[LINK] the media vs. new media wars

[Richard Chirgwin]

I might find the arguments more convincing if, frankly, Arianna wasn't 
so patronising.

For example:

> the ways of new media (including transparency, interactivity, and 
> immediacy) 
Oh. "Old media" aren't transparent, and cannot be; and "new media" are 
transparent; and these are intrinsic characteristics of the media, 
rather than reflecting proprietorial, editorial or journalistic practise 
... crap. "Old media" cannot be "interactive" (because interactive means 
what we define it to mean, and doesn't imply any relationship between 
editor and readers?).

> suddenly the air is filled with shrill, nonsensical, and misplaced 
> verbal assaults on those in the new media.
...because nobody on the "new media" side every indulged in 
name-calling! ...

[snip]
> News is no longer something we passively take in.
...as if nobody in the world took any greater interest in "news" than to 
use the TV as a sort of background pastiche. News was never merely 
something I "passively take in", and I know plenty of people for whom 
the same is true (many for example on this list!). To tar an entire 
spectrum of citizens, from the most passive to the most involved, with 
the same brush so as to support a thesis that "involvement is impossible 
without new media" is very lazy thinking.
> The same people who never question why consumers would sit on a couch 
> and watch TV for 8 hours straight can't understand why someone would 
> find it rewarding to weigh in on the issues -- great and small -- that 
> interest them.
The background stereotyping, not of the media but of the citizen, 
borders on insulting ... just because Ms Huff wishes to characterise, 
say, the reader of newspapers as being the passive consumer who doesn't 
"weigh in on the issues", or that someone who watches the TV news 
doesn't "weigh in on the issues" ... <shakes head>.

We might make fun of listeners to talkback radio, but doesn't calling 
Alan Jones - or if you prefer, the ABC - count as "weighing in on the 
issues?" Or is that a fake because such people aren't taking part in the 
"right" kind of media?

RC



Jan Whitaker wrote:
> This is a must read article from Arianna Huffington on the skewed 
> view of Uncle Rupert and his ilk re the thieving new media worms.
>
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/journalism-2009-desperate_b_374642.html
>
> Jan
>
>
> Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
> jwhit at janwhitaker.com
> blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
> business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
>
> Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
> sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
> ~Madeline L'Engle, writer
>
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