BIG MEDIA vs. little bloggers

For the start of this blog I would like to feature another writer's work to explain a dicussion of blogs versus the media at large. As a student of Public Relations, many of my classes and revolve around the blogosphere:How it has affected the mainstream media, what it means for journalism, and how far it can be trusted. The fact of the matter is that the big media: newspapers, major networks, and magazines do not like bloggers. They resent the control that bloggers have over them and the public. Until the advent of bloggers rise to power with the demise of Dan Rather at CBS News and Eason Jordan's resignation from CNN; Nobody was giving them much credit or paying any attention to them.
Since the past election cycle though the public and the big media have become very aware and wary of these people who are called 'bloggers'.
Will Collier, from VodkaPundit, pointed me towards another article:
'PR and the MSM'

Very interesting piece on here by Paul Graham, who was around in the early days of web start-ups. It's about how public-relations firms inject memes into the mainstream media for their clinets. In Graham's words,
PR is not dishonest. Not quite. In fact, the reason the best PR firms are so effective is precisely that they aren't dishonest. They give reporters genuinely valuable information. A good PR firm won't bug reporters just because the client tells them to; they've worked hard to build their credibility with reporters, and they don't want to destroy it by feeding them mere propaganda.
If anyone is dishonest, it's the reporters. The main reason PR firms exist is that reporters are lazy. Or, to put it more nicely, overworked. Really they ought to be out there digging up stories for themselves. But it's so tempting to sit in their offices and let PR firms bring the stories to them. After all, they know good PR firms won't lie to them.
Further down, Graham notes that the standard PR methods aren't working so well with one particular manifestation of new media:
Remember the exercises in critical reading you did in school, where you had to look at a piece of writing and step back and ask whether the author was telling the whole truth? If you really want to be a critical reader, it turns out you have to step back one step further, and ask not just whether the author is telling the truth, but why he's writing about this subject at all.
Online, the answer tends to be a lot simpler. Most people who publish online write what they write for the simple reason that they want to. You can't see the fingerprints of PR firms all over the articles, as you can in so many print publications-- which is one of the reasons, though they may not consciously realize it, that readers trust bloggers more than Business Week.
I was talking recently to a friend who works for a big newspaper. He thought the print media were in serious trouble, and that they were still mostly in denial about it. "They think the decline is cyclic," he said. "Actually it's structural."
In other words, the readers are leaving, and they're not coming back.
Why? I think the main reason is that the writing online is more honest. Imagine how incongruous the New York Times article about suits would sound if you read it in a blog:
The urge to look corporate-- sleek, commanding, prudent, yet with just a touch of hubris on your well-cut sleeve-- is an unexpected development in a time of business disgrace.
The problem with this article is not just that it originated in a PR firm. The whole tone is bogus. This is the tone of someone writing down to their audience.
Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic. It's not mystery meat cooked up out of scraps of pitch letters and press releases, and pressed into molds of zippy journalese. It's people writing what they think.)

In my opinion the big media has become too corporate, I think once maybe as recently as the early 80's journalists were people looking for a good story. They were writers who wanted to report the facts. Newspapers wanted to sell copy but, they were more creative in their day to day work. Journalists were asked to be unbiased and focus on keeping their morals intact. This is what I was taught in college for journalism, never accept gifts, keep out of your personal opinions and respect the integrity of the subjector subjects involved. But, jounalists have stopped being asked as group to adhere to these principles. Some do and some don't..so who do you trust for information?
You trust the people who you have come to know on a certain level through regular reading, personal contact, whose opinions you know how to judge, and who have not openly failed you when it comes to the facts. Trust is hard to gain these days and easy to loose, especially in readers. Cynicism seems to be the mark of an educated mind. But for all the cynicism that has been drummed into us, bloggers provide information we feel we can digest free of contamination.
Why is this true? Because bloggers openly disclose what they think and where they are coming from as they write their work. Case in point: I just told you I am a student of PR, and I want to work in the field somewhere in DC. I have nothing to gain or loose by this action. I do not get paid to write this blog and write for my own edification as a writer.
This brings me to another point:
Big PR people don't like bloggers- especiall those well the over 40 set, in Media PR, these people really look down on bloggers-they can't relate to them and don't trust them-assume they are just really easily swayed writers and inauthentic because their sources can't be traced. Another way to look at is this: Bloggers aren't on a money crunch timeline, they do their posts as apart of their personal self actualization. They don't need or even want some PR person giving them a press release to help them form a story. In addition, those bloggers who are paid and have deadlines depend on the authenticity of their work to continue blogging. Otherwise, they would be no different than a paid journalist. (It is important to distinguish bloggers from corporate website blogs as well such as GM's which is written by some ghostwriter for the CEO in the Communications office of the corporation.)
Bloggers start by developing a small base of readers who trust them or know them personally, if they are good and trustworthy their base grows-they form relationships with other bloggers who pass along their information. But, Bloggers are also under a strict adherence to the truth or to at least openly sharing where they stand on issues. If they are not honest, it seems to take about a minute for their credibilty to be shattered. It boggles the minds of PR professionals and defensive jounalists.
I can't tell you how many of my elders in this field of Media Relations have expressed an extreme dislike for bloggers. They think they are freaks, people who hang out in their underwear and eat two day old pizza off the floor-ultimately because they don't understand them and cannot control them some members of the PR profession resent bloggers as much as the mainstream media. Think about it like this: Media relations professionals had a great relationship full of perks for everyone-free information for journalists as well as meals and food(who knows), but bloggers changed that, journalists can't take free story ideas and media relations professionals can't easily give them out anymore without the public or at least some part of the public questioning the motives....the biggest question is what will happen to mainstream media. Will we all have to start logging onto our computers just get our weather report??? NO.I think the mainstream publications will stay around. The truth is bloggers work best as a compliment to what the major media outlets produce. Due to the medium and the fact that most bloggers really do have lives their will always be a space for some kind of daily newsource for current events. But, the big media producers are going to find their world changed-I think the rule of giant media is over-it only lasted 15 years anyways....I point to the fact that the newspapers have become very corporate and a lot of people who used to be journalists have left the industry altogether finding themselves embittered and angry at what has happened to journalism. In fact, a lot of ex journalists have become bloggers or dare I say it-CURRENT JOURNALISTS HAVE BLOGS, outside of their normal articles and columns. The blogosphere is a place where you can escape from the monopoly of certain subjects that run in an obnoxious repitition on the major news outlets like so many MTV videos. OR a person can find a much needed set of facts or a different opinion to fill out a current issue in their mind. But this does not really signal the end of CNN, or Fox News, or even really CBS. It does signal a change.
Additionally, in college many of my English professors hypothesized that one day the reign of the free press would end-fearing government regulation of information would take over and calling my college years the twilight of the free press. They feared this action as a result of journalists wild and often careless mistakes in publications. It was an analysis that made sense given the strength and power of the newsworld in the U.S. Journalists are both loved and feared by politicians, admired by the public and the educated, and most importantly they were believed to be truthtellers and benevolent entities. I think this stereotype still exists, but this belief is a great weight to be carried by humans and the practically non-divine. Journalists ulitmately do not like bloggers because they disempower them and smudge this image of divinity. It is the bloggers who ended the reign of big media and not the loathsome government. And this new era where the big media is enforced by the little bloggers, as a back up system of media, to produce better material is a far better solution. The development of bloggers preserves the fundamental American practice of freedom for the press and maybe even the place of traditional journalism-for this big media should be grateful to the little bloggers-no matter how much they annoy them.