The News War

This was a quite good Frontline exmination of journalism in the 21st century, called "News War," and yet something was missing. I am not a blogging triumphalist, and I would certainly not call the vast majority of what I do online news. I don't have the unlimited budget to pound the pavement and talk to everybody and find stories. It's not even a first job, or something that pays me... well, anything, unless you step right up and buy an ad (one line, no waiting, over to your right). What I can do is provide analysis, put stories in context and try to keep stories in the forefront of the national conversation. Actually, I can't do hardly any of that, but I can join the other bloggers out there in the attempt.

The News War program talked about the danger of putting the public trust of journalism in a for-profit context where they have to make more and more year over year to satisfy Wall Street. It talked about the lack of foreign news bureaus and the struggle to leverage the online medium for major news organizations. But it did not address the relationship between the press and the people they are supposed to cover. It did not address the inability for the news media to stop telling the same story over and over and to provide new perspectives instead of re-framing old ones. News War told a valuable story, but only part of the story.