Wednesday, December 20, 2006
About the Author
Lance Dutson is publisher of MaineWebReport.com, a citizen journalism Web site.
This week's Maine Sunday Telegram featured a column by Editor Jeannine Guttman lauding her paper's steps into the world of social media.
While I commend the paper for recognizing the need to adapt, those of us who have spent some time watching and being part of the New Media's assault on traditional news sources will greet this venture with a skeptical eye.
The newspaper industry is in a financial tailspin that will be hard to overcome. This summer, industry analysts released projections showing an estimated $20 billion shortfall in newspaper ad revenues by 2010.
The advent of more efficient advertising methods, coupled with an increasingly discerning public, is forcing papers to open their eyes to the world around them. This is good news; unfortunately, views like Guttman's illustrate an innate misunderstanding of the problem.
Which is, quite certainly, that the public is rejecting the corporate news model because it has become complacent. It is failing in the market because it does not serve the expectations of consumers. Maine's media are no exception.
Perhaps its most egregious shortcoming is the lack of scrutiny it places on public officials. Maine's news media have consistently allowed politicians in this state to feed them news with minimal questioning.
In a state where one political party controls all branches of government, the news media have the responsibility to provide an intense level of skepticism and scrutiny of all things political. Desire for access to public officials often seems to trump that responsibility.
The New Media world of blogs and other forms of Internet-based social media isn't changing the landscape of news and politics because of its underlying technology. It is changing the world because it is allowing truly egalitarian access to the media for the first time ever.
It is specifically the fact that a blog is not a newspaper that has given it its power. A legion of Press Herald bloggers will ultimately fail to produce results until the policies that cause the print media to come up so short are changed. A digital version of a sanitized press leaves the public in the exact same position as before, except for less paper to use in the fireplace.
There is a troubling diminution in Maine's traditional press for actual inquisitive reporting. Across the nation, blogs are filling this void. Maine's press corps seems to have abandoned the idea of probing into the subjects they cover, as if the concept of impartiality has paralyzed them.
The media, more so than government, sets the dialogue in a community. They provide the ultimate check and balance between the citizenry and its elected officials. When improprieties are ignored, the press becomes complicit.
The near-manic concern for decorum among Maine's traditional press has resulted in a disenfranchised public, cheated out of a thorough understanding of a reality the press has a responsibility to reveal
Blogs and other independent media sources have usurped the role of the press in this regard, and they've taken the audience with them.
The arrogance and elitism that pervades the world of journalism has allowed this problem to escalate almost unchecked, but now that revenues are declining we see a grudging acceptance of the need for change.
A successful adaptation by the traditional press will require an outright cultural revolution in the newsroom, and a real understanding that the public expects a harder edge and a more adversarial stance toward canned political rhetoric.
Maine could really benefit from a sharp change in the Press Herald's attitude toward journalism. Its responsibility as the largest newspaper in the state is to provide a real and intense analysis of the problems we face, and not the perpetuation of cozy relationships with newsmakers and politicians.
New voices need to be heard, stances taken on issues, and scrutiny placed on public officials. I'm glad to see Guttman opening her eyes to the emergence of the New Media, and hope that tomorrow's Press Herald will be more about authentic debate and dialogue in Maine -- and less about being safe.
- Special to the Press Herald
Reader comments
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Fall cleaning update...thanks. ;-)
report abuse
Especially when the "New" is lacking even a lick of truth.
I've never seen so many gullible newbies.
http://bangorreports.blogspot.com
report abuse
Mr. Dutson has made a very cogent case for mismanagement and ethical misbehavior in the Baldacci Administration, with a specific and warranted allegations.
Moreover, the vast majority of his allegations have been substantiated in e mails and documents grudgingly handed over under the FOIA requests. The mainstream press has, conveniently, ignored the ethics issues that have challenged the Baldcacci administration.
John conveniently leaves out the fact of the frivolous lawsuit filed against him by the Baldacci administration seeking millions in damages and filed by the law firm that functionally runs the State of Maine at present. It lasted only a very short time in Federal Court before being consigned to the dust bin of history. No longer will the people of Maine who voice an opinion be subject to the abject thuggery of the Baldaccis.
But you don't have to take my word for it. Thanks to alternative media you may check it out and decide for yourself--something "John" from Brunswick probably won't like. You will likely come to the conclusion that something in Augusta smells pretty bad--and Dutson has the gumption to question it:
http://www.mainewebreport.com/report abuse
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