There are 86 posts filed in journalism (this is page 5 of 11).
An unexpectedly moving article by Paul Miller, about what it was like to spend an entire year off the internet:
I’d read enough blog posts and magazine articles and books about how the internet makes us lonely, or stupid, or lonely and stupid, that I’d begun to believe them. I wanted to figure out what the internet was “doing to me,” so I could fight back. But the internet isn’t an individual pursuit, it’s something we do with each other. The internet is where people are.
Interesting reflections from Martha Bayne, whose amazing piece Knocked Over landed her a spot on Terri Gross’s Fresh Air…before the interview went disastrously and had to be pulled:
[O]ne key thing that I forgot is that to a large degree, these interviews function as a stand-in for the story itself. So you’re being asked to re-tell the story you already told on paper, for those who don’t know it, rather than have a conversation that builds on the existing information. I remember subconsciously chafing against this at the time, thinking, Why is she asking me these dumb questions? But I blame myself completely for that part.
Kevin Smith has had a pretty rocky relationship with film reviewers these past few years but I’ve stayed a fan of what he has accomplished (I was one of the few on our podcast that was really impressed by Red State).
This past year has seen a huge life transition for me. As I’ve gone through it, and as I’ve experienced recent events, there’s one interview with Kevin Smith that keeps coming to mind, over and over again: a 2009 interview that Smith did with Lee Stranahan on “The Dark Side of the Internet.” In it, Smith discusses how the poor performance of Zack and Miri caused him to swear off the internet for good.
While I think constructive criticism can benefit any number of people (myself included), there’s one section of the interview that has really changed the way I look at things. It starts about the 5 minute mark above:
“You know what I realized one day? People can write the worst shit about you that you’ve ever seen. They can write really horrible shit about your wife, about your fucking kid. They can write things about your motivations. They can try to peer into your soul and write heinous fucking things. They can take you into bizarro world and write the opposite of everything that’s true, and maintain to the world in general that it’s true. And it’s only really recently that I’ve realized that they can do all that, and they can’t affect your ability to earn, to love, to be loved, to have a good day…
It’s weird. I’ll sit there and read something on the internet really heinous about myself or about my work or something, and then I’ll go a meeting on some project I’m working on. Those cats aren’t like ‘Hey, we read that thing and that dude’s right, you are a prick!’ That shit doesn’t matter, and you bring it up to them! It’s so weird, I’m so tired of telling people in my life…people will be like, ‘What’s wrong?” and I’m like ‘I read this fucking thing on the internet that really bothers me.’ None of them have ever been like, “Oh man I’m sorry.’ They’ve all been like, ‘So? Dude, look at your life! You won! What do you give a shit what someone writes about you on the internet?’ And I’m like, ‘I dunno. Because I always have.’
And then I just realized, maybe I can just stop.”
Amen.
Drew McWeeny asks whether or not it’s appropriate for filmmakers to strike back after a negative review of their film. In referring to Calvin Reeder and his film, The Rambler, McWeeny writes, “He should say what he has to say with his films, I should say what I have to say with my reviews, and everything else should be tabled as needless noise that detracts from us both.”
I don’t agree with McWeeny here – informed dialogue after a movie has been released and written about can benefit both the filmmaker, the public, and film critics. Just look at what happened with that Django Unchained incident, after all.
That being said, I don’t think Reeder is the standard bearer for what constitutes a civilized response. Based on his communications on his Facebook page and on the comments on the Hitfix post, he seems more interested in sniping and destroying McWeeny’s credibility than in actually engaging in a serious dialogue.
But to me, there is no question that a person who makes their living talking about their opinion on the works of others should be able to have their work commented on. How productive that commenting is, and in what venue it occurs are the unresolved questions.
Andrew Phelps has some cool analysis of Gawker’s new editorial guidelines that are geared towards garnering more page views:
The key to the balance probably doesn’t lie in raw numbers, though. A Gawker that was only weird Chinese goats would likely, over time, bore its readers. The more substantive stories serve as tentpoles for the entire site; once in a while, they’ll blow up huge, and they’re probably more appealing to the kind of brand advertisers Gawker seeks. […]
It also at least has the potential to lead to happier writers who know when they need to chase pageviews and when they don’t.
Stephen Glass was a journalist who fabricated a wealth of materials for features that he wrote for publications such as The New Republic and Rolling Stone. His crimes were dramatized in the solid journalistic thriller, Shattered Glass. Glass is now trying to become a lawyer in California, but the Bar association there is…reluctant. Jack Shafer explores whether or not Glass has learned his lesson:
Glass ‘s legal struggle to join the bar goes back almost a decade. According to court filings, Glass passed the New York Bar Examination in 2000 and applied for admission to the bar in July 2002. But he withdrew his application on Sept. 22, 2004 after the bar notified him he would not likely be approved on moral character grounds. He moved to California that fall and passed its bar exam in 2007, but the Committee of Bar Examiners rejected Glass on moral character grounds in 2009. The committee holds that Glass has not rehabilitated himself, waiting more than 11 years to fully list and identify all of the fabrications in his journalism.
After Bob Costas obliterated Jerry Sandusky’s reputation in a well-executed but troubling interview, one would think that we wouldn’t need to hear too much more about the matter from the man himself. Costas’ questions were pointed, relentless, and well-researched. Sandusky’s failure to provide even a moderately plausible explanation for his prosecution (and persecution) spoke volumes.
But today, the New York Times published a front-page story on Sandusky, featuring an interview with Jo Becker. The interview is bizarre, to say the least. Becker seems less interested in getting at the truth than in 1) trying to help Sandusky find justifications/explanations for his imprudent behaviors, and 2) giving Sandusky a massive mouthpiece with which to tell his side of the story. Commenters on the piece are lining up to complain about Becker’s softball questions. And as a side note, I can’t imagine this interview helps Sandusky’s cause any (Seriously, WTF is his lawyer thinking? Unless he’s playing some kind of circuitous, long game here…).
I’m not too familiar with Becker’s work. But if I may go out on a limb here, I think I can understand the motivation behind such a piece. It felt like Becker was trying to get inside the mind of a pedophile and try to make us understand his plight and condition. There is some value for society in this; if we can’t understand monstrosity, how can we ever hope to contain or stop it? But I’m also reminded of this important column about the Sandusky scandal by priest James Martin. In the column, Martin argues that pedophiles often exhibit two tendencies: grandiosity and narcissism. When the pedophile is discovered, these two qualities often fuse together:
The grandiose narcissist now focuses almost exclusively on his own suffering. His removal from office, or from ministry, he believes, is the worst thing that has happened to anyone, and he (or she) laments this fate loudly and frequently. Because of his narcissism he focuses almost entirely on his own troubles; because of his grandiosity he inflates them to ridiculous proportions. He suffers the most. This is the “Poor Me” Syndrome.
Even more dangerous: he draws others into his net, and the suffering of the real victims, those whose lives have been shattered, is overlooked-even by otherwise intelligent and well-meaning people. The focus of those within the institution is shifted onto the person they know, rather than the victims that they may not know.
We cannot allow this to happen. Today’s NYTimes interview does not help.