Losing the New Media Battle

Jonathan Martin has a very interesting article in Politico about the huge capabilities gap between left-leaning and right-leaning new media in terms of doing reporting and the impact that this is having on the campaign trail. There's no equivalent on the right to what's being done at TPM Media or Think Progress or the Washington Independent or the Huffington Post in terms of finding new campaign stories and pushing them. There's plenty of commentary on the left, but on the right that's all there is.

The only real disagreement I would have is that I think Martin to some extent overstates the extent to which this is all about old-fashioned "shoe leather" when a lot of it is more research than reporting in that it's the kind of stuff you can do with Google (possibly while eating cheetos in your underwear) rather than by interviewing people. Indeed, in a sense I would say that one problem with conventional campaign journalism is that there's too much reporting. If you're standing outside at a John McCain press availability with a notebook or audio recorded, you're very poorly situated to debunk or verify anything McCain is saying. A well-informed person sitting at home with his laptop, by contrast, can actually bring information to bear.

Comments

maybe it's a little ambitious, and i don't really know what a press availability is like, but wouldn't it be possible in the age of portable web access to be able to actually fact check what somebody is telling you while the whole thing is going on?

google works on my hand-held, and so do most of the pages i can get to from it. wouldn't an iphone or a laptop with a mobile internet connection be even better?

Posted by 362442 | July 25, 2008 9:13 AM

It really isn't a beat reporter's job to debunk or verify what McCain is saying. A reporter reports what happened, and what happened is John McCain or his campaign people saying something. Then editors can do the verifying, and analysts/columnists/talking head/blogger/prognosticators can do the debunking.

Posted by Andrew Fly | July 25, 2008 9:16 AM

It really isn't a beat reporter's job to debunk or verify what McCain is saying. A reporter reports what happened, and what happened is John McCain or his campaign people saying something. Then editors can do the verifying, and analysts/columnists/talking head/blogger/prognosticators can do the debunking.

Posted by Andrew Fly | July 25, 2008 9:23 AM

I think that reporters and bloggers can live in perfect harmony. I disagree that reporters are doing too much reporting. After all, the more information they provide, the more information there is to be verified. Perhaps a good system is like the one that has come along - reporters tell us what candidates said, and bloggers/analysts look into those claims and verify them.

Posted by B. Minich | July 25, 2008 9:24 AM

WorldNetDaily, CNSNews, OneNewsNow, Christian Post, Baptist Press, etc. have been around for years with staff reporters writing for the web. Now, it may be that their reporting is crappy--it is--but if the Washington Times can be listed as a newspaper, these sites are reported blogs (or whatever you want to call it). An example of a campaign story being pushed by WorldNetDaily: "Hamas endorses Obama" came from an interview between a WND reporter in Jerusalem and a Hamas official.

Posted by Other Ezra | July 25, 2008 9:33 AM

i wouldn't disagree with that, but is it always only "beat reporters" only at these things, and if somebody is asking questions, don't they get to ask follow ups. wouldn't it be cool if somebody instantly fact-checked an answer at a press conference and asked a follow up in the same event based on what they found?

Posted by 362442 | July 25, 2008 9:39 AM

Was Fr. Coughlin viewed as a cynical clown like O'Reilly?

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 25, 2008 9:43 AM

I would agree with Digby when that blog pointed out that the right's hostility to journalism isn't at root based in their opposition to liberals, but in their opposition to journalism, per se.

For the right, to the degree a journalist departs from a pure, refined propaganda function, it is wrong and liberal and anti-American.

Posted by El Cid | July 25, 2008 9:44 AM

I think one key thing that the article and the conservatives trying to "respond" to the emergence of places like TPM and HuffPo miss is that the difference between them and even a site like Drudge versus what the right is talking about building is that they aren't wholly owned subsidiaries of a political group. They pay the bills with ads and small donations from readers, not a big check from some billionaire.

The reason this is important is because it means they actually have pressure to put out reporting and commentary that is interesting and useful to a broad group of people. I think this is a key check that prevents them from descending into the deranged comments that fill most traditional right wing commentary. We can argue about whether the "mainstream media" is left of center or right of center, but the fact is they are around the center. That means they (like TPM or Drudge) can't descend into nuttery that has no basis in reality.

I also wonder how much this is a generational rather than strictly ideological issue? I feel like the fact that the Dems are moving towards a 2:1 advantage in party ID among the people most likely to look to web sources for news coverage impacts this (Then again Josh and Arianna are both ahead of this wave age wise). On the flip side, the Post had a piece the other day about how much young conservatives loathe the folks running the movement today and so those most likely to be able to drive innovation seem to be increasingly focused on the internal battle.

Posted by dma | July 25, 2008 9:45 AM

I think one key thing that the article and the conservatives trying to "respond" to the emergence of places like TPM and HuffPo miss is that the difference between them and even a site like Drudge versus what the right is talking about building is that they aren't wholly owned subsidiaries of a political group. They pay the bills with ads and small donations from readers, not a big check from some billionaire.

The reason this is important is because it means they actually have pressure to put out reporting and commentary that is interesting and useful to a broad group of people. I think this is a key check that prevents them from descending into the deranged comments that fill most traditional right wing commentary. We can argue about whether the "mainstream media" is left of center or right of center, but the fact is they are around the center. That means they (like TPM or Drudge) can't descend into nuttery that has no basis in reality.

I also wonder how much this is a generational rather than strictly ideological issue? I feel like the fact that the Dems are moving towards a 2:1 advantage in party ID among the people most likely to look to web sources for news coverage impacts this (Then again Josh and Arianna are both ahead of this wave age wise). On the flip side, the Post had a piece the other day about how much young conservatives loathe the folks running the movement today and so those most likely to be able to drive innovation seem to be increasingly focused on the internal battle.

Posted by dma | July 25, 2008 9:52 AM

I think one key thing that the article and the conservatives trying to "respond" to the emergence of places like TPM and HuffPo miss is that the difference between them and even a site like Drudge versus what the right is talking about building is that they aren't wholly owned subsidiaries of a political group. They pay the bills with ads and small donations from readers, not a big check from some billionaire.

The reason this is important is because it means they actually have pressure to put out reporting and commentary that is interesting and useful to a broad group of people. I think this is a key check that prevents them from descending into the deranged comments that fill most traditional right wing commentary. We can argue about whether the "mainstream media" is left of center or right of center, but the fact is they are around the center. That means they (like TPM or Drudge) can't descend into nuttery that has no basis in reality.

I also wonder how much this is a generational rather than strictly ideological issue? I feel like the fact that the Dems are moving towards a 2:1 advantage in party ID among the people most likely to look to web sources for news coverage impacts this (Then again Josh and Arianna are both ahead of this wave age wise). On the flip side, the Post had a piece the other day about how much young conservatives loathe the folks running the movement today and so those most likely to be able to drive innovation seem to be increasingly focused on the internal battle.

Posted by dma | July 25, 2008 9:54 AM

These are unusually interesting comments, and tie into earlier threads about how bad is it if newspapers go away.

Its clear that organizations that only "publish" via websites can do original reporting, in many ways Drudge was a pioneer in this area. The key seems to have very low overhead and be interesting and actually put things up that people want to read. Also, this model may not fund organizations with news bureaux in every capital, but can probably support specialized publications. And I suspect the wire services will stick around.

In many ways, this is a throwback to nineteenth century newspapers, where you had lots of small newspapers, all with obvious biases and different standards of reporting, supported mainly by circulation. The model of a newspaper that is one of two in the city, supported by advertising placed in it by large businesses in the city, often for reasons other than reaching lots of readers, is relatively recent. In some ways it was an improvement, but when it goes away this doesn't mean news will go away.

Also, I.F. Stone did most of his reporting just by going through publically available documents. If you know where to find the right documents and know how to read them, then you can ask the right questions of the right people. There is a good example of Matt Taibi doing this with the defense budget in his latest book. I suppose there is a role for stenographers of press conferences and speeches, but I don't see much evidence of big media going beyond much beyond this.

Posted by Ed | July 25, 2008 10:05 AM

Right, we need at least three categories here. There is the reporting of news. Then there is the statement of opinion. But there is also the relation of news and opinion to other facts which aren't news, but nonetheless are relevant.

I'd personally call that something like analysis, and I would be comfortable with saying that right now the conservatives have a relative lack of people doing serious analysis. And blogs (and--dare I say?--the comments on blogs) are in fact where today a lot of the serious analysis is occuring.

Posted by DTM | July 25, 2008 10:06 AM

Much of our press has forgotten how to do investigative journalism; and fall for he-said/she-said balance.

Investigations take expensive resources, require reporters both intelligent enough to understand how to investigate and smart enough to understand what story their discovery reveals. It requires setting aside your narrative and finding the narrative you reveal.

What passes for news, now, is mostly entertainment.

I agree about bloggers' ability to investigate with google; but much needed information isn't available on the internet; and much of what is on available is false in some way (though the same is usually true about the stories in the mainstream media).

Posted by zic | July 25, 2008 10:24 AM

Summary: MattY is, of course and as always, wrong.

The right certainly has no equivalent to the HuffPost, but to flatly state that there aren't those who occasionally try to break stories is false.

And, the part about "standing outside" is dangerously wrong. Those who know what they're talking about can spot lies and misleading statements and during a Q&A session call the candidate on them. Even those who aren't familiar with an issue can simply read a question off a card and get the response on video. Calling a candidate on their lies and misleading statements to their face and uploading their response to Youtube is going to be far more effective than simply blogging about what they said later.

Posted by TLB | July 25, 2008 12:10 PM

To be a successful reporter, you need to be curious, out-going, reasonably personable, and a fast writer. What you don't need to be, however, is smart, at least not in the sense that Matt is smart -- to be able to notice logical contradictions.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 26, 2008 5:22 PM