogue going with all and sundry. Since I happen to know that I have the best readers in the world, I am quite certain that what everyone really means to be doing, right now, is conversing respectfully with each other (even if it is a somewhat begrudging respect from some…) rather than lining up their flaming arrows.
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I’m going to be tied up until late Sunday night, so you all act respectable and spit in the appropriate spitoons and not on the floor or each other!
October 2nd, 2005 at 9:04 am
I should add to my comment about Chesterton that I think he was right about himself (that he was a journalist in everything he wrote).
October 2nd, 2005 at 4:25 pm
Darrell said, “Afterall, I already know the Left.”
Not true, I know you see me as one being on the left, but one thing is for sure, you don’t know me. Your trouble is, you confuse what you see with what is, they are not necessarily one and the same.
October 2nd, 2005 at 10:47 pm
Just “a simple cavewoman”? Reminds me of an old SNL skit. Except that this would be, Unfrozen Cavewoman Blogger!
October 3rd, 2005 at 12:14 pm
[...] Quoting Harriet Miers Cupla Muslim guys sittin’ around, talkin’ Miers: Anchoress Knows-all-Sees-all A busy weekend… Updated the Bookshelf! Awright, take a chill pill! Smart bloggers, writing smart Stem Cell Breakthrough gets little coverage First Temple-era Discoveries A Grotesque Peggy Noonan - a perfect piece Blanco asked NO QUESTIONS about Katrina (UPDATED) Feast of the Holy Archangels Buster and Generation Bliss Yer Bull Connor Reminder! Burlingame - Warrior Princess Vote for Jake Another Katrina Victim Chuck and Tom - only Tom matters (WAY Updated) Book in the mail, today [...]
October 3rd, 2005 at 1:16 pm
[...] may be Derek Jeter Quoting Harriet Miers Cupla Muslim guys sittin’ around, talkin’ Miers: Anchoress Knows-all-Sees-all A busy weekend… Updated the Bookshelf! Awright, take a chill pill! Smart bloggers, writingsmart Stem Cell Breakthrough gets little coverage First Temple-era Discoveries A Grotesque Peggy Noonan - a perfect piece Blanco asked NO QUESTIONS about Katrina (UPDATED) Feast of the Holy Archangels Buster and Generation Bliss Yer Bull Connor Reminder! Burlingame - Warrior Princess Vote for Jake Another Katrina Victim Chuck and Tom - only Tom matters (WAY Updated) [...]
October 4th, 2005 at 8:28 am
[...] CBS vs. HEWITT– Awright, take a chill pill! …. (anchoress, buzzmachine) [...]
October 14th, 2005 at 10:01 am
[...] Over the past several weeks I have had occasion to write here and there about CBS’s recently-created blog, The Public Eye. [...]
November 1st, 2005 at 2:40 pm
[...] Dick Meyer, the Executive Director of CBS Internet Stuff, has appeared in this blog a time or two, most recently when he and Hugh Hewitt engaged in a dust up in which Meyer gallantly defended one of his own. [...]