What is Jay Rosen For?
| Fri Jun. 29, 2007 6:36 PM PDT
For the past three days, writers and editors at Mother Jones have been engaged in a flak session over at the blog Press Think, and more recently, the Huffington Post, where NYU professor Jay Rosen has lambasted the magazine's package of stories and interviews on "Politics 2.0." Or rather, he has lambasted the "framing" of the stories, which is to say he's unhappy with the way we introduced the stories in our press release and in the opening essay. Thousands of words have been expended on the subject, but Rosen's beef can be summarized (I think) like this: In a shameless ploy to promote itself, Mother Jones has set up a false tension between the idea that Politics 2.0 is revolutionary and the idea that it's irrelevant, and then congratulated itself with showing how neither one is true. "The Mother Jones editors," Rosen writes, "had a great story about politics and the web within their grasp, but they were too busy fabricating myths they could bust up later— and so they missed it."
Personally, I haven't felt a need to respond to Rosen in our own blog because I feel his critique is, on its face, kind of silly. But I think some of the issues that have come out in the discussion of his post are worth talking about, and so I'm going to wade through this. First, in response to Rosen, I wrote in his blog:
Much of your argument against our Politics 2.0 package presupposes that the extremes of thought on net politics--"revolutionary" or "irrelevant"--do not exist. I will grant that people who are truly informed on the subject don't hold black and white views, but the rhetoric that they and the press employ frequently comes off as totally unambiguous, and results in a mistaken impression that things really are that simple. It is thus unfair to say that we are setting up two straw men. The straw men are already there. Yes, knocking them down is easy, but it's also a way to, in the process, explore a lot of interesting issues raised by politics 2.0 with more complexity and nuance. . . .
What we have done is allow people in the field--actual bloggers, actual professors, actual online political consultants--to weigh in themselves, and we're allowing anybody to comment on their thoughts at the end of each article and interview online. Our "idea," in short, is have a bunch of people talk about their ideas. It's not revolutionary, but it's very Web 2.0, and it differs from the I'm-an-expert-so-let-me-tell-you-how-it-is approach that bloggers have come to expect and loathe in the print world. I fear that if we had opted for the latter, you'd simply be caviling over that instead.
In response, Rosen said that we should have simply "framed" the package as an exploration of "the complex landscape of Politics 2.0 with some of the world's best guides." He wrote:
But... and here we come to the contradictions at the heart of this little episode... that isn't the stance you wanted to take. Doesn't feel tough enough. Non-dramatic. It lacks that savvy sheen print journalists like to have on the surface of their work. Your desire, I believe, ran counter to your concept.
Rosen is missing several important points, I believe. For one, he's writing from the perspective of an avid blogger who is familiar with the ins and outs of the Politics 2.0 world (I think) and doesn't seem to realize that some of our readers, especially of the print magazine, are not. People with less exposure to that world need to understand the big questions at play--What's the deal with this grand Politics 2.0 talk?--before they will see a reason to read about it. So we use that question as a starting point and then flesh it out with more nuance. It is a classic element of magazine journalism: Will Al Gore stop global warming? Well, here's Al Gore, and here's what he says and what he'd doing. And so on.
Rosen believes that this approach, in its more intellectually lazy forms, is associated with the print media. The thread over at HuffPost has veered off into condemnations of the mainstream media and exaltations of the blogosphere as a less spin-oriented alternative. I do think that blogs serve as a crucial check on journalistic folly, but I don't think that they have proven to be any less susceptible to the same "framing" issues. Case in point is Rosen himself. Over at HuffPost I noted that Rosen had written his post under the headline: "Printing Press Progressives at Mother Jones Try to Debunk the Political Web." Talk about framing. I wrote back:
Are we printing press progressives? Then what about our well-established blog? Are we trying to "debunk the political web?" We're certainly interested in dispelling hype when it exists, but the way you phrase it makes it sound like we are out to expose the political web as a sham, which we aren't, and it isn't. Indeed, we are a part of the political web (or did you mean to say citizen journalism?) So who is guilty of lazy and self-serving framing here? This question leads naturally to ones about your motives for attention, which mirror your questions about our motives for attention. Pretty mind bending. But hey, I'm sure you can handle it since you're a salaried NYU professor.
So this leads to the question: What is Jay Rosen For? (His book was called "What Are Journalists For?). I'm sure he's good for something, but I'll let him answer as to what that is. Meanwhile, he still hasn't responded to my question about why he is accusing us of setting up straw men, only to do so himself.
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Comments
Submitted by Clara Jeffery (not verified) on Sat Jun. 30, 2007 2:54 PM PDT.
I've been waiting for perhaps three hours for this comment to get get "approved" over at HuffPost (how 1.0 and/or gatekeeper is that? Though troll proof, granted), and I can wait no more. In a response to incoming Columbia J-School student Adam's post re:Rosen I wrote:
Dear Adam:
That was an artful post. Well reasoned, well written, displaying a sense of wit, a grasp of irony, and an understanding of the conventions of essayistic journalism. Good thing you're off to Columbia, where such things are appreciated.
Meanwhile, should anyone want to read what I've got to say about the whole Rosen-in-a-teapot thing, over at Bivings Report (folks who have more than a little knowledge about 2.0), Steve Petersen and I have decided to enage in a collegial manner on such topics as the lack of diversity in old and new media and whether or not asking people to work for free?be it as an intern or a "citizen journalist"?is part of the problem. Also discussed: sci-fi.
A couple different threads, at http://www.bivingsreport.com/
Clara Jeffery
Editor, Mother Jones
Tim,
You'd asked for a response, so here it goes. Dvorkin wrote:
"Seems to me that we need to find a way to bring the public into the act of journalism in a more effective way than we have thus far. . .More than letters-to-the-editor, more than "have your say" on the BBC, and even more than having an ombudsman (!), we need to encourage MSM to bring citizens inside the journalistic process and to participate? webcasting editorial meetings, having public reps on boards, handing over the airwaves to the public in a meaningful way, asking the public to give their editorial input to stories BEFORE they get published? well you get the idea."
I don't think webcasting editorial meetings will work (it would destroy our ability to do many investigative stories, for one). As far as having public reps on boards--our board does already include many non-journalists, people who are very involved in doing good things in their community and bring different perspectives to the magazine. How do you define citizen rep, and how would you suggest those people be chosen?
In terms of getting input before stories are published, that's exactly what we did. I conducted dozens of interviews, and then we took what we learned and crafted that into stories and interviews. Jay was one of the people who had (multiple) chances to weigh in before things were published.
As far as letting non-professional journalists report content, please see this recent story:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2007/04/stanford_living_wage.html
Submitted by Clara Jeffery (not verified) on Sat Jun. 30, 2007 2:54 PM PDT.
I've been waiting for perhaps three hours for this comment to get get "approved" over at HuffPost (how 1.0 and/or gatekeeper is that? Though troll proof, granted), and I can wait no more. In a response to incoming Columbia J-School student Adam's post re:Rosen I wrote:
Dear Adam:
That was an artful post. Well reasoned, well written, displaying a sense of wit, a grasp of irony, and an understanding of the conventions of essayistic journalism. Good thing you're off to Columbia, where such things are appreciated.
Meanwhile, should anyone want to read what I've got to say about the whole Rosen-in-a-teapot thing, over at Bivings Report (folks who have more than a little knowledge about 2.0), Steve Petersen and I have decided to enage in a collegial manner on such topics as the lack of diversity in old and new media and whether or not asking people to work for free?be it as an intern or a "citizen journalist"?is part of the problem. Also discussed: sci-fi.
A couple different threads, at http://www.bivingsreport.com/
Clara Jeffery
Editor, Mother Jones
Submitted by Legacy on Sun Jul. 1, 2007 11:38 AM PDT.
Tim,
You'd asked for a response, so here it goes. Dvorkin wrote:
"Seems to me that we need to find a way to bring the public into the act of journalism in a more effective way than we have thus far. . .More than letters-to-the-editor, more than "have your say" on the BBC, and even more than having an ombudsman (!), we need to encourage MSM to bring citizens inside the journalistic process and to participate? webcasting editorial meetings, having public reps on boards, handing over the airwaves to the public in a meaningful way, asking the public to give their editorial input to stories BEFORE they get published? well you get the idea."
I don't think webcasting editorial meetings will work (it would destroy our ability to do many investigative stories, for one). As far as having public reps on boards--our board does already include many non-journalists, people who are very involved in doing good things in their community and bring different perspectives to the magazine. How do you define citizen rep, and how would you suggest those people be chosen?
In terms of getting input before stories are published, that's exactly what we did. I conducted dozens of interviews, and then we took what we learned and crafted that into stories and interviews. Jay was one of the people who had (multiple) chances to weigh in before things were published.
As far as letting non-professional journalists report content, please see this recent story:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2007/04/stanford_living_wage.html
It will be interesting to see how the new joint venture with HuffPo will fare now:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/
offthebus-huffposts-cit_b_52712.html
Submitted by Adam Weinstein (not verified) on Sat Jun. 30, 2007 7:34 AM PDT.
Jay Rosen's good for reminding working journalists not to get to pleased with ourselves, our computers or our potentials as tenured professors. Check out my comment back on his original post.
Submitted by Seth Finkelstein (not verified) on Sat Jun. 30, 2007 8:55 AM PDT.
I must plead the Fifth Amendment on the title question (to the Bogospheric Constitution, which says "An A-lister can write a personal attack on any critic, and they usually have no *effective* way to reply")
However, the following material may be useful for the discussion:
http://civilities.net/Webcred-Inclusiveness
How could the tension be false? On one side there is the idea that 2.0 is some great boon to all humanity and on the other is the polor opposite saying it is not. How could this tension be false? Before I read the story I had similar questions in my own head and came to a middle ground that it was neither unimportant nor all-important.
And what's up with two different bloggers misunderstanding what Mother Jones is at it's core? First the techpresident calls it part of the mainstream media and now this guy referring to the "savvy sheen" of all print media with regard to MoJo.
In the great census of bloggers we can count one more in the category of self important know-it-alls. (A category overflowing by the way.)
It's funny, reading Jay Rosen, all hunkered down in sanctimony-soaked truculence; posting all this immodest vitriol.
Political bloggers seek political economy, which really is the science of domination. They publicly rake one another over the coals, again and again, aiming for the ego and pulling no punches.
It's all so self-serving and self-indulgent. Too bad the comments section is used as a soapbox for intellectual petulance.
Kind of on par with E! TV: entertaining, but in light of the very real shit going on in the world, disgustingly vapid.
Thanks for the carefully crafted BS, Jay! I shudder to think what your students must endure.
Submitted by Clara Jeffery (not verified) on Sat Jun. 30, 2007 2:54 PM PDT.
I've been waiting for perhaps three hours for this comment to get get "approved" over at HuffPost (how 1.0 and/or gatekeeper is that? Though troll proof, granted), and I can wait no more. In a response to incoming Columbia J-School student Adam's post re:Rosen I wrote:
Dear Adam:
That was an artful post. Well reasoned, well written, displaying a sense of wit, a grasp of irony, and an understanding of the conventions of essayistic journalism. Good thing you're off to Columbia, where such things are appreciated.
Meanwhile, should anyone want to read what I've got to say about the whole Rosen-in-a-teapot thing, over at Bivings Report (folks who have more than a little knowledge about 2.0), Steve Petersen and I have decided to enage in a collegial manner on such topics as the lack of diversity in old and new media and whether or not asking people to work for freebe it as an intern or a "citizen journalist"is part of the problem. Also discussed: sci-fi.
A couple different threads, at http://www.bivingsreport.com/
Clara Jeffery
Editor, Mother Jones
Clara,
So Dvorkin is wrong? He's mistaken, confused, ignorant ...?
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2007/
06/27/mother_jones.html#comment48602
Just to clarify ... the position of Adam Weinstein and Mother Jones is that the structural biases of media are necessary for good journalism: "conventions of essayistic journalism"?
Submitted by Legacy on Sun Jul. 1, 2007 10:45 AM PDT.
As of this morning, Jay Rosen has announced that he will not be responding to this post. He told me: "I generally don't respond to "so's your mother!" posts, and I won't be responding to yours. Respectfully, I feel that your critique is, on its face, kind of silly."
The "kind of silly" quip is of course a reference to what I've said above, but it really doesn't hold water when you consider that I was the very first person to post a comment in Jay's blog and have continued to do so at all hours of the day and night since Wednesday. That he can't offer us a single response in own blog is pretty telling, I think.
I then asked Jay to cite where his mother has entered into this discussion. I'd certainly call my post here a "kettle calling the teapot black" post. As a "yo mamma" post though, I think it falls kind of short.
So it looks like this is where this multi-day, Ulysses-length scuffle will end: mommy non sequiturs. I kind of find that sad, though a bit poetic.
Submitted by Legacy on Sun Jul. 1, 2007 11:38 AM PDT.
Tim,
You'd asked for a response, so here it goes. Dvorkin wrote:
"Seems to me that we need to find a way to bring the public into the act of journalism in a more effective way than we have thus far. . .More than letters-to-the-editor, more than "have your say" on the BBC, and even more than having an ombudsman (!), we need to encourage MSM to bring citizens inside the journalistic process and to participate webcasting editorial meetings, having public reps on boards, handing over the airwaves to the public in a meaningful way, asking the public to give their editorial input to stories BEFORE they get published well you get the idea."
I don't think webcasting editorial meetings will work (it would destroy our ability to do many investigative stories, for one). As far as having public reps on boards--our board does already include many non-journalists, people who are very involved in doing good things in their community and bring different perspectives to the magazine. How do you define citizen rep, and how would you suggest those people be chosen?
In terms of getting input before stories are published, that's exactly what we did. I conducted dozens of interviews, and then we took what we learned and crafted that into stories and interviews. Jay was one of the people who had (multiple) chances to weigh in before things were published.
As far as letting non-professional journalists report content, please see this recent story:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2007/04/stanford_living_wage.html
Josh,
Thanks for the excellent response. I understand the concern on webcasting and it may not be appropriate for all (or any?) of MoJo's meetings. I will only offer S-R's as a reference point: http://www.spokesmanreview.com/webcast/
re: How do you define citizen rep, and how would you suggest those people be chosen?
Great questions! I only have examples, not answers. It would be interesting to explore the qualifications these orgs seek in citizen reps and how those qualifications could be adopted/adapted for MoJo.
Minnesota News Council
http://www.news-council.org/trial/about_us_members.html
Washington News Council
http://www.wanewscouncil.org/CouncilMem.htm
A good article that may or may not help:
A meeting place for communities and their storytellers
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002953171_hamer26.html
I didn't track the Stanford Living Wage for student workers to non-professional journalists, but I appreciate the link!
Submitted by Legacy on Sun Jul. 1, 2007 2:51 PM PDT.
Tim has responded to my thoughts, but a glitch with our movable type program is preventing his post from appearing here. Until the comments appear, here's a link to his summary:
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/
2007/06/27/mother_jones.html#comment48674
Once they're up here, I'll weigh in some more.
Also, I responded to Monika at PressThink. Thanks!
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2007/06/27/mother_j...
Submitted by Legacy on Thu Jul. 5, 2007 9:56 AM PDT.
Tim,
I'm slammed today trying to prepare for a trip where I'll be conducting some interviews in Dallas. I'll be back on Tuesday and will respond then. Thanks for being patient with the glitches in our M-T. I contacted our tech guys about this and your comment got hung up in our filter, which is why it took so long to post.
Submitted by Legacy on Thu Jul. 12, 2007 6:04 PM PDT.
Tim,
Sorry about the delay in getting back to you on the News Council idea. The links you provided were the first I've read about news councils, so these are just initial thoughts on my part. In general, they sound like good ideas to me. It could be interesting if they covered blogs as well as so-called MSM. I could see problems if the process was abused by people who just want to get back at journalists for writing things they disagree with, but I can see how rules and elected boards could keep that from happening. How those boards are elected, or appointed, though, is definitely an issue. I'd be worried about corporate takeover of the boards in the long term. Also, I don't think the boards would be that effective if their findings go unnoticed. I'm sure there are ways to compel media outlets to print notices of the findings, but then, my concern goes back to the initial points about who elects, appoints and controls these boards. So in general, I guess I'm not opposed to them, and think there should be more consideration of the idea, but I'm not yet ready to become an activist for the idea. In general, I think the best way to ensure accountability in the media is thorough competition, which we are losing as newspapers close (and gaining, though not gaining enough, as blogs and online news comes to the fore). The idea of competition and dissident voices has always been central to Mother Jones' mission as an independent, non-profit magazine, by the way.
Josh, thanks for the response and not forgetting about me.
The fact that news councils are the best kept secret from so many journalists says something. I don't expect you to be an activist for the idea, but I'm glad to hear your initial reaction wasn't revulsion. If you think the idea merits more consideration, is there a way to promote greater awareness without being an activist? Could you interview Monika (http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2007/06/27/mother_j...) for a future blog post?
I think competition is one method of media accountability. It's not the only one, but media's reliance solely on competition has hurt journalism.
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