I couldn’t help but read The Value of Networked Journalism in light of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, and particularly his chapter entitled, “Now... This.” Postman laments the fragmentation that is necessarily present in television-mediated journalism and demonstrates how the entertainment-oriented news had (at that point in the 80s) already infiltrated print media (as demonstrated by USA Today in particular). In a lot of ways, Beckett’s piece offers an alternative that should satisfy many (though not all) of Postman’s critiques.
It is important to begin with what seemed like a throw-away line from Beckett, but I think is important observation in any conversation with Postman’s writings: “Networked journalism is creating - or some would say reflecting - a new relationship between the journalist and the story and the public” (207). For anyone who has read Postman on budding technologies, this is an important point to make. Postman often overlooked the culture’s influence over the technologies and mediums they created and looked at things like television as outside agents working culture over. Not only would I want to echo other scholars who have observed that technology wells up from within culture, but I would want to be a part of the “some” that Beckett mentions here who see networked journalism as a resultant phenomenon and not a creative one. For all the speculation that Postman did concerning the future of news-media, Beckett demonstrates the actual state of things - and Postman wasn’t wrong about everything.
The most important aspect to networked journalism (from a Postman perspective) is that it allows for more in depth interaction. Postman recognized the “Now... This” nature of television news where coverage of killings or natural disasters were always quickly followed by a commercial about toilet paper or a bubbly weatherman pointing to smiley-faced sun icons. His point was that television journalism was sensational and entertaining and therefore short, fragmented, and anti-intellectual - the viewer was forced not to think about any particular story for too long.
After the inception of live-blogging, Beckett recognized “that there was an appetite for a more complex form of coverage” (207). He goes on to speak of networked journalism in general: “Unlike a TV news channel it allows the reader to control their consumption of the flow of news in a much more proactive way” (208). Networked journalism puts power back into the hands of the viewers and allows them to explore stories more thoroughly than a television snippet between commercial breaks would. In this way networked journalism answers Postman’s primary critique of “Now... This” news.
Interestingly, however, Postman inadvertently addressed Twitter-mediated news. Beckett talks about the strength of micro-blogging and its frequent use in networked journalism, and of course anyone who heard anything about the raid on Osama Bin Laden (and his consequent death) knows how important Twitter can be in journalism. Without negating the usefulness of Twitter and its role in journalism, I have to quote a section from Postman’s chapter on news when he is talking about USA Today’s television-influenced style:
It is important to begin with what seemed like a throw-away line from Beckett, but I think is important observation in any conversation with Postman’s writings: “Networked journalism is creating - or some would say reflecting - a new relationship between the journalist and the story and the public” (207). For anyone who has read Postman on budding technologies, this is an important point to make. Postman often overlooked the culture’s influence over the technologies and mediums they created and looked at things like television as outside agents working culture over. Not only would I want to echo other scholars who have observed that technology wells up from within culture, but I would want to be a part of the “some” that Beckett mentions here who see networked journalism as a resultant phenomenon and not a creative one. For all the speculation that Postman did concerning the future of news-media, Beckett demonstrates the actual state of things - and Postman wasn’t wrong about everything.
The most important aspect to networked journalism (from a Postman perspective) is that it allows for more in depth interaction. Postman recognized the “Now... This” nature of television news where coverage of killings or natural disasters were always quickly followed by a commercial about toilet paper or a bubbly weatherman pointing to smiley-faced sun icons. His point was that television journalism was sensational and entertaining and therefore short, fragmented, and anti-intellectual - the viewer was forced not to think about any particular story for too long.
After the inception of live-blogging, Beckett recognized “that there was an appetite for a more complex form of coverage” (207). He goes on to speak of networked journalism in general: “Unlike a TV news channel it allows the reader to control their consumption of the flow of news in a much more proactive way” (208). Networked journalism puts power back into the hands of the viewers and allows them to explore stories more thoroughly than a television snippet between commercial breaks would. In this way networked journalism answers Postman’s primary critique of “Now... This” news.
Interestingly, however, Postman inadvertently addressed Twitter-mediated news. Beckett talks about the strength of micro-blogging and its frequent use in networked journalism, and of course anyone who heard anything about the raid on Osama Bin Laden (and his consequent death) knows how important Twitter can be in journalism. Without negating the usefulness of Twitter and its role in journalism, I have to quote a section from Postman’s chapter on news when he is talking about USA Today’s television-influenced style:
The paper’s Editor-in-Chief, John Quinn, has said: “We are not up to undertaking projects of the dimensions needed to win prizes. They don’t give awards for the best investigative paragraph.” Here is an astonishing tribute to the resonance of television’s epistemology: In the age of television, the paragraph is becoming the basic unit of news in print media. Moreover, Mr. Quinn need not fret too long about being deprived of awards. As other newspapers join in the transformation, the time cannot be far off when awards will be given for the best investigative sentence. (Amusing Ourselves to Death pg. 112)
It seems like Beckett wouldn’t have too much to disagree about here. Newspapers have followed after USA Today and with the emergence of networked journalism the sentence is quickly becoming the basic unit of news in print media. How long before Postman’s prophecy is realized and an award is given for best investigative sentence?
****As far as my research interests are concerned I remain interested in asking Postman-like questions of Facebook (e.g., what kinds of content does Facebook appropriately carry? Can Facebook effectively transmit important cultural conversations? Is it an important cultural conversation in itself?). I am also interested, from a pragmatic standpoint, in updating my teaching philosophy that I had to do for RWS 609 so that it incorporates some of the points made in our readings that inadvertently made a case for a rhetorical education.
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