“Free news delivered by a search engine is part of the same freeloading zeitgeist that has shattered the larger economy.”
Who would equate Google News with no-doc mortgages?
Of course, it would have to come from the fringes of the world — but, this time, it comes from the left: The Nation.
Michael Moran (that’s an “a” — not an “o” — at the end) writes about the Internet in an amazingly condescending and uninformed way that seems almost anachronistic. Seriously, as I write this, I keep looking back to see if it is satire. Lines like this make me think it could be: “Call it NOPEC–the Newspaper Owners Print and Electronic Cartel.”
But, the clueless quotient about the Internet makes it clear that it must be serious. For example:
Then there are blogs. From the pure, opinionated one-man bands like Daily Kos and the Drudge Report, to to well-financed Internet catch basins like Huffington Post and the Daily Beast, these outlets not only fail to fill the breach of serious journalism; they actively undermine it.
So, where to start? How can one man be so wrong about so much so quickly? Neither Drudge nor Daily Kos is a “pure, opinionated one-man band.” Drudge is primarily, almost exclusively, a collection of links. Though his choices obviously (notoriously?) reflect his biases — and though some of his “scoops” advance those biases — no one disputes that the vast majority of what he does is repetition of headlines. And Kos is a “community” blog, which I would think very much disqualifies it as a “one-man band.”
Clueless.
There is a great value provided by good journalism, as the awarding of the Pulitzer Prizes today reminds us, but Moran’s way of propping that up is counterproductive to any possible discussion of how to keep that value in the public sphere as the world moves forward.
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Chris Geidner is the award-winning senior political editor at D.C.'s Metro Weekly and has written for The Atlantic Online, The American Prospect, Advocate.com, Salon and other publications, as well as at his blog, Law Dork. In 2011, he received the Excellence in News Writing Award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his coverage of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal. Prior to moving to D.C. in 2009, he served as an attorney on the senior staff at the Ohio Attorney General's Office and had earlier worked for a leading Columbus law firm. An extended biography can be found