Kurtz: The Boys On The Bus? Who Needs 'Em?
Howard Kurtz has an interesting piece today on something that's often struck us here at TPM: The degree to which the advent of blogs and other new vehicles for covering political campaigns make it less and less defensible for big news orgs to dump huge amounts of money into putting newspaper reporters on the road with candidates.
Kurtz:
Does the campaign trail still matter much in an age of digital warfare? Or is it now a mere sideshow, meant to provide the media with pretty pictures of colorful crowds while the guts of the contest unfold elsewhere? And if so, are the boys (and girls) on the bus spinning their wheels?"Anything interesting that happens on the road is going to be eaten up before you can get to it," says Slate correspondent John Dickerson. "By the time you see the papers, you feel like you know it all."
On the road, some of the nation's top print journalists morph into bloggers who post paragraphs on each mini-development, giving them a more stenographic role that leaves less time for actual reporting, or even thinking. Obama advisers have concluded that newspaper and magazine stories no longer have the same resonance but that a brief item by, say, Politico bloggers can spread like wildfire.
Putting aside Kurtz's claim that reporting quotes quickly inevitably means a more stenographic role -- why can't we deliver quotes fast and then stroke our chins about them? -- he really is on to something. The key, I think, is that many readers think that blogs -- not just the internet, but blogs specifically -- are simply a better medium for delivering campaign news.
Blogs allow readers to get every update as it happens, in real time -- drawing on multiple sources, and not just whatever info was delivered at this or that political event. Each mini-development gets highlighted with its own headline. If you were to take some of the stories that will run in the newspapers tomorrow about the campaign, you could easily cut them up into, say, a dozen paragraphs, and each nugget of information would have been available on multiple campaign blogs today.
Each one of those nuggets of info would have been delivered to readers in a medium that also allows reader interaction and comments. Those are key built-in advantages at a time when the news cycle can be measured in seconds.
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October 13, 2008 4:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
You passed!
October 13, 2008 4:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
News-pap-er?
This is going a bit in another direction but I've been thinking that the trail matters more. What's said in Duluth is heard in Miami. The medium we're using to report and discuss what's going on has just changed.
http://pufferfish.typepad.com/
October 13, 2008 4:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Blogs are useful in the way a handbill passed out on the street or a subway may (or may not) contain an element of truth. If you're lucky, you might come across a few that you can count on for unadulturated information.
However, I'd prefer to get my news from a source that puts the news product through a rigorous editing process that provides a minimum standard of verification and credibility. Anyone can post a blog these days, but most newspapers still have a reputation of one sort or another from which the reader can induce the degree of veracity and authenticity he should assign to the work of any particular writer. I don't get the same feeling of confidence about any purely online source just yet.
October 13, 2008 4:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
fair enough, but I'm talking specifically in terms of comparing them as useful mediums for transmitting campaign news.
October 13, 2008 4:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
The immediacy of blogs gives them a strong advantage over print media. Nonetheless, so many blog stories get corrected with updates and rollbacks that I end up cross checking them with mainline newspaper & TV reports online. It may take the papers and TV stations longer to get stuff online due to the editorial process, but I find that they less frequently have to post corrections and in that sense, are far more reliable.
Another advantage that blogs have over newspapers and other media is the degree of subject matter specialization. Newspapers and TV sites have to be generalists and are far more broadbrush in their approach. Sites like TPM and Politico are pretty much devoted to politics and as a result, I don't have to slog through a lot of dog bites man stories to find the political information I want.
October 13, 2008 4:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's a shame newspapers long ago stopped living up to those standards. They aren't in the business of providing news or information they're in the business of selling newspapers and ad space. And sucking up the powers that be who they hope will protect their business from regulation or deregulation.
Ask Fred Hiatt.
October 14, 2008 11:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
You need the bus so that candidates can throw people under them . . .
October 13, 2008 4:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hmmmm...here's a thought. What if newspapers tried - I don't know - maybe some Analysis?
I know it's crazy. But, perhaps instead of this sterilized, watered-down, "balanced," crap that they peddle, why don't they try to actually digest it and give us a little perspective from some of their more informed and seasoned journalists?
October 13, 2008 4:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't that why they hire those guys who end up on the op-ed page -- you know, the pundits?
October 13, 2008 4:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
What a concept!
October 13, 2008 4:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ahh, poor baby! Kurtz is one of the world's biggest crybabies.
They can't compete Greg - I used to love newpapers, but anymore any national news is stale and I miss the interaction. The interaction always expands the story -
October 13, 2008 4:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not compared to this one.
October 13, 2008 5:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hitch never grew up past his boarding school days, IMO.
He's a big squawling baby who can't wean himself off that bottle, in every sense.
I'm not fond of drunks. I used to be one - I know what we're like.
October 13, 2008 5:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
jzap
O snap! I think Hitch secretly yearns to be carried off by The Son of the Sheik! That's what his problem really is!
October 13, 2008 5:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm embarrassed to ask, is Hitch a nickname for Howard Kurtz? Something I prolly oughta know.
October 13, 2008 6:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Along with being a petulant shill with his hostility to any and all criticism of the media....
It's a simple fact of being human that everybody has their biases, but that's not to say bias can't be recognized & seen past. This is what we call objectivity.
What I miss, that seemed to exist a lot more back in the days of Brinkley/Cronkite etc. is the integrity to report as accurately as possible, regardless of your personal feelings about the issue, and enough education/knowledge/experience to put what's being reported in some context for an almost-certainly less well-informed audience.
I honestly don't know what's worse anymore, the shrill, naked agenda pushing on Faux or the PC tippytoeing that won't take a stand on ice if it was an Eskimo.
October 13, 2008 10:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Kurtz is watching the slow demise of his chosen profession.
I'll enjoy watching hacks like Kurtz come to the realization that they're becoming less relevant, and their opinions are carrying less weight, every day.
Dinosaur, meet tar pit.
October 13, 2008 4:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why can't I log in on my iPhone today? When I go to sign in, I get a page with a message: page not found. When I use the login line, nothing happens.
October 13, 2008 4:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Talk about interaction - I can think of 3 or 4 times when the NYT ombudsman basically told the readers to fuck off.
What do they expect?
October 13, 2008 4:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
The NYT ombudsman was nowhere near as bad as that woman at the Washington Post.
That woman had one of the tinniest tin ears ever in terms of relating to what the public was trying to tell her.
October 13, 2008 6:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's conflating two issues: The value to the candidates of battleground stumping, and the value to journalists of dogging the procession.
The latter is a good question. The intertoobz have certainly accelerated the evolution of campaign coverage.
But it's hard to see the value of doing the stump circuit diminishing much anytime soon. It gives candidates a lot of valuable local press coverage -- both TV and print. And that coverage makes local voters feel like the candidate cares about them. And it helps feed the enthusiasm of the volunteers who make a candidate's ground game work.
October 13, 2008 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do you know where I go for unbiased reporting? Nowhere. I'm pretty sure I pretty much keep to the sources that are slanted in my direction; just as I avoid things called 'Fox News.'
October 13, 2008 4:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
I lost faith in the American press during the lead up to the Iraq War. You had to read the British press to get anything close to objectivity about real threats compared to the real risks of the whole fiasco.
If I were in charge of the world, I'd cut the salaries of every pundit and require them to live and report like among average Americans. They don't start covering he police beat any more. They go from privileged suburb to the Ivy League to highly paid job reporting about people they know nothing about.
October 13, 2008 4:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually Knight Ridder (now McClatchy) was pretty good. That doesn't mean your local KR paper would frontpage their own reporters stuff though. The Philly Inquirer put it in the front section, not sure about the rest.
October 14, 2008 11:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
A thought: the speed at which news is disseminated now vis blogs requires the writer to be *more* cautious. I would think a reporter/blogger would lose their readership pretty quickly if what is reported ends up being wrong too much of the time.
The speed provides it's own crucible?
October 13, 2008 4:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent comment - and very true. That's all a blogger has - his or her reputation for telling the truth and admitting it when they've erred.
The rest is icing.
October 13, 2008 4:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would think a reporter/blogger would lose their readership pretty quickly if what is reported ends up being wrong too much of the time.
By contrast, an editorial gasbag like William Kristol can be wrong practically every time, and yet increase his readership. Hmmmm.
October 14, 2008 4:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Word to Howard Kurtz: Get your butt out of the tent.
Talk to the locals. Talk to the people who show up at the campaign rallies. Talk to the down-ticket candidates.
There are good stories to be had from talking to local voters and local campaign volunteers and staff. There's horse-race news to be had from them about how things are going locally. Even their perceptions of the candidates' positions and how they're playing in their communities can make good news.
Stop waiting to be spoon-fed your daily dose from the national campaign staff. Like you say, they don't need you to get their message out.
October 13, 2008 4:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Alternatively, you can whine about your plight like Dean Reynolds of CBS News does. Feh.
October 13, 2008 5:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
While he was whining, Katie Couric was actually turning into a possible journalist.
Here's a tip guys: Quit whining and change something.
October 13, 2008 5:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another ode to the British, I don't often agree with him but his tirade on Palin is worth the read:
http://www.slate.com/id/2202163/
October 13, 2008 4:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not bad until the last paragraph.
I wonder though why it is that Hitchens persists in seeing Islamofascists under every bush and is terrified their "totalitarian masters" (Chris, really - these terrifying old men in the desert - really?) is looking in his bathroom windows at him.
I guess he's got a permanent case of the DTs at this point.
October 13, 2008 5:29 PM | Reply | Permalink