Lileks defends Big Media

After I finish my walk every morning with the dogs, I read The Bleat. I love every Lileks post whether it’s about his day as a stay-at-home dad, rants, matchbooks, architecture, or the occasional Bleatdown—a thorough fisking as only Lileks can do.

In this morning’s Bleat, inspired by the flurry of activity in the blogosphere in reaction to Nick Coleman of the Star Tribune’s column attacking blogs and bloggers, Lileks has written an apologia for Big Media. He offers both a hard power and soft power argument for the value of newspapers.

First, the hard power argument:

One: they have the resources to go places and report. You can argue about how they report it, but there aren’t many bloggers today who can get on a plane, fly to the Sudan, use embassy contacts and press credentials to attempt to get the story out. If the New York Times wants to do a story on something, it can do it, and devote however many resources are necessary. (Like the Augusta National Golf Tournament story, for example.)

As I’ve mentioned before, this isn’t nearly as true as it used to be and it’s getting less true with each news staff budget cut.

Besides it’s largely an apples-and-oranges comparison. Don’t compare bloggers to institutions. Compare them to individual reporters and individual columnists. Have the full resources of, say, the New York Times been applied to this individual story? Not just can they be. Have they been?

Lileks then makes a number of soft power arguments for the value of newspapers. He raises the issue of the compared credibility of, again say, The New York Times with, say, Hindrocket of Powerline. Once again it’s apples and oranges. Compare individuals. For example compare Jayson Blair and Hindrocket. Make a difference? Additionally, credibility is based on reputation. Gaining a reputation is a hard, lengthy process. A reputation once gained may last longer than the reality upon which it is based, may be lost in an instant, and, once lost, be much, much more difficult to re-establish.

“Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation!”

Shakespeare’s Othello 2.3.262-265

Finally, Lileks makes this observation:

So the MSM has this useful function: it tells you what the Overclass is thinking. You can compare that to what you know.

I think that may be the heart of the problem with Big Media. I believe it does reflect what “the Overclass” is thinking. But, as Mama Rose says in Gypsy, “New York is the center of New York”. “The Overclass” of which Lileks writes is becoming increasingly regional, increasingly provincial, and increasingly irrelevant. It’s like the well-known “Eucalyptus Tree Phenomenon” (even TV shows putatively set in Chicago or Minneapolis have eucalytpus trees in the background). There’s a rising level of absurdity as the degree to which the people who actually make up Big Media are poorly informed about so many things that are not part of their little world becomes more obvious under an onslaught of increased scrutiny and shared information.

I think that Lileks shouldn’t be too concerned. I honestly believe that a considerable amount of the media scrutiny in the blogosphere over the last few weeks has been more hortatory than damning. Big Media can do a better job. Big Media can apply the resources that Mr. Lileks correctly points to towards doing its job rather than proving its point.

UPDATE: I see that Jeff Medcalf at Caerdroia reads Lileks in the morning, too. He has some reflections on anonymity.

UPDATE: Submitted to the Beltway Traffic Jam