Eric Alterman offers a valuable, and as far as I can tell, entirely accurate timeline of reporting on the U.S. Attorneys scandal. His essential point being that this fascinating episode of ham-fisted politicizing would have been ignored, as so many other stories have been, were it not for REPORTING work done by prominent blogs, principally Josh Marshall’s TPM Muckraker.
Reading this as I slog through the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s dispiriting 2007 State of the Press report, I’m reminded again of commercialized news’ numerous self-inflicted wounds. Forget Anna Nicole Smith — if you can — the sheer volume of inconsequential, excuse me, “repetitively inconsequential” news plugged into both newspapers and TV as a marketing strategy is a fundamental factor in the declining appeal of that style of mainstream journalism. Put another way, all of us so-called “busy news consumers” have less and less time for junk information and are hungrily searching for reliable sources of information that is relevant to something other than small talk with a barista. Hence the growth in public radio.
There is no shortage of junk information. In modern American culture you acquire knowledge of Anna Nicole and Britney’s dysfunction by osmosis, like a virus. Its appearance in the mainstream press as anything other than an analysis of a cultural phenomenon is properly taken as signs of desperation and lack of imagination. And the influence of otherwise serious news venues decreases in moments when someone contrasts the sluggish response to something as valid, though complex, as the US Attorney’s story to what editors and news directors regarded instead as a more palatable mix of topics.
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