The hostility of the old guard
by 3k on May 23, 2009 12:01 PM CDT
13 comments
I try not to beat this to death here, as I am far inferior to others who have made the same points more effectively elsewhere, but traditional media organizations and many of their employees just don't get it: the more they fight people-powered media coverage, the more they lose.
The last time I touched on this was in early April when I linked to this essay over at Maize n Brew, SBN's blog for the Michigan Wolverines. Well last Friday, Bob Kravitz of the Indy Star wrote a piece suggesting that we have become "a culture of weenies", citing Mark Cuban's e-apology to Kenyon Martin's mother. On this, we agree. To be fair, I'm biased in a very traditional, Southern way: female family members are off-limits in 99% of conversations with other men. Don't talk about my mother, my wife, my sister, or any future daughters I might have unless you want some free dental surgery compliments of my knuckles. After that, Kravitz loses me. Allow me.
Issue #1.
We are a culture in hiding. We are scared to death of confrontation. We can't look another person in the eyes and say what needs to be said. We say what we want to say, and then we want to run to a safe place where nobody can tell us we're full of baloney.
E-mail. Blogs. Twitter. Text messaging. Anonymously written Web posts. Message boards.
One-way conversations.
One-way converstaions? Really? Twitter is based on the very opposite of one-way conversations. In fact, the prime example of a one-way conversation is a newspaper article; Mr. Kravitz writes something, people read it, and that's the end of the conversation. Sure, you can comment on the piece at the IndyStar's website, but after 34 comments and a week of letting this sink in, Mr. Kravitz is yet to respond to any of those comments. I guess I could send a letter to the paper, but I seriously doubt I would get a response. So to rail against one-way conversations and the negative effect they have, Bob Kravitz exploits the oldest one-way conversation medium in history.
Issue #2
My biggest objection is the proliferation of blogs and posts by anonymous weenies -- or pansies, if you will.
Everybody is big and brave behind a pseudonym, but confront them face to face, and next thing you know they're changing underwear.
Who are you confronting and why? Really, though, that's not the point. To extrapolate that a sample of people who you confronted and realized they were pussies to suggest that anyone who writes online under a pen name is a pussy is stupid. That would be like Bernie Miklasz confronting me, and then suggesting that anyone who covers sports online under a pseudonym is a gun-loving, beer-drinking hyper-masculine asshole. In fact, let me throw this out, since as I'm going to get to, it seems Mr. Kravitz seems to have an issue with SBN: feel free to confront me and try to pass it off as if I'm a weenie. To be fair, using the word weenie makes you a weenie. I haven't said that or heard anybody say that since I was about 10.
Issue #3
I don't mind personal criticism in the least; if you dish it out, you take it. Some of it is kind of funny, if I'm being honest. But who are these people writing in Stampede Blue and 18to88?
Again, weenies.
We're becoming a culture of weenies.
We hide behind technology that makes one-way conversations possible.
We hide behind technology that provides us with pseudonyms and takes accountability out of the equation.
Journalism, and life, are about true human connections. We lose that, we lose the essence of what it means to truly communicate.
Essentially, his point is that people who write under a name other than the name given to them by their parents are "weenies" simply because they don't write under that name. Why? I'm not sure. They just are. And you have to accept it, because he can hide behind technology that makes one-way conversations possible. But his next sentence disparages that notion, one that he promotes by doing what he does. He suggests pseudonyms take accountability away from ones opinions, as if people haven't argued with me here at TST...often. Let's just ignore his final sentence, since he tries to equate the core of journalism with the meaning of life.
So at this point, Mr. Kravitz has written a hypocritical article that does nothing but suggest he doesn't understand the essence of people-powered media. Had he left it at that, I could have given him some lenience, attributing this to his experience in an industry that relies on a legacy system that is forced to ignore the power of people-powered media because it inherently weakens that industry. The authority of his opinions are weakened because someone like me can rip on him, and that's tough to take. I get it. But it didn't stop.
Later that day after being specifically called out in the article, Stampede Blue's BigBlueShoe responded to Mr. Kravitz on a radio show and did so much more professionally and with much more restraint than I would have been able to. For the duration of the "interview", Kravitz continues to cling to the fact that BigBlueShoe doesn't post under the name his mother called him. And really, he seems to be upset at the fact that he doesn't like the name BigBlueShoe. I went at his piece for the Star, so I'll leave this audio clip alone, but only because people have more time to think through their own ideas, opinions and positions before writing them than they do in voicing them.
So let me wrap this up without making some kind of jackassed point that the meaning of life is the same as the value of journalism -- Bob Kravitz doesn't get it, because if he did, he'd have to admit that he's not that important, and that his opinions are as valid as anyone else who is equally informed. That is hard to do, because, apparently, his opinions are pretty fucking stupid.
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Too long? Too rant-y?
Your uncle molests collies.
by 3k on May 23, 2009 7:42 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
Love it!
LMAO under my pseudonym! HAHAHAHAHAHA! I love this page. Keeps me laughing. Fucking hilarious and scarily right on target. Go SBN and Go TST!
by papapegasus on May 23, 2009 8:10 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
IM A WEENY I GUESS
I get in plenty of confrontations and arguments while working on the railroad and raising teenagers to go online looking for them. I’m not looking for them here. I would, however, like to give Mr Kravitz that confrontation he is looking for if he comes on here. I’m a fan first and as a matter of fact, a fan only. I log onto this site for information, not to inform anyone. It serves me well.
by dbcouver on May 24, 2009 1:28 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs
But how can you possibly get any information
if you don’t know our real names???!!!!!! There’s a very stalker-esque layer to his argument.
Your uncle molests collies.
by 3k on May 24, 2009 8:39 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
Great stuff 3k
I listened to the whole, worthless diatribe that Kravitz went on. How anyone in the media, or in real life, can claim that because they don’t know someone’s real name their opinions aren’t valid is beyond me.
BBS made the perfect point on accountability, if he writes something stupid, people call him on it. If he writes a lot of stupid stuff people stop coming to his site. I was hoping he’d drop that little bomb in the inverse, the reason the papers are failing is because people are rebelling against the stupid, asinine, repetitive garbage that hacks like Kravitz are turning out. When was the last time he actually responded to a comment left by a reader or a letter left by a reader. Accountability is a two way street. And from his tone, he has no concept of that.
Like you pointed out, what he fails to realize, is that blogs are the free market in effect. We provide a product that people can take or leave. If they leave it, well, we go away. If they like it, then they keep coming back and so do we. Sure there are sites that deal exclusively in rumors, innuendo, and expletives, but to lump every site in with that minority is lazy. And it’s that kind of laziness that’s crept into journalism over the past two decades, making people turn away to sites like this one.
Kravitz can rail against the coming of the dawn all he wants, it’s not going to change anything. The irony will be that the “access” he bases his stature on will go away the second the indy star final folds. Then he’ll be just another person trying to tell strangers how great he used to be. But for now, let him have his moment to throw a tantrum. Let him wail and scream and say bloggers have no accountability. Let him. Because it doesn’t matter.
And neither does what he writes.
Maize n Brew
Because Football is Better with Beer
by Maize n Brew Dave on May 24, 2009 12:45 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
I'm just astounded by the hypocrisy and the foolishness
The hypocrisy being that his article suggests that one-way conversations are the driving force behind the “weenie-ization” of our culture, but he’s using a paradigm of one-way conversation to suggest it. Maybe it’s more irony than hypocrisy, but the fact that he doesn’t recognize that is amazing. But that is the basis of his foolishness. He just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand that the conversation is more important than the opinion. Writing something under your real name doesn’t make the arguments you might lay out any more valid. It doesn’t make your facts any more factual. And it doesn’t make your style of writing or your grasp on lexicon any sharper. The only thing writing under your real name does is allow people who deal with you physically to recognize you. Outside of a handful of people here, I doubt anyone that comes by TST would give a damn if they met me in person. It’s just so endemic of the rigidity in the thinking of not just the industry, but by employees of it; I can’t figure out why they don’t get it. Happily, time, and to be specific, the public, will weed these fools out and put the people with the best ideas and the best writing in the sports section of whichever newspapers survive.
Your uncle molests collies.
by 3k on May 24, 2009 2:21 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
Now that there is no Fire Joe Morgan, someone needs to carry this torch
Awesome rant. Meant to comment on it earlier. But there is an element of truth to the pseudonym argument.
My dad was a newspaper man, and spent half his time as a journalist with a byline, and half his time in the editorial department writing some of the opinion pieces that were the “voice of the newspaper” — in other words, no byline. (This was not in St Louis, btw). When he was a reporter, he did a lot of investigative journalism on environmental practices. This was in the 70s, when the issue was just starting to be brought to people’s attention, and the stuff he wrote made some folks pretty angry. I remember as a kid him getting into a shouting match with a total stranger in the grocery store, and not knowing why.
So, as a journalist, there is some amount of community risk in putting your name on something.
But, there is a huge gulf in integrity between journalists and columnists, and this is where this guy’s argument breaks down. Columnists want to “make their name” — get readers, get people talking, stir shit up no matter how base your argument is. And that’s just crass commercialism. For columnists, their name is their brand, whether it’s “Bob Kravitz,” “Ann Landers,” or “Perez Hilton.” There’s absolutely no distinction between a real name and an assumed name, for the purpose of writing a column, as long as – as you have pointed out – there is opportunity for two-way discussion.
1909-2008: A Century of Suck
by taiko on May 24, 2009 11:00 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
Quick point of clarification needed.
Are you saying Cuban was a weenie for apologizing to K-Mart’s mom, or that Cuban was a weenie for e-apologizing?
Vic
by victorian on May 25, 2009 2:05 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
e-apologizing
He shouldn’t have done what he did in the first place, but having done it, he should have called both Kenyon and his mother to apologize.
Your uncle molests collies.
by 3k on May 25, 2009 2:14 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
Not to defend Kravitz, but I think part of his resentment comes from the fact that these guys used to have to earn credibility, and now it can be had rather quickly. In some cases, credibility is assigned until the writer actually does something to lose it. (sorta like Florio at Faux Ball Talk who has written so much bullshit that he made up, I can’t even read it anymore)
And I think they worry about the competition, since it comes from everywhere now, from people who haven’t put any time into learning the craft, yet are widely read. Paper newspapers have bascially gone away and here we are with everyone able to be published with a click. That’s got to hurt people who invested a lot of time and effort into a career that, lets face it, any literate person can have a shot at. Press credentials now only amount to a better seat.
Lived in LA during the Rams and Raiders days. Now based in NorCal, I am still a die hard Rams fan and Raiders season ticket holder.
by CoachConnors on May 26, 2009 10:31 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
Well put
but I think the system as it exists now awards greater credibility to the individuals who consistently produce efforts of the highest quality. Regardless of the medium, if you’re a joke of a writer, you’re going to get panned (a fine example would be your feelings toward Florio).
Is it fair to lament the downfall of a system that they succeeding in partially because they worked so hard to achieve the benchmarks that system demanded? Yes. Do they have my sympathy? Undeniably. But that sympathy and understanding doesn’t mean that I will support the continuation of that system, especially if it promotes the continuation of pundits who fail where those who “publish with a click” succeed.
Your uncle molests collies.
by 3k on May 27, 2009 3:27 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
For some extra conversation on this topic
check out the May 28th episode of Turf Show Radio for a good hour of discussion on this.
Your uncle molests collies.
by 3k on May 28, 2009 8:59 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
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