Andy Dehnart, Wesley Morris, and Alex Pappademas
Reporting on Reporting
By Andy Dehnart
Posted Tuesday, April 24, 2001, at 12:22 PM ETAlex 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
Reporting on Reporting
By Andy Dehnart
Posted Tuesday, April 24, 2001, at 12:22 PM ETAndy Dehnart publishes Reality Blurred, works as a Web producer and free-lance writer, and is pursuing a master of fine arts in nonfiction writing. Wesley Morris is a film critic at the San Francisco Chronicle
. Alex Pappademas is an editor at Blender
, a new music magazine. Reader Comments From The Fray:
[Notes from the Fray Editor: President Bush on drilling, MTV and the youth market: same situation? Talk to WillV here. Thread your way through all the posts saying yes they do have the ads in Chicago (we know now, OK?) and find some posted lists: Zeitguy's Rools of Cool, Paul Caniff's answers to questions, and Gypsy's theory on disco. Jared White suggests Eggertian rather than Eggersesque. Check out the checkmarks for discussions on criticism and music. For more good stuff on film reviews read in full the fascinating posts from Steve Sailer and Aluminum Man (below). Done all that? Congratulations, you are now a complete popular culture Instant Expert. (Or a Breakfast Table Fray expert--same thing.)]
At the risk of sounding churlish--or rather, gleefully trying to sound churlish--the comment of your "Breakfast Table" writer about the Bush administration--"Essentially, they're politically motivated cowards" [Monday's entry]--demonstrates an acute lack of insight into, well, one of the great features of civilization. Politically motivated bravery is usually a suspect virtue--it led Napoleon into Russia, Hoover into a principled stand against "hand-outs," and Tom DeLay into being Tom DeLay. The real problem is that the Bushies face no bullying from the other side of the aisle: nobody who is willing to demagogue them, dog them, and dice them into the neutered conservatism which was Jr.'s daddy's trademark. In the weird mores of Washington, the dogger/dicer really doesn't have to have a national constituency--just a nasty taste for institutional infighting. If only Wellstone had Gingrich's taste for lowmindedness.
--Roger
(To reply, click here.)
Having recently become the film critic for United Press International, I've been thinking a lot about these issues. The biggest problem with movie reviews in general is that reviewers are so homogenous--almost always male, white, upper middle class, with a grad degree in humanities or liberal arts, urban, high IQ, intellectual but not hugely logical or well-informed about things beyond the cultural realm like business or science or sociology, and extremely opinionated--that the tastes of huge demographic groups get ignored. I fall in most of those categories, too, but coming at a rather late age to this trade, I just don't as often experience anymore the testosterone surge that makes me want to shove my opinion down the throats of people who aren't like me.
For example, women. Over the years I've noticed that women generally don't like the same movies I like. That used to offend me greatly. I figured I could cure women of their bad taste in movies by exposing them to the really good stuff (i.e., what I liked) and explaining to them--over and over again--why it's better than the crap they liked. Slowly, though, I grew to respect women and their tastes more. I also learned that lots of other people aren't as smart as me and that making them watch what I liked to watch wasn't going to make them enjoy it more. Now, I take steps to help put myself in other peoples' shoes...
--Steve Sailer
(To reply, or to read this post in full, click here.)
Most Tom Green fans (and I'm not one of them) will have already decided to see Freddy Got Fingered a long time ago, and nothing that reviews have said (or will say) makes any difference. The same is true of the upcoming Lord of the Rings trilogy or the last installments of the increasingly awful Star Wars series. In fact, contrary to what the Breakfast Tablers are suggesting, I think most people have their minds made up about whether or not to see any given movie long before reviews hits the stands.
What informed, thoughtful, articulate critics can do is make us see, hear and understand things in movies that we otherwise might miss. They can challenge us by forcing us to examine elements that we might otherwise pass over, and make us look at a movie from a perspective perhaps unlike our own.
--Aluminum Man
(To reply, click here.)
(4/25)
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Reader Comments From The Fray:
[Notes from the Fray Editor: President Bush on drilling, MTV and the youth market: same situation? Talk to WillV here. Thread your way through all the posts saying yes they do have the ads in Chicago (we know now, OK?) and find some posted lists: Zeitguy's Rools of Cool, Paul Caniff's answers to questions, and Gypsy's theory on disco. Jared White suggests Eggertian rather than Eggersesque. Check out the checkmarks for discussions on criticism and music. For more good stuff on film reviews read in full the fascinating posts from Steve Sailer and Aluminum Man (below). Done all that? Congratulations, you are now a complete popular culture Instant Expert. (Or a Breakfast Table Fray expert--same thing.)]
At the risk of sounding churlish--or rather, gleefully trying to sound churlish--the comment of your "Breakfast Table" writer about the Bush administration--"Essentially, they're politically motivated cowards" [Monday's entry]--demonstrates an acute lack of insight into, well, one of the great features of civilization. Politically motivated bravery is usually a suspect virtue--it led Napoleon into Russia, Hoover into a principled stand against "hand-outs," and Tom DeLay into being Tom DeLay. The real problem is that the Bushies face no bullying from the other side of the aisle: nobody who is willing to demagogue them, dog them, and dice them into the neutered conservatism which was Jr.'s daddy's trademark. In the weird mores of Washington, the dogger/dicer really doesn't have to have a national constituency--just a nasty taste for institutional infighting. If only Wellstone had Gingrich's taste for lowmindedness.
--Roger
(To reply, click here.)
Having recently become the film critic for United Press International, I've been thinking a lot about these issues. The biggest problem with movie reviews in general is that reviewers are so homogenous--almost always male, white, upper middle class, with a grad degree in humanities or liberal arts, urban, high IQ, intellectual but not hugely logical or well-informed about things beyond the cultural realm like business or science or sociology, and extremely opinionated--that the tastes of huge demographic groups get ignored. I fall in most of those categories, too, but coming at a rather late age to this trade, I just don't as often experience anymore the testosterone surge that makes me want to shove my opinion down the throats of people who aren't like me.
For example, women. Over the years I've noticed that women generally don't like the same movies I like. That used to offend me greatly. I figured I could cure women of their bad taste in movies by exposing them to the really good stuff (i.e., what I liked) and explaining to them--over and over again--why it's better than the crap they liked. Slowly, though, I grew to respect women and their tastes more. I also learned that lots of other people aren't as smart as me and that making them watch what I liked to watch wasn't going to make them enjoy it more. Now, I take steps to help put myself in other peoples' shoes...
--Steve Sailer
(To reply, or to read this post in full, click here.)
Most Tom Green fans (and I'm not one of them) will have already decided to see Freddy Got Fingered a long time ago, and nothing that reviews have said (or will say) makes any difference. The same is true of the upcoming Lord of the Rings trilogy or the last installments of the increasingly awful Star Wars series. In fact, contrary to what the Breakfast Tablers are suggesting, I think most people have their minds made up about whether or not to see any given movie long before reviews hits the stands.
What informed, thoughtful, articulate critics can do is make us see, hear and understand things in movies that we otherwise might miss. They can challenge us by forcing us to examine elements that we might otherwise pass over, and make us look at a movie from a perspective perhaps unlike our own.
--Aluminum Man
(To reply, click here.)
(4/25)