Alex and Wesley,
I think you’ve quite acutely hit on a larger problem, Alex, one that isn’t just limited to rock critics. Carlson’s piece, which, I agree, isn’t really bad in terms of its message, is indicative of journalism and media’s biggest problems: the flatness of the writing and the laziness of the reporting.
Journalistic writing today often seems damp and uninteresting. Stories are littered with clichés. Look at these phrases from the first six paragraphs of the New York Times’ cover story on Junichiro Koizumi’s primary election victory in Japan: “rank-and-file members,” “resounding,” “tapped by party elders,” “riding a wave,” “throwing in the towel.” Ugh. Besides being uninteresting, those types of word choices tend to generalize and editorialize in subtle and non-journalistic ways.
And that gets much worse when you look at columnists. With the regular exception of Time’s Joel Stein–who sadly isn’t in this week’s Time, but whose Q&As and self-focused humor essays generally rock–most columnists I read regularly seem to crumble under the pressure of having to produce engaging and witty prose day after day after day. (Never mind agenda-pushing columnists like the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Joseph Perkins, who wrote last week that Katie Couric’s “lifestyle choice” to raise her kids alone sends a “harmful message.” There were so many things wrong with the column, but the worst is that Katie’s husband died of cancer–some choice. Thankfully, the paper removed the online version of the column last week and corrected the error. No one messes with Katie.)
But it’s not just columnists; this laziness–perceived or otherwise–extends to all forms of media. This morning’s Sun-Times has a large picture of President Bush’s daughter Barbara on its cover, which illustrates a story inside from the UK’s Daily Telegraph about the first daughter “ditch[ing] her bodyguards.” The story cites Yale’s Rumpus, which broke the story last week.
So the Sun-Times is reproducing an article from the Daily Telegraph, which reported what the Yale paper reported last week. Since the Rumpus got nailed by the university for the piece and removed the story from its Web site, maybe it’s good that national media are picking it up. But we’re seeing more and more of this reporting on reporting lately, especially during last year’s election.
My guess is that it has more to do with the evolution and democratization of media than it does with the general laziness of reporters. Online, Web logs gather and filter information and even filter the filters; in print, tabloids, college papers, and other formerly marginalized publications break news regularly. Basically, there’s no longer a central conduit of anything. Which I think is definitely progress; it’s just that the media don’t know how to deal with it, and from the perspective of the public, it looks like the media are just collapsing upon themselves like an MC Escher drawing. And commenting upon that phenomenon just adds to it. Alas.
Devolving,
Andy
