PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISM AND NEW MEDIA

I found a recent article on Real Clear Politics by Cathy Young (of Reason Magazine) on professional journalism vis-a-vis new media good fodder for (DIS)ENGAGED.

Ms. Young makes a wise statement that professional journalists and the profession are both still as important than ever, and that the new media, while a powerful tool of democracy and spreading information, is not a wise substitute. She rightly claims that both do best when acting as a check on, and complement to the other. There is some additional commentary on how Barack Obama was handled with velvet gloves and also that the media is liberal-leaning. She may be right, but that is not what I am interested in here.

The rest of the article (posted on a blog, mind you) goes on to discuss how traditional media might survive in the new media landscape, and business models that might allow these companies to make profits and survive in the face of blogs and the like. I do think this is important.

Ms. Young closes with a judgment that if Americans still respect quality journalism they will pay to keep it alive so long as the media earns that respect. I agree with this in broad terms, but I am not sure that it is entirely true.

I know more people in my hometown in Illinois that think the NY Times is liberal propaganda than those who take it as honest reporting. I see plenty of people here in the big apple who use The NY Post for one-stop news/info shopping. And I have spoken with plenty of folks who seem to put more faith in user-generated commentary disguised as news than they do in that from professional sources.

I was recently in Seattle when the Seattle P.I. folded, and it seems like each day another one bites the dust. It is sad, and scary. While our new media give us new and exciting democratic opportunities, I agree with Ms. Young. We do need to find a way to at least preserve professional journalism, if not the papers.

SAD "STATE" OF AFFAIRS

Given the public figures that too have claimed that they wanted the new President to fail, it was not so much that it surprised me when I read about this, which appears on the blog "Red State," in The Economist. It was that it struck me as a particularly difficult conundrum to confront here on (DIS)ENGAGED. I also felt really dirty just now posting a link to that site and the petition in question.

In one respect, it is definitely engaged, just not for the side that I am on. On the other hand, does engaging people in an effort to cause catastrophic failure count as "moving us forward?" No, I think not. So here in lies the issue. What qualifies as something that aids progress?

I guess to the folks that might sign on to this petition, aiding in the failure of the new administration is moving us forward by taking us back. Huh? To others like myself it just seems counter-productive and a terrible waste of time, effort and broadband. If I had to make a tally in either column, engaged or otherwise, I guess I would call it a wash. In all honesty, I should give them credit since they are promoting something they believe in, but it is my blog and much like Cartman, I do what I want.

So Red State...be happy with the goose egg.

MORNING MORSEL

I have to start out by saying that I don't really drink orange juice. I am more of a grapefruit person. My parents retired to Florida and this new design looks like the local generic brand sold at Publix grocery stores (one on every corner!). Also, this piece seems like fodder for my friend and classmate Jennifer's blog, but I thought I would try to scoop her.

So as I am eating my high fiber bran cereal with banana this morning, my regular news show was covering this story about how Tropicana was switching their carton design back to the old picture of a straw coming right out the orange. I also caught the same story here.

On the outset it seems like nothing special; alright, they went back to their old package...so what? But it is how Pepsi was forced back that is the interesting part. Apparently blogs, chatrooms, fan pages on facebook, and the whole realm of online Tropicana fans went ballistic about the packaging, flooding the internet with complaints. Well, Pepsi was listening and decided to tuck their tail and run back to the straw. Looks like Pepsi understands the Groundswell.

But I want to get back to the topic of this blog. Jennifer can cover the deeper branding implications, but is this really a step forward? On my morning program Linda Kaplan Thaler was on (and I never realized she was so...animated), and her take on the people's revolt was that:

"People can't control the state of the economy, they can't control the housing crisis, but they can control their carton of orange juice. They can go in there, blog about it, write it, and change it. They feel empowered."

OK - maybe - but since when? I have never felt like I can control what companies do with their products. When something changes for the worse, I usually just switch brands or deal with it. But now, people CAN force companies to change. However, I am not convinced that this is moving forward. Is the carton really that important, or have we become so consumerized (is that a word?) that we are getting so caught up in superficial nonsense like our orange juice packaging? It seems to me that if people want to control the economy and the housing crisis, all of the tools they just used to passionately plea for a new picture (or, rather, reverting back to the old design) on the carton of their morning juice could be used to try and sway lawmakers and the powers that be about important things.

Maybe I just don't understand because I don't drink orange juice - it's possible. But I just can't believe that getting Pepsi to change Tropicana's packaging is really engaging people over anything that meaningful. But I do concede that it does demonstrate the power of the new tools consumers and ordinary folks have available.