Progenitor of ‘New Journalism’ Complains about New Journalists
Old people these days… As soon as they achieve the status of legendary journalists, they’re given license to spew adorably misinformed bits of crazytalk alongside dazzling rhetoric with little to no public recognition of the crazytalk part. So it was when Tom Wolfe, the father of “New Journalism,” came to Ithaca College to talk about journalism this past Halloween Eve. He called blog readers “tribal people,” equated bloggers with rumormongers who spoon-feed misinformation to said unsophisticated people, and insinuated that online journalism, even when based off of pre-existing newspapers, will contain no reporting. These opinions are rather unsurprising given that Wolfe has recently blamed the entire financial crisis on the fact that it’s hard to read stuff on “the computer.” (Perhaps fellow computer-ignoramus John McCain should consider Wolfe as his economic advisor.) The old bat’s quasi-senility is totally forgivable, but it’s worth examining some of his crazytalk mostly because it reflects opinions that are widely held among other old bats.
Here’s an account of Wolfe’s beefs with new forms of journalism, as reported by the Daily Sun:
Towards the end of the lecture, Wolfe also commented on the current trend of journalism, in which printed newspapers are “frantically” shifting online.
“I think that reporting is so important that I’m fearful when newspaper in printed form is no more,” he said.
He also lamented on the blogosphere, where “no reporting is done” and compared its readers to “tribal people who don’t believe in printed text but rumors.”
Wolfe seems to conceive of the internet as a scary, murky place filled solely with information of dubious origin. While it’s true that the internet hosts a whole lotta bullshit on it, it’s straight-out disingenuous to pretend that other media of communication don’t carry the same risks. In the few times in my life that I’ve unglued myself from my computer, I think I may have seen a rag called the National Enquirer on the newsstands. In printed form!
The elegiac manner in which Wolfe bemoans the fact that the New York Times must now inhabit the same sad space as PerezHilton.com, coupled with his previous craycray statements about the difficulty of reading off of a computer screen reflect a stubborn suspiciousness that many old people harbor towards the newfangled computer. In short, Wolfe–like tons of old people–just doesn’t like computers.
But he has a point: blogs hardly ever do any original reporting. In fact, a 2005 study showed that only 6 percent of the posts put out by the contemporaneous top 20 blogs “contained elements not obtained from other media sources or weblogs.” Yet the commentary that blogs offer still draws millions upon millions of pageviews, and is even analogous to the way the talking heads on TV and the ranters of talk radio use news reports as a launching block.
While whether that commentary is good or not is a matter of personal opinion, Wolfe should at least give blogs some leeway. He did after all, add personal color to his reporting of hard facts in starting the New Journalism movement; and bloggers as new journalists of sorts often do similar things. Well, not terribly often. But sometimes! We’re working on it.
P.S.: Why did IC not inform me of this event? Yes, I did no actual reporting for this story (besides reading a shit-ton of stuff on the internet). But it’s not my fault because Tom Wolfe has perpetuated the theory of bloggers as second-rate journalists. I had no choice!
P.P.S.: Want more amazing crazytalk from Wolfe? Read his pre-talk interview with the Ithacan. A sample:
In Madison, Wis., where the University of Wisconsin is, the newspaper has stopped printing completely. It’s completely online. One problem with it is computer screens are backlit, and it’s very hard to read anything at length if you’re reading a backlit screen. It’s just irritating. The second problem is the computer scrolls, I’m sure you’ve noticed that, you can’t turn a page, it scrolls. You know the monks were so happy to get rid of those damn scrolls in the 14th century and get pages and here we are back at the scrolls, and so it’s very hard for any new idea to get hold except in some medium where you can read at length without it bothering your eyes. Maybe the Kindle will solve that. I haven’t heard enough reports about the Kindle.
Tags: crazytalk, IC, tom wolfe
