Journalism (pt 2)
Journalism
Everyone’s favourite journalism dude RTing a guy who regularly gets criticised for being an unofficial US government spokesperson with their “analysis” of international relations complaining about Kim Kardashian’s presumably poorly considered opinions on an important issue that, for better or for worse, doesn’t really get much traction outside of interest groups that follow this stuff.
I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to have given up on most venerated journalists. They always find a way to let you down. See also: journalists who have so much experience, who are literally at retirement age, who are very highly regarded and respected, who should theoretically be beyond reproach, actually doing some real journalism, being considered “gutsy” and brave for doing so. FFS.
Political news, and especially the important news that really affects the campaign, proceeds at an irregular pace. But news coverage is produced every day. Most of it is filler, packaged in the form of stories that are designed to obscure its unimportance.* Not only does political coverage often lose the signal—it frequently accentuates the noise. If there are a number of polls in a state that show the Republican ahead, it won’t make news when another one says the same thing. But if a new poll comes out showing the Democrat with the lead, it will grab headlines—even though the poll is probably an outlier and won’t predict the outcome accurately.
Amazing that The Australian newspaper has managed to get Joseph Kony to take some time this week to pen an op-ed on the dangers of government regulation. Sensational scoop. The fact that I haven’t seen any discussion of this online just goes to show how biased against quality journalism so much of the twitterati is.
Politically homeless: Leaves of astroturf
In which Andrew Elder demolishes a bunch of bullshit that was written about the demise of News Of The World.
tl;dr Tabloids are hollow excuses for journalism, so hollow that everyone can see right through them and no one cares when one particular brand name disappears except for those that derived their income from that one particular brand name.
Visualization of Twitter Town Hall topics
Press focuses on conflict/politics while citizens focus on jobs/issues. Shocked!
The Australian’s media coverage: seriously, why bother?
…for a media industry journalist, Caroline Overington seems uniquely ignorant and uncurious about current media industry debate. As a media professional, why would I bother reading Media Diary?
This is excellent, pulling apart Caroline Overington’s bizarre Crikey obsession.
