These days there is a lot of head scratching and hair pulling in the news business -- at least the print side of it -- about the future of news and reporting. We hear all the time about the demise of newspapers, the decline of literacy, of generations both here right now and coming soon that will depend entirely on the Internet for all their news and other information.
So how is it, as Jack Shafer asks in an article on the Internet magazine Slate, that "The current [New York] Times [best-seller] list features four heavily reported and lengthy books about the Iraq adventure: Hubris, by Michael Isikoff and David Corn; Fiasco, by Thomas Ricks; State of Denial, by Bob Woodward; and Imperial Life in the Emerald City, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran."
How indeed? Shafer writes about what he calls the "newsbook," a genre that began, mostly, with the Watergate thriller "The Final Days," by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, in 1976.
I've never really shared in the industry's widespread anxieties over the question, "whither newspapers?" Newspapers will change. They are changing; this very blog is minor evidence of that. But in a representative democracy, serious citizens will always want and need sources of accurate, reliable information. There will always be a need for reporters and editors, whatever the medium.
The Internet may be where that happens in the future, though it's not a perfect medium. The absence of rigorous journalistic practices is held up as a virtue by some who despise the traditional journalistic institutions, but that's hogwash. Serious Internet users know that the vast majority of stuff on Web pages is unreliable and untrustworthy. Standards of accuracy and credibility will develop eventually, and my bet is that they will very closely resemble the ideal newspapers have always aspired to achieve -- not always with success, but more often than their competitors.
Quote: "Serious Internet users know that the vast majority of stuff on Web pages is unreliable and untrustworthy. Standards of accuracy and credibility will develop eventually...."
Sure, some of the "stuff" found on the internet is pretty bogus - but, that's where a person's discernment comes in. I've lived long enough to realize (finally) that not everything is to be taken at face value; That newspapers, political parties and especially the internet and their bloggers almost always have an agenda. It's up to me to discern and weigh that agenda and determine it's worth.
When I read from some of my favorite internet sites, I get a perspective (usually conservative evangelical and/or libertarian) that no newspaper on the west coast can or will give me. And let's face it, most of our west coast newspapers these days have a fax machine connected only to the DNC.
Internet bloggers, the various web sites, the diversity of thought, forces me to reexamine (and defend) my views and values. That's good!
Yet, I'm aware of the danger of the internet (as any discerning person should be). One might get the idea from the many diversities of thought that there are no standards of truth. (If there is one characteristic of today's culture, it is, that "truth" is not important and that what may be "truth" for you may not be "truth" for the next person).
As an evangelical, I believe there is an ultimate truth and I recognize as my ultimate standard, the revealed Word of God. Furthermore, my own personal belief system MUST pass through that "grid" of truth.
And let's all hope that it's not government, a political party or some other political entity that sets the "standards of accuracy and credibility" for us. Remember, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels tried that a few years ago.