PressThink: "Mother Jones invites you to question if the Politics 2.0 revolution really lives up to its hype."

"Mother Jones invites you to question if the Politics 2.0 revolution really lives up to its hype."

And PressThink asks whether the printing press progressives at Mother Jones have any kind of grip. "They saw the Internet and freaked: this can't be real. Recovering their bravery, they decided to debunk it."

Mother Jones magazine has come out with a special Politics 2.0 package. It has a great collection of interviews with “bloggers, politicos, and Netizens,” including MyDD’s Jerome Armstrong, Howard Dean, Chris Rabb of Afronetizen, Digg’s Kevin Rose, conservative Grover Norquist, Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, and Phil de Vellis, the guy who created that “Hillary 1984” video. Absorb them all and you have a tour d’horizon for how the Web is changing politics.

The writing and framing from the journalists at Mother Jones is another story. This will give you the flavor:

Are we entering a new era of digital democracy—or just being conned by a bunch of smooth-talking geeks?

New dawn or techo con game: such illuminating alternatives! Again:

Blogs, social networking, and viral video are redefining where political discussion takes place. But are they just replacing the old machine bosses with a new group of bullies?

And what an irony that would be. (See Meet the New Bosses.) Another:

Is old media dead, or is the blogosphere just a flash in the pan?

Because we know it’s one or the other. Those quotes come from a press release that landed in my box yesterday, provoking me with breezy hype about all the hype-busting going on at Mother Jones, an investigative magazine of the left.

“Mother Jones invites you to question if the Politics 2.0 revolution really lives up to its hype.” (Press release again.) When I later asked Clara Jeffery, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, from whence comes this impulse to debunk (and who provided the bunk that made your de-bunking so imperative…?) she said: impulse to debunk? We weren’t out to debunk. I don’t know what you’re talking about. We said some good things and we said some skeptical things. You have a problem with that?

Which is kinda how the whole interview went.

I thought I was her asking about an editorial decision Mother Jones made: to frame and present its report on “open source politics” not with an idea of its own, or a conclusion reached via reporting, but with the standard myth-busting software journalists load into their prose machines a zillion times a year.

The package begins with a page that is made up like a Wikipedia entry for Open Source Politics. (Of course no one can edit it, except Mother Jones.) This was meant to ease you into the bouncy, crap-detecting spirit of the section and get you to read it, while having a little fun with the form. Thus…

The neutrality of this story is disputed.
Open-Source Politics

Open-source politics is the idea that social networking and participatory technologies will revolutionize our ability to follow, support, and influence political campaigns. Forget party bosses in smoky backrooms—netroots evangelists and web consultants predict a wave of popular democracy as fundraisers meet on MySpace, YouTubers crank out attack ads, bloggers do oppo research, and cell-phone-activated flash mobs hold miniconventions in Second Life. The halls of power will belong to whoever can tap the passion of the online masses. That kid with a laptop has Karl Rove quaking in his boots. And if you believe that, we’ve got some leftover Pets.com stock to sell you.

Fun, right? I had lots of questions about this part but Jeffery was again mystified as to why I would even ask. Sure, it’s snarky, she said. But the point of the fake wiki page was “to set up the ‘it’ll change everything,’ ‘it’ll change nothing’ tension that runs throughout the package.” And that is how the package is framed. My question was: why? Through several emails and a phone interview, I failed in getting an answer.

Ohmygod this is going to change everything! as against Same shit as always. To Clara Jeffery those are two different thoughts. To me they are the same idea: don’t think it through yourself, use rote forms: the revolutionary and his glorious dawn to come, the reactionary who spits at the new. To her there is some kind of “tension” between these views. To me there is no tension because they are fake alternatives to begin with— just off-the-shelf bi-polar hype-speak from Mother Jones.

If you read their interviews with smart people who know politics or know the Web, they are far more grounded. Take Mike Cornfield of George Washington University, who said:

There’s a big difference between having a technical capacity to do something and having the willpower to organize people and persuade them and make history. There’s just a huge gap there.

Or Jane Hamsher on the kingmaking powers of the online left:

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama probably don’t need the netroots behind them— they just need us not to hate them.

So I asked Jeffery: if your sources, the people you talked to for this report, didn’t hold such extreme views (“it’ll change everything” or “it’ll change nothing”) and if, after checking into it, twelve writers and editors working for Mother Jones didn’t come down in either of these camps, then why in the world would you use that “tension” to frame the thing? Where did it come from? Couldn’t you find anything better in the reporting you did?

The question—like all my questions—did not compute. She did, however, say that taking two extreme-ified claims and discovering that the truth is somewhere in the middle was a “perfectly standard” treatment in journalism. I had to agree with her on that. But it seemed like a strange explanation. Ours is the same lame frame game you see everywhere in the press, so what’s your problem with it, Jay?

Reality is elsewhere. That’s my problem with it. Here’s what Phil de Vellis said…

There are still gatekeepers. There are just a lot more of them, and new ones all the time.

Observe how this sort of statement doesn’t scream out, “revolutionary alert: there are no more gatekeepers!” Nor does it idiotically contend, curmudgeon-style, that since everything hasn’t been overturned nothing is really different. Vellis says: The political media system hasn’t crumbled, it still stands. But there are changes, and some of them show a pattern that is quite different from the old pattern, so we have to keep an eye on this.

Compare that to Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery in their editors’ note introducing the Mother Jones package, piling irony on irony in their hype-busting prose.

And what of the glorious netroots? Already we’ve seen some of these gate-crashers act more like gatekeepers, promoting groupthink, punishing dissent, and growing drunk on the tribute that old-school pols and the msm now provide them. Not only that, but the blogosphere hardly looks like America yet: as Afro-Netizen’s Chris Rabb notes, those “who could afford to sleep on Howard Dean’s couch in Vermont are the same people who can raise the money to build a digital consultancy or a social networking site.” Is democracy’s best hope just another—if somewhat bigger and younger—elite? Even if the online conversation broadens, not everyone in the crowd is wise, as the digital road rage in comment threads so often proves. And if you thought Willie Horton and Swift Boating were slimy, wait till every last racist smear or dirty lie finds its way to YouTube or Digg.

An outstanding feature of this kind of writing is the question that really isn’t a question because for savvy journalists there is only one plausible answer.

Can revolutionaries hold true to their lofty declarations, or will they inevitably be corrupted by power?

Pop quiz: which of those views is meant to scan “naive,” and which reads “savvy?” Give up so soon? Revolutionaries holding to lofty ideals as they become more established— not likely. And Mother Jones did not find any cases worth reporting. Revolutionaries with lofty rhetoric getting corrupted by proximity to power? Well, yeah— that happens. That’s where the real word is. That’s the savvy view.

“In the world of ‘Politics 2.0’ the masses are forging a more transparent political system—one where bottom-up organizing trumps top-down messaging,” the press release says. “Or so we’ve been led to believe by bloggers and web consultants.”

I asked Clara Jeffery who these bloggers and web consultants were, the ones who were leading us to believe things that Mother Jones just had to challenge. Had she spoken to any? Those true believers she wrote about, did they have names or anything? Again she didn’t understand the question. Why was I asking her about imagery in a press release that some flack sent out?

(Hey, Shel, help me out here, isn’t that what I’m supposed to do? Press release goes out. PressThink receives it and has a few questions. Flack passes me along to editor. Editor says: huh?) Jeffery did mention that in this interview a real live revolutionary with lofty declarations could be found.

In March Jonathan Chait wrote about the Netroots in The New Republic, not the same subject but very similar terrain. Unlike the happy balloon poppers at Mother Jones, he at least had an interpretation to offer:

The Democratic leadership and the liberal intelligentsia seemed pathetic and exhausted, wedded to musty ideals of bipartisanship and decorousness. Meanwhile, what the netroots saw in the Republican Party, they largely admired. They saw a genuine mass movement built up over several decades. They saw a powerful message machine. And they saw a political elite bound together with ironclad party discipline.
This, they decided, is what the Democratic Party needed. And, when they saw that the party leadership was incapable of creating it, they decided to do it themselves.

When I asked Clara Jeffery what her interpretation was from all the reporting time her team put in, she had one: “Politics 2.0 is still a work in progress.” (MOTHER JONES CHALLENGES THE POLITICS 2.0 “REVOLUTION;” CLAIMS RESULTS ARE NOT IN YET.) Chait agreed that the results are not in, but didn’t leave it there:

What they have accomplished in just a few years is astonishing. Already, the netroots are the most significant mass movement in U.S. politics since the rise of the Christian right more than two decades ago. And, by all appearances, they are far from finished with their task: recreating the Democratic Party in the image of the conservative machine they have set out to destroy.

Which may not be entirely accurate but it does cause conversation, and from conversation additional layers of understanding may grow.

The Mother Jones editors had a great story about politics and the web within their grasp, but they were too busy fabricating myths they could bust up later— and so they missed it. Jerome Armstrong told them: right now there’s a generational conflict being played out within the campaigns. In 2004 the “big” operators around the candidate weren’t focused on the Internet, and didn’t see why they should be. And so at times the kids and outsiders could show the way to new uses, bypassing legacy thinking at the top.

Now in ‘08 all the old hands have woken up to the Internet and through embrace and extend they have tried to exert control over that department, colonizing it for the kind of command and control, push-the-message politics where (boomer) knowledge is ancient and decisive. “I know people on all these campaigns that work on the Internet and they’re frustrated as hell,” said Armstrong. “That’s throughout the Democratic Party.” But I bet you could find a similar dynamic on the Republican side.

“It’s a generational gap between the decision makers that lead the candidates and campaigns, and the campaign managers, who are directors of the different departments.” Somebody will do that story (a good story!) but it won’t be the printing press progressives at Mother Jones. They saw the Internet and freaked: this can’t be real. Recovering their bravery, they decided to debunk it.

After Matter: Notes, reactions & links…

“There is no Boss Tweed of the blogosphere, and I don’t think there ever will be.”

Daniel Glover, National Journal’s Beltway Blogger reacts to the treament of his ideas by Mother Jones. He was interviewed for the package, and was also asked to write for it. His quotes about bloggers being thin-skinned made it into Daniel Shulman’s piece, Meet the New Bosses. What didn’t make it in? “The fact that I disagreed with his very thesis — that an elite group of mafia-type bosses in the liberal blogosphere controls lesser bloggers and intimidates traditional power brokers.”

Glover says he saw signs of a “pre-determined thesis.” He says my objection to the tone of the package “is a legitimate criticism.” And he says blogger reactions to Mother Jones show that the thin-skins and knee-jerk reactions remain. In other words: a must read post.

And don’t miss the comments where (in a civilized discussion) Daniel Schulman says: pre-determined thesis? Impossible, and insulting. Co-editor Monika Bauerlein says “Dan Schulman is too good a reporter to go into a piece with a predetermined conclusion.” Impossible! But Glover sticks to his guns. How does he know? Because he heard the pitch for the piece himself when Mother Jones asked him to take it on as a freelancer, and he saw his views coveniently ignored when they didn’t fit the thesis.

Shulman then comments at PressThink: “[Glover] said that while some bloggers command bigger followings than others, no single blogger is setting the agenda so to speak. I agree and you’ll notice that I don’t suggest otherwise in my story, (nor will you find the words ‘gatekeeper’ or ‘boss’ anywhere in the body of my piece.” Headline to his article:

Meet the New Bosses
News: After crashing the gate of the political establishment, bloggers are looking more like the next gatekeepers.

Glover’s interview is not one of the ones you can find in the Mother Jones compendium: Interviews with Bloggers, Politicos, and Netizens on Politics 2.0. Why would that be? Explained here.

“No, we did not set out to debunk politics 2.0,” explains Mother Jones co-editor Monika Bauerlein at another must read post in comments (July 1.) “We did set out to debunk some hype that we saw within that universe.” (That’s a change—but a welcome change—from what had been a position denying any such intent; thus, my italics.) More:

No, we are not the victims of a rogue press agent. We approved the press release. It is a work of marketing, which doesn’t make it bad or false or “from another planet,” but which does mean that it highlights elements of the package that are assumed will get people’s attention and get them to look closer. The closer look is what’s intended; a press release is a tease, not a summary.

“And yes, there is similar ‘revolution-or-snake-oil’ framing in the heads and deks for the package.”

MoJo blog replies. What is Jay Rosen For? by Josh Harkinson. I thought this part revealing.

[Rosen is] writing from the perspective of an avid blogger who is familiar with the ins and outs of the Politics 2.0 world (I think) and doesn’t seem to realize that some of our readers, especially of the print magazine, are not. People with less exposure to that world need to understand the big questions at play—What’s the deal with this grand Politics 2.0 talk?—before they will see a reason to read about it. So we use that question as a starting point and then flesh it out with more nuance.

Yes, the big questions…. Perhaps that’s why in the print edition of Mother Jones the cover package is entitled, “Politics 2.0 smackdown.”

Points to Mother Jones for engaging with the blogosphere. And here.

Monika Bauerlein comments at the Huffington Post version:

Jay, thanks for spreading the word about our package—we’re delighted you’re helping get the word out. And when folks actually read it, they’ll see that it’s a pretty wide-ranging exploration of how technology is transforming politics, how politics is transforming the netroots, and lots of other questions. Why you’ve gone on a crusade to take this down as some sort of fake exercise in myth-busting (or why myth-busting would be a bad thing, especially for progressives, anyway) is a mystery to us, but feel free.

Jeffrey Dvorkin, former NPR ombudsman, now with the Committe of Concerned Journalists, emails. “Seems to me that we need to find a way to bring the public into the act of journalism in a more effective way than we have thus far.”

Here’s what I love about blogging: you ring people up with a question, they drop by to answer you. Shel Holz, ace PR-in-the-Web-age blogger, (“Shel, help me out here…”) in the comments:

Jay, that was exactly what you were supposed to do. Were I the flack who sent out the release (a questionable tactic in the blogosphere to begin with), I would be gratified to learn that it had motivated you to seek an interview. And if the interview had gone the way you described, I would spend a sleepless night wondering if the client was worth the billables. One wonders how much time the client has spent learning how to talk to the press (or bloggers), all the more distressing given she is a member of the press herself. This suggests nothing about the rightness or wrongness of Mother Jones’ point of view on Politics 2.0, merely its approach to addressing those who responded as desired to its outreach efforts.
Thanks for asking.

Micah Sifry in The Nation, Sep. 2004, The Rise of Open-Source Politics.

Micah Sifry in the comments defends his statement at the MoJo blog, “there are no gatekeepers anymore.” Clara Jeffrey at the MoJo blog contests Sifry on the “cream rises,” calling him naive to think that. Blogger Hubris 3.0 by MoJo reporter Daniel Schulman warns us: “The egalitarian blogtopia Sifry knows and loves is changing—and not always for the better.”

Mike Cornfield emails:

They swung their counter-establishment bat at the already flimsy (straw hombre) idea that the Internet will bring about a democratic revolution. A lot of interesting quotes tumbled out, mixed in with some not so interesting ones and a lot of facts and factoids. For what it’s worth, I was pleased to be among the many interviewed, and they quoted me accurately and excerpted me fairly. But I didn’t see anything extraordinary in the contents, positive or negative.

Off the shelf pressthink will do that for ya.

Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice: “Rosen’s reaction to the Mother Jones piece is in a way reacting to our whole culture being enmeshed in the Hollywood idea of ‘high concept’: where things are painted in simplistic, starkly contrasting, immediately recognizeable terms.”

Clara Jeffery hits the blogs for some dialogue with those who linked to my post: “As the editor of Mother Jones, I would ask only that you and your readers take a look at the package itself, and not just Rosen’s windy and self-promoting screed.”

In These Times from 2006, Can Blogs Revolutionize Progressive Politics?

Matt Stoller emails: “[Reporter Daniel] Schulman sent me questions about the slippery line, ethically speaking, of bloggers working for campaigns. I emailed him and asked him to google ‘blogger ethics panel’, and he didn’t get the point. There are lots of conflicts of interest in politics and journalism, the internet just makes them transparent. This is actually much more consequential for old political figures whose conflicts of interest are now on display than it is for bloggers, who are accountable directly to their audience (nothing keeps you on your toes like having thousands of people shouting at you every day).”

Schulman in the Mother Jones article, “The New Bosses.”

Moulitsas has been on paternity leave and didn’t respond to interview requests. When I emailed Townhouse list owner Matt Stoller to talk about this story, Stoller replied tersely: “Google ‘blogger ethics panel.’” (A running blogosphere joke, the query brings up various tales of mainstream media hypocrisy.) Then he posted my email on MyDD as the inaugural message in a series he calls, simply, “Annoying Email.”

Josh Harkinson of Mother Jones replies in the comments:

Much of your argument against our Politics 2.0 package presupposes that the extremes of thought on net politics—“revolutionary” or “irrelevant”—do not exist. I will grant that people who are truly informed on the subject don’t hold black and white views, but the rhetoric that they and the press employ frequently comes off as, totally unambiguous, and results in a mistaken impression that things really are that simple. It is thus unfair to say that we are setting up two straw men. The straw men are already there. Yes, knocking them down is easy, but it’s also a way to, in the process, explore a lot of interesting issues raised by politics 2.0 with more complexity and nuance.

I like that: the straw men are already there; heck, let’s use ‘em! Josh also reminds me that Mother Jones has had a web site since 1993 and is “edited and written these days mostly by Gen-X. kids.” Never heard of a young curmudgeon? I know quite a few.

Posted by Jay Rosen at June 27, 2007 5:04 PM Print

Monika: I'm conversing....Your "it's obvious" is pure bunk. So by all means join the argument.

Okay Josh. Now we're seeing at least some movement, intellectually speaking.

So I take it you are joining Clara Jeffery in denying that any debunking tone or purpose is in evidence in the framing and presentation of the Mojo 2.0 package?

Or did you feel the question was unworthy of an answer?

Or would you like to take a pass given that she's your boss and all...? (Understandable.)

I ask because you have introduced a different purpose with this explanation:

Our "idea," in short, is have a bunch of people talk about their ideas. It's not revolutionary, but it's very Web 2.0, and it differs from the I'm-an-expert-so-let-me-tell-you-how-it-is approach that bloggers have come to expect and loathe in the print world.

Couple of corrections.

Expert? Who said you should pretend you're the experts? I didn't. You're thinking in extremes again-- claim no authority (just debunk) or claim all authority (The expert.) Life isn't like that, Josh. Chait never says in his article, "now that I've studied it, I'm the expert."

But he does say: here's the part about the Netroots that's real, and here's the part I find truly revolutionary, even though the revolution hasn't come yet, and here's where my understanding of them and their understanding of themselves depart.

He did that work. You could have, in your own ways, but you didn't. You can keep interpreting that as my call for your "single" all-embracing view if you like, but that's really isn't what I mean at all. You are way, way off.

That there might be something that isn't balloon-popping on the one hand or a pre-emptive and arrogant claim to expertise on the other-- that is the idea you may need to absorb.

Now if your plan really was to have a bunch of informed and interesting people talk about their ideas on politics and Web 2.0, which is a valid approach, then maybe we can see where the package got into trouble.

For what you are saying to readers with this notion is: we respect the knowledge and insights of our survey of people so much (and frankly, we're so proud of our interviewing skills in drawing them out...) that we're basically going to let them talk and listen really, really well because they--not us--are a richly informative crew when it comes to the Web and politics.

If that was your approach, to present Mother Jones as the debunker of the Digerati, stripping away the hype they peddle and letting readers in on all the ironies the Netheads and Web consultants don't talk about (which is definitely the tone of the package despite Carla's deluded denials) this decision was a critical mistake, for it undermined your other idea and led you away from the work you would have had to do in order to complete a good "listening to smart people" package. Like putting together a serious glossary rather than clowning your way through it.

Mother Jones challenges the Politics 2.0 "revolution", the actual slogan under which your work went out, should have read "Mother Jones explores the complex landscape of Politics 2.0 with some of the world's best guides."

But... and here we come to the contradictions at the heart of this little episode... that isn't the stance you wanted to take. Doesn't feel tough enough. Non-dramatic. It lacks that savvy sheen print journalists like to have on the surface of their work. Your desire, I believe, ran counter to your concept.

Your desire was to be the proud myth-busters, the ironists, the "check" on blogger and Netizen zeal ("and what of the glorious Netroots?...") the crap-detectives, and so even though your editorial intent was to listen to geeks (among others) you couldn't help jeering at them to puff yourselves up. Thus: "are we just being conned by a bunch of smooth-talking geeks?"

These are exactly the moves I criticized in my post.

One more thing, Josh... about "are we just being conned by a bunch of smooth-talking geeks?" Where in the package did you answer that question?

Posted by: Jay Rosen at June 28, 2007 3:52 PM | Permalink

Jay--
Much of your argument against our Politics 2.0 package presupposes that the extremes of thought on net politics--"revolutionary" or "irrelevant"--do not exist. I will grant that people who are truly informed on the subject don't hold black and white views, but the rhetoric that they and the press employ frequently comes off as totally unambiguous, and results in a mistaken impression that things really are that simple. It is thus unfair to say that we are setting up two straw men. The straw men are already there. Yes, knocking them down is easy, but it's also a way to, in the process, explore a lot of interesting issues raised by politics 2.0 with more complexity and nuance. You don't seem to disagree that we do that in the interviews (you don't really get into most of the reported pieces--have you read them?), but you simply object to the framing.
So let's look at your specific objections. You write:

Reality is elsewhere. That’s my problem. Here’s what Phil de Vellis said.

Ok, so you seem to be saying that nobody will actually come out and say, "There are no gatekeepers." Well, you're wrong. Don't take my word for this one, just look at Micah Sifry's comment, posted a few hours ago in our blog. His verbatim quote is: "There are no gatekeepers anymore." Gosh, looks like that goes against your argument. As the reporter who did the bulk of interviews for this package, I was told such things all the time. Very smart people do believe, for example, that the netroots will usher in a new era of progressivism unseen since the New Deal. On the flip side, people like Grover Norquist are total skeptics. He told me: "What would our friends at MoveOn point to as sort of a success? Getting people all exercised in writing naughty emails, naughty words and sending them to congressman may make you feel better, but does it change the world?" I shouldn't really have to spell this out for you, Jay, but, anyway, there it is.

I'm sorry that you didn't find our analysis up to snuff with TNR. Not much I can say there except that we are not TNR, thank God. As for the fact that we crusties in the print biz have just woken up to the Internets, you might want to consider that Mother Jones has had a website since 1993, has employed bloggers for years, and is edited and written these days mostly by Gen-X kids, among them myself and Clara. Oh wait, but that might not fit your frame.

Josh Harkinson, Mother Jones Magazine

Posted by: Josh Harkinson at June 27, 2007 8:12 PM | Permalink

I should be packing for a flight to Israel tomorrow, instead I'll wade in for a bit.

I totally defend my saying "There are no gatekeepers anymore." The definition of a gatekeeper is someone who keeps other people out of a room, or in this case a conversation. When anyone with access to the internet can join the conversation, in what sense do we still have gatekeepers? Phil de Vellis made a video, put it on YouTube, and we the people who make up the social web, or what my hero Yochai Benkler calls "the networked public sphere" spread Phil's video for him, to the point where 300,000+ people had viewed it before a single old media journalist decided to cover it.
One can argue that when you go from a world with one "Great Mentioner" (Russell Baker's term for the makers of conventional wisdom in Washington punditry) to a world of the Gang of 500 (Mark Halperin's updated version of the press pack) to a world where something like 10,000 or 20,000 or 50,000 political bloggers, podcasters and videobloggers sift the day's news and opinion and bubble up the most interesting stuff from obscure sites onto the big hub sites, that we just now have 10,000 or 20,000 or 50,000 gatekeepers instead of one or 500. I suspect that is what Phil means when he says "There are still gatekeepers. There are just a lot more of them, and new ones all the time." But when you have a world with thousands of "gatekeepers" and new ones rising all the time, it sounds like such a porous (and gloriously democratic) system that the word "gatekeeper" scarcely seems appropriate anymore.

I was pleased to see Mother Jones devoting so much space to "Politics 2.0" and of course delighted to be quoted and cited for having written, earlier than most, about "open source politics." I have friends at Mother Jones and so it pains me to criticize them. But, like you Jay, I smell a lot of defensiveness from a magazine that, once upon a time, thought of itself as fighting for a more open society. It really dismayed me to see them take such a jaundiced view of how the internet is affecting politics, considering that you probably can't point to any other development in the last ten years with as much promise for opening up the political process to more diverse voices, fostering more accountability, and engendering more transparency from powerful institutions. Oh well. So it goes.

Posted by: Micah Sifry at June 27, 2007 9:44 PM | Permalink

Jay, that was exactly what you were supposed to do. Were I the flack who sent out the release (a questionable tactic in the blogosphere to begin with), I would be gratified to learn that it had motivated you to seek an interview. And if the interview had gone the way you described, I would spend a sleepless night wondering if the client was worth the billables. One wonders how much time the client has spent learning how to talk to the press (or bloggers), all the more distressing given she is a member of the press herself. This suggests nothing about the rightness or wrongness of Mother Jones' point of view on Politics 2.0, merely its approach to addressing those who responded as desired to its outreach efforts.

Thanks for asking.

Posted by: Shel Holtz at June 27, 2007 10:55 PM | Permalink

re:"I totally defend my saying 'There are no gatekeepers anymore.' The definition of a gatekeeper is someone who keeps other people out of a room, or in this case a conversation. When anyone with access to the internet can join the conversation, in what sense do we still have gatekeepers?"

Micah,

That doesn't seem to be true... My impression was that somebody sort of *lets you in*... when it comes to joining the *relevant* conversation. The significant discussion tables (such as this one) are moderated, for the most part.

Delia

P.S. And I'm not saying that's necessarily bad, just that you generally don't just walk in as you please...

P.P.S. oh... and putting something on a blog, or video clip etc. and waiting for somebody to "discover" it and bring it into the relevant conversation seems to be like hoping you are going to win the lottery... (for the vast majority of people, it's the wrong place to put your money). D.

Posted by: Delia at June 27, 2007 11:35 PM | Permalink

Delia--

Fair enough. But having worked the "slush pile" at The Nation magazine many years ago as a young editor, and seen perhaps one out of 500 or more manuscripts that came in over the transom make it to publication, I can tell you the entry points to the political conversation are far far more open online in the blogosphere than in print media.

Micah

Posted by: Micah Sifry at June 27, 2007 11:55 PM | Permalink

Josh: You did a lot of reporting but in the end you had no ideas with which to make sense of the Net in politics, so instead you popped some balloons. Now you seek to defend that as your "idea." Balloon popping (sorry, straw man toppling to use your terms...) leads to nuance!

It does?

To me it is worth more comment that Clara, editor in chief, denies that the package is done in any myth-busting style. Incredibly--meaning, her statement is not credible to me--she said that debunking wasn't a strong theme of the package; it's not a good characterization of the tone; it wasn't our intent, etc. Several times she said this.

I wonder: do you agree with that?

The point is not that you should "be like" Jonathan Chait or the New Republic. Please don't. Here is a writer who looked at the phenomenon and instead of knocking over straw men (your term, not mine) set himself the far harder task of assessing what was actually different in national politics because of the rise of the Net and the movement sometimes called the Netroots.

This task you and your package declined.

If I understand what you are saying in your comment above, you do "grant that people who are truly informed on the subject don't hold black and white views" but sometimes they let slip a remark that sorta sounds like they do and once in a while you talk to someone who really does make breathless or utopian statements; so it does happen.

But, you also said, you know that these sloppy, unwisely categorical statements do not represent very well what informed people actually believe, and so when publicized result in a "mistaken impression that things really are that simple."

Nonetheless you said you feel entirely justified building a story line around them because... this is where I need a little help... because...because it's easy! Right. Okay. Pre-fabs, they snap right in!

I'm pretty sure I agree with you, so that's the good news.

I said nothing about your age or which generation you belong to, nor did I deny that MoJo has a significant presence on the Web. I said you were printing press progressives, and in my view (not yours, I'm sure) you are. You prefer not to have to deal with the people your magazine calls "the online masses." Printing press progressives is a reference to your attitude, not your age.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at June 28, 2007 1:45 AM | Permalink

Hands down my favorite part of the Mother Jones package is the derisive glossary of terms they provided, The Digerati Code. You get not a two-fer but a three-for with this beautifully designed Dodge Savvy.

1.) Because it's a joke glossary, not a real one, only half serious, you don't have to do the exacting work of fully understanding what these terms mean in use and explaining it to the uninitiated without prejudice. You get a huge break that way. When you go derision it makes things a lot easier.

2.) Because it's a joke glossary, with many of the terms played for laughs ("broadcast politics: using elite white male journalists and pundits to get your message out...") you can attitudinize all over and freely express your suspicion of the Digerati, which is good clean fun.

(And, as I said, you don't have to figure out how to concisely explain broadcast politics, a pattern less visible before the Net because it was more naturally the order of things.)

3.) If anyone makes the mistake of taking the glossary seriously, and tries to criticize you, like I am doing now, well, it's obvious they missed the point, which was simply to have fun with some definitions of these wacky Internet terms. Not everything has to be serious all the time, right?

Right! And that's why I love the combo. It swings. It plays offense and defense equally well. You get by with a cursory job in defining key terms that might help readers understand Politics 2.0, you can have fun making fun of the Digerati, and it's a joke text so critics get stuffed.

Brilliant, MoJo! I know some of you disagree with me but I think it's these small features that add up and become the signature on the package.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at June 28, 2007 2:09 AM | Permalink

Micha,

The points of entry may be more open but they don't seem to deliver the same thing (so it appears that we are NOT comparing equally effective ways of getting a message through): a more useful way of looking at things may be the level of difficulty in getting the message published -- in print versus online -- times the
level of effectiveness in becoming part of the relevant conversation.

Delia

P.S. And online may still win (if not right now, maybe soon...). But this may be not because the new system is better at getting valuable information to become part of the relevant conversation, it may just be because the old system keeps weakening...

Jay,

I agree with you that they just framed it wrong (well, could have been much better...) and as a result got less serious issues under consideration and made it more difficult for their readers to look at what's really going on.

Posted by: Delia at June 28, 2007 8:21 AM | Permalink

“edited and written these days mostly by Gen-X. kids.”

Gen-X "kids"? Gen-Xers are beginning to show a little gray around the temples these days. Either the "kids" editing the web site are post-Gen-X, or they're Gen-Xers still wallowing in their immaturity.

Posted by: Andrea at June 28, 2007 8:47 AM | Permalink

Delia:

Read Benkler's "The Wealth of Networks." Or watch this video of his keynote at PdF this year: http://pdf.blip.tv/file/237315/

I'm sorry if you can't see his slides very well, but it's the single best synopsis of how our emerging networked public sphere is improving on the old mass mediated public sphere.

Posted by: Micah Sifry at June 28, 2007 9:55 AM | Permalink

MJ hasn't undated what to call the younger generation. Gen X is the one-size-fits-all term for anyone younger than a Baby Boomer. I've heard the term Gray Generation floated for 20-somethings now, a terrible label--but then aren't all labels that reduce complexity to the equivalent of how e.e. cummings described the Reader's Digest, to which he once applied for a job: 8 to 80, anyone can do it, makes you feel good.

Posted by: Ferdy at June 28, 2007 9:57 AM | Permalink

Man, what a circle jerk this is. You guys really can't tell yourselves enough how important you are, can you? A little skepticism, well-documented at that, and you freak out like the whole facade is crumbling. Bloggers knock "MSM" columnists for Washington insiderdom, yet they take money from political campaigns and expect everyone to admire their honesty, even when they fail to disclose. Something smells here, and it ain't the burning down of the printing presses.

Posted by: Kevin Dean Nicewanger at June 28, 2007 9:58 AM | Permalink

You know something, Kevin, you really don't get it. It isn't about how important we are, not for the vast majority of us. It's about how to bust information out of the frame of pressthink and get what we really need to make informed choices for our democracy. Packaged so tightly now, it's impossible to do any free thinking or inquiry in traditional forms. We're just doing what communities are supposed to do--cooperate, make helpful suggestions, share information and ideas, learn, keep open minds, etc etc. It sounds like you've made up your mind about what this enterprise is about--that says more about what YOU value than what we do.

Posted by: Ferdy at June 28, 2007 10:59 AM | Permalink

Well... it's certainly *different*... whether or not it's an improvement (when everything is taken into consideration) appears to be a value judgment. There are also a whole lot of things that are just unknown -- I find the hero-guru system to be a terrible way of getting to the truth of what's really going on.

I'm going to try to be much gentler this time, but isn't there a different kind of corruption when it comes to the blogosphere? well.. the prominent people involved with this (and not just some bad apples, something systemic that distorts the information that reaches the public)?

Posted by: Delia at June 28, 2007 11:47 AM | Permalink

The overwhelming sense I get from all this is simply this: Mother Jones disappoints by addressing a serious topic and getting lazy with it. Then they get defensive and claim that it wasn't intended to be treated as serious journalism in the first place.

Sorry, but no. If it's not intended to be taken seriously, then why did MJ devote so much time and space to it? If they did want to be taken seriously, then why the joke glossary?

In short, it sounds to me as though they wanted to have it both ways -- they can call it serious journalism if it suits them, but they can fall back and disclaim that if they need to do so. That's the sort of behavior you'd expect from MAD Magazine, perhaps... or from a teenager taking a true/false test, and writing down a capital T with a horizontal line through it.

It's too bad, really. The subject deserves serious attention -- more than it apparently got from Mother Jones.

respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline

Posted by: Daniel in Brookline at June 28, 2007 12:55 PM | Permalink

Jay--
You write:

The extreme arguments on both sides are not so much a story line for the package as a starting point. It would be one thing if we spent all of our space parading the most extreme views on the subject. Then maybe that would be our story line. As it stands, the package consists of four main stories and 27 interviews with experts in the field. If you actually sift through the thing, especially online, you will get a nuanced picture of politics 2.0 and quite a few ideas and theories about its future.

You also write:

The point of the package was not to provide a single analysis on the meaning or impact of Politics 2.0. In fact, I think it is deeply ironic that you take us to task for not living up to the analytical rigor of others in the print world. What we have done is allow people in the field--actual bloggers, actual professors, actual online political consultants--to weigh in themselves, and we're allowing anybody to comment on their thoughts at the end of each article and interview online. Our "idea," in short, is have a bunch of people talk about their ideas. It's not revolutionary, but it's very Web 2.0, and it differs from the I'm-an-expert-so-let-me-tell-you-how-it-is approach that bloggers have come to expect and loathe in the print world. I fear that if we had opted for the latter, you'd simply be caviling over that instead.

And how dare you say that I prefer not to have to deal with the online masses? Quite frankly, I would love it if the more Netizens wrote about our package, positively or negatively, or came to our blog and told us we were stupid. The silent treatment is coming from some of the major blogs, and not from us at this point. Or from you. And for that, I thank you.

Posted by: Josh Harkinson at June 28, 2007 1:33 PM | Permalink

Expecting Mother Jones to be open to the new, that which is outside their realm of authority, is like expecting an earthworm to become a weatherman. "...promoting groupthink, punishing dissent..."? Oh, irony. The magazine's culture has always been one of rule making above all. The petulant tang of Mr. Harkinson's defense of this undertaking of his is tiresome. Let the dead bury their dead.

Posted by: Curt at June 28, 2007 2:13 PM | Permalink

I think I detecting something here.

"Quite frankly, I would love it if the more Netizens wrote about our package, positively or negatively, or came to our blog and told us we were stupid. The silent treatment is coming from some of the major blogs, and not from us at this point."

Perhaps the frame that so provoked Jay is really a cry for help to get more of an audience.

Posted by: Ferdy at June 28, 2007 2:19 PM | Permalink

Jay--I'm not going to get into an argument with you here because it's obvious that you're interested in sounding off, not having a conversation. (If this is about not setting up "fake alternatives" and "off the shelf bipolar hype-speak," then why the bipolar hype-speak? "They saw the Internet and freaked. This can't be real. Recovering their bravery, they decided to debunk it." Really measured and constructive.)

Micah and everyone else, thanks for wading in here. Micah, you guys do great work over at techpresident, and you personally have done terrific work in this area for a lot longer than most of the people who now claim to be experts. I respect and appreciate your disagreement, and the beginning of a response is at our blog. One point that I felt should be made over here as well:

What puzzles me a little bit is this sense that Mother Jones is in some way apart from, or new to, online journalism. (We're in San Francisco, for chrissakes!) We had the very first website of any national magazine (back in 1993), as well as one of the first political blogs (Peter Coyote's dispatches from the 1996 Dem convention are still online somewhere if you dig deep enough, not to mention our "Bush Files" blog back in 2000/2001.) We were doing original journalism on the web when most people were still calling it cyberspace and we're in the middle of a major expansion in this area, as part of an effort to reimagine the way journalism is done BOTH in print and online. We have nothing to fear from the medium; we're part of it, and happily so. But just as we will shine a critical spotlight on Democrats and progressives--no matter whether we share many of their values--we'll be skeptical and critical in this universe. We make no claim to having the answers, but we believe asking questions is almost always good.
Let me just quote the intro to our package, which pretty much sums up both our enthusiasm and our skepticism: "Open-source politics has the potential to fundamentally change the way we govern ourselves--to fulfill the democratic promise that Web 1.0 pioneers dreamed of before they grabbed for the IPO brass ring. It also has the potential to become exactly what Web 1.0 turned into—a delivery system where most of us are mere customers. To get a sense of what's hype and what's real, we surveyed bloggers, politicos, and all manner of netizens."

In other words: There's a lot of promise and a lot of peril here, a lot of good stuff and some bad. We set out to explore, reflect, and join a debate that is very much ongoing online. What's so weird about that?

(And Daniel, if you have a moment, it'd be great if you stopped over to look at the package yourself--right now you have heard Jay's version of it, and I'd love to know if you still think we got lazy after you see it.)

Posted by: Monika Bauerlein at June 28, 2007 3:27 PM | Permalink

I refer you back to the line that Monika quotes from our intro: "To get a sense of what's hype and what's real, we surveyed bloggers, politicos, and all manner of netizens." There is no contradiction between that and challenging the "politics 2.0 revolution" or asking "Are we just being conned by a bunch of smooth-talking geeks?" (see one piece that addresses that in the link). They are valid questions, for all the reasons I've enumerated, and they are answered, in many ways, in the pieces and interviews in the package. If you are really interested in learning more, read the pieces. And then if you still have problems, you can quibble with the points that people make. But I don't think you can have a conversation about "framing" without talking about the actual content of the pieces. It's like accusing a newspaper of writing a sensationalistic headline without having read the story.

Posted by: Josh Harkinson at June 28, 2007 4:52 PM | Permalink

Josh: I read all the pieces (the major ones three or four times) and all but two of the interviews before I started my post. I know you were concerned about that.

Basically the pieces said little to me (thin, little added value, lots of recycling old episodes); the interviews and excerpts from said a lot (so I praised them in the first paragraph); and the packaging, introduction and framing spoke loudly.

As Mike Cornfield, one of your sources said, about the articles. " I didn’t see anything extraordinary in the contents, positive or negative."

Jeffrey Dvorkin, former NPR ombudsman, now with the Committe of Concerned Journalists, wrote me a note about this piece:

Seem to me that we need to find a way to bring the public into the act of journalism in a more effective way than we have thus far. As MSM pays lip service to acknowledging that the public may be more than an empty vessel where their offerings can be received, and at the same time a new generation of computer literates appear to be garnering time and space for their ideas, the mass of citizens appears left out.
A new role for media, especially MSM, which hopes to be relevant in this age, would be to help give the citizens the critical tools they need to participate in a more engaged way in the act of committing journalism.

More than letters-to-the-editor, more than “have your say” on the BBC, and even more than having an ombudsman (!), we need to encourage MSM to bring citizens inside the journalistic process and to participate… webcasting editorial meetings, having public reps on boards, handing over the airwaves to the public in a meaningful way, asking the public to give their editorial input to stories BEFORE they get published… well you get the idea.

Otherwise the outflow of energy and creativity away from journalism will just continue and the ability of the citizens to make informed decisions about their own lives becomes just another discussion point in the academy.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at June 28, 2007 5:14 PM | Permalink

I've read most of the interviews. They seem to hitting pretty hard--as are the lead-in lines from the landing page--how Internet participation in politics will be the purview of a small group of smart, savvy, activists (however you want to define that politically or from a behavioral point of view) with Internet access and knowledge. This does not translate into smooth-talking geeks, but by raising that as the black-and-white of the issue from an editorializing point of view, you seem to be making the case that in fact is what they are. Whoever read the interviews seems and editorialized for MJ on this seems to have made up his/her mind(s) that's how these folks need to be framed and labeled. So you're not exactly just doing a round-table forum--not when you're commenting like that.

Posted by: Ferdy at June 28, 2007 5:15 PM | Permalink

I've heard the term Gray Generation floated for 20-somethings now, a terrible label--but then aren't all labels that reduce complexity to the equivalent of how e.e. cummings described the Reader's Digest, to which he once applied for a job: 8 to 80, anyone can do it, makes you feel good.

Posted by: David at June 28, 2007 5:32 PM | Permalink

I've read the articles and interviews, which admittedly I wouldn't have if Jay hadn't linked to them.

I agree with Jay about MoJo's hyperbolic straw men (Josh's term) pitch. I agree with Josh that the articles and interviews managed to scratch below the shallow balloon popping (Jay's term) promised in MoJo's ad hook. Which brings me back to Jay's question: Why the shallow, hyperbolic, black and white straw men in the first place?

My first concern was the use of the term blogosphere and blogs. We really need to come up with a more descriptive language. Imagine writing an article about the "print media" which consists of newsletters, tabloids, dailies, weeklies, monthlies, porn, etc. Leaving the impression that tens of millions of bloggers are Markos Moulitsas or Glenn Reynolds wanna-bes is just misinformation about the social phenom.

I think the What's Hype? cutout is a good contrast to The Digerati Code (which is awful and it would be nice if someone from MoJo just said, "Yeah, we blew it there.").

I did wonder, as I read this part from Daniel Schulman's Meet The New Bosses, if he experienced any sense of irony while composing it:

As bloggers attain power and influence, they will undoubtedly find themselves subject to the same withering scrutiny they've bestowed on other powerful people. And they won't take it quietly....

"There was quite a nasty reaction to my op-ed," says Glover. "I've been surprised at how thin-skinned bloggers can be. You compare that with how they treat the mainstream media and how they'll go after them and attack them, but when anything at all is said about the blogosphere, they go off half-cocked."

Posted by: Tim at June 28, 2007 5:50 PM | Permalink

A recommendation for MoJo's editors ...

When refering to Politics 2.0, perhaps it would be better to refer to the online participants as the pundisphere.

You don't seem to have caught on to that term and probably should if you plan on more stories on this topic.

Posted by: Tim at June 28, 2007 7:27 PM | Permalink

"She did, however, say that taking two extreme-ified claims and discovering that the truth is somewhere in the middle was a “perfectly standard” treatment in journalism."

It's also an enormously popular logical fallacy called the False Dilemma. It should probably be updated to include the derivative, media generated Fallacy of the False Middle.

Posted by: JM Hanes at June 28, 2007 9:43 PM | Permalink

Thanks, Tim.

I think we're going to have to put MoJo reporter Josh Harkinson as well as MoJo editor Monika Bauerlein in the "debunking wasn't on our mind, and isn't a theme of the package, so I don't know what you're talking about, I really don't...." category, joining editor Clara Jeffery.

Truly interesting, considering how right there on the surface the message is.

How do we explain it? Any theories as to what this denial by three MoJo's is all about?

Or, to put it more neutrally, what accounts for this difference in perception, where they see no attempt to debunk and to others--especially me--it is quite apparent, an unconcealed part of the frame and a major chord in the overall tone?

Monika says she is puzzled by all the confusion about MoJo's intentions.

There's a lot of promise and a lot of peril here, a lot of good stuff and some bad. We set out to explore, reflect, and join a debate that is very much ongoing online. What's so weird about that?

Nothing is. What's weird is not being able to hear any "let's bring the dreamers down to earth and remind them what politics is all about..." purpose in the writing that framed the whole package:

Can there be such a thing as open-source politics? True believers promise a marriage of freewheeling pluralism and the technological tools to share and refine its goals and strategies. Bottom-up organizing, they promise, will trump top-down messaging; "from many, one" will actually mean something again.
It sounds really appealing. But we live in San Francisco, and saw what happened the last time the tech Kool-Aid was passed around. Innovation was quickly co-opted by the money sloshing about, a sock puppet told us it made perfect sense to ship bulk pet food around the country by air...and, well, you know the rest.

Not only do we have to be wary of the geeks and vcs trying to sell us (literally) on MyDemocracy, but ultimately these are politicians we're talking about—creatures of spin, beholden to many, sincerity challenged, and risk averse. Who says that "listening to the netroots" is not just another "listening tour"?

And what of the glorious netroots?...

What's weird is being unable to hear any debunking going down in mocking lines like these:

The halls of power will belong to whoever can tap the passion of the online masses. That kid with a laptop has Karl Rove quaking in his boots. And if you believe that, we've got some leftover Pets.com stock to sell you.

Remember there was no special attempt at hype-busting, myth deflation or debunking in this package, according to the editors, though the headline on the press release invited us to "question if the Politics 2.0 revolution really lives up to its hype," rather than, say, "Politics 2.0: A lot of good stuff and some bad." That's weird, too..

Theories at to what's going on here?

Posted by: Jay Rosen at June 28, 2007 10:01 PM | Permalink

Jay, again I think they *did* frame it wrong (that they could have done much better in that respect) but I'm wondering if everybody would have gotten more out of the "after matter" if it would have just been *suggested* that they do a follow up article that explores the subject more in depth... instead of telling them just how wrong it all was...(that's done and over with) D.

Posted by: Delia at June 28, 2007 10:32 PM | Permalink

Theories? I'm not sure this would qualify as a theory. Call it a reaction, or a SWAG.

When I read the initial MoJo defenses (not explanations), it seemed they were proffering the first rule of journalism (usually attributed to The Economist's Geoffrey Crowther) "simplify, then exaggerate."

C'mon Jay, what could be simpler than dichotomous straw men? Heck, Josh isn't even taking credit for the simplification: "... the rhetoric that [people who are truly informed on the subject [that] don't hold black and white views] and the press employ frequently comes off as totally unambiguous, and results in a mistaken impression that things really are that simple."

Wait ... mistaken dichotomous straw men? Totally unambiguous? With so much room, this story writes itself!! And it's all their fault! It's their rhetoric!

Now comes the hype (exaggeration): watch us debunk the new generation of evil capitalist dot com geeks (or in this case, dot pol) before the inevitable bubble bursts!

What I don't get is how that enables MoJo to "explore a lot of interesting issues raised by politics 2.0 with more complexity and nuance."

If they really are interesting issues, why the simplify and exaggerate? Didn't I come for the debunking? Is this a bait and switch? Sounds like it:

Yes, knocking them down is easy, but it's also a way to, in the process, explore a lot of interesting issues raised by politics 2.0 with more complexity and nuance.

So, it's really not (I guess) simplify then exaggerate journalism but rather setting low expectations with simplify then exaggerate headlines. Anything that even appears "complex" or "nuanced" after that has got to be deep.

Right?

Posted by: Tim at June 29, 2007 12:22 AM | Permalink

Lets' face it. Nobody is immune to spin. This whole thing started with a PRESS RELEASE, right? Those people are paid to spin, and this is how it's done these days. You want to sexy up a story? Provoke. I want to quote from an e-mail response I got to a letter I wrote disagreeing with the way the author made an argument:

"Yeah, I'm no doubt guilty of judging the actions of others by what I personally like; but then again, you kind of have to get into that snarky frame of mind to write a column sometimes."

And here I think you might have it. MoJo is no different from other established entities: We were the authority challengers before you guys were a twinkle on a silicon chip; we're print; we're trained professionals. We don't like you and your unfamiliar methods. You'll flame out, mark our words.

Posted by: Ferdy at June 29, 2007 9:22 AM | Permalink

Yeah, I think we're getting there.

I like "simplify, then exaggerate." Do you have a better source for that, Tim?

But here it's "simplify, then exaggerate, then debunk the cartoon images you created in step one." As you said.

I also like this from a reader of the Huffington Post version, which went up last night.

I suspect as you do that Mother Jones began their research with that highly polarized, rather juvenile article concept in mind--juvenile because it reflected a simplistic world view, white/black, a pre-adult reality based on concept rather than living. When content didn't fit concept, instead of throwing concept overboard and running with a potentially great piece (as you mention), they stuck with their outmoded concept.

Another idea: one of the simplified, ultra-exaggerated notions that pro journalists tend to fall in love with and make part of their religion (not all but a lot of them) is skeptic v. cheerleader, with one of those terms a term of contempt and the other of course high praise. (You can swap "true believer" for cheerleader and it's the same device.)

If you don't want to be a cheerleader, then you have to be a skeptic, right? If you advertise what a skeptic you are, then everyone will know you're not a cheerleader. If someone criticizes our way of being skeptical, or what we said when we were trying to point to our skepticism, well, that's because they wanted us to cheerlead; but we must inform you, Sir, that we will never, ever give up our skepticism-- we're journalists, not cheerleaders!

Genuine skepticism in journalism is a good thing, a healthy thing, a virtue, a discipline. But formulaic skepticism, and skepticism where learning is light, is not only a bad thing, but a self-deluding bad thing because the criticism that might allow for correction is itself assimilated into the skeptic vs. cheerleader frame.

I wrote about this in two earlier posts, one of newsroom religion:

In the daily religion of the news tribe, ordinary believers do not call themselves believers. (In fact, “true believer” is a casting out term in journalism, an insult.) The Skeptics. That’s who journalists say they are. Of course, they know they believe things in common with their fellow skeptics on the press bus. It’s important to keep this complication in mind: Not that journalists are so skeptical as a rule, but that they will try to stand in relation to you as The Skeptic does.

Emphasis added. It's also explored in "When I’m Reporting, I am a Citizen of the World.”

Mother Jones found that their sources (an excellent mix) were better at being skeptical about the glorious dawn of democratic revolution via Web than the MoJo editors and reporters were. (Not surprising, the sources have to deal with the realities of political life online.) But if the sources are the better skeptics, what role does that leave for the journalists?

Cheerleaders? No, no way. We have to be even bigger skeptics. Authority challengers for the "new bosses." But this "bigger" skepticism is a cartoon image. It isn't based on knowledge drawn from life, but the formal requirements of an image. That's why every time they refer to "true believers" and the like, they never reference anyone in particular. There is no particular referent for that, except the rituals of journalism itself.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at June 29, 2007 10:04 AM | Permalink

Jay, this is sounding more and more like beating on a dead horse... If they did a shabby treatment of a worthy subject, why not go into great detail about how it could have been much better? (it seems that that would be a lot more interesting and useful to read) D.

Posted by: Delia at June 29, 2007 11:03 AM | Permalink

Can't we just do it the easier way, which is don't read it if you're bored? I really hate having you edit my blog for me.

The rituals, framing tricks and avoidance tactics described here are very generally seen in journalism today; they are not the property of one MoJo package. I have an interest in puzzling them out, and describing them carefully. If you don't, that is fine, normal, and all part of blogging.

About one of your earlier questions, isn't there corruption in the blogosphere we ought to concern ourselves with even if MoJo didn't go a great job in illuminating it... I'm a trifle concerned that this post, criticizing a progressive magazine, has been linked to by Instapundit on the right, Joe Gandelman of The Moderate voice in the center, but not a single link from the left. Fortunately I have the Huffington Post to get it out there, but it is curious.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at June 29, 2007 11:25 AM | Permalink

re: "simplify, then exaggerate" source

I think the best I can come up with online is Bill Emmott.

re: "simplify, then exaggerate, then debunk the cartoon images you created in step one."

How 'bout, "simply, then exaggerate, then debunk the cartoon images you created, then deny the cartoon images were important (or even played a role) and accuse your critics of being true believers (or partisans) for questioning your framing."

Posted by: Tim at June 29, 2007 11:57 AM | Permalink

I think it's simple, what's going on. It's a point of view most easily seen in old style marketing (and journalism and politics): Game the consumer, admit no culpability. (Culpability, mistakes, actually admitted would kill my authority, which is more important than learning.)

Anyone with an intro to literature class under their belt (or with a functioning bullshit detector) knows that 'debunking' was the motif for the issue. And yet all of the Mother Jones people engaging in this discussion deny it. I think they honestly believe, that a) we hoi polloi are not, and can never be, equal partners in the process, and b) if they deny it enough, somehow we will eventually just...believe them.

The weirdest thing to me, however, is how they don't know that _most_ if not all of the people criticizing their decisions regarding this package would be _very_ gratified by their listening to us. If did so, they would show they had learned something about the topic. (You know, like how by interviewing a cop you could learn something about crime, even though the cop is not a journalist?) That is the whole point of this medium, I believe, what attracts me to it: Argument is the road to knowledge. Without the destination, it's all ego.

Frankly, I would even prefer it if they just said outright, "Social media is crap and you all suck." At least they'd be making an honest stand. Pretending they weren't doing what they did might work for a philandering politician (though less and less I think and hope), but it just _won't work_ in this context.

But unidirectional, authoritarian habits are very hard to break.

Posted by: Curt at June 29, 2007 1:06 PM | Permalink

Alright,then! let's do this the easy way: you come across like a sore loser who was pissed that they didn't include you among the interviewees, went out and *asked* them to interview you and then raised hell because it didn't turn out the way you wanted...

P.S. As to my "editing your blog", I was trying to help you out of this vicious circle but... keep spinning around! -- what do *I* care?

P.P.S. As to the other question, that's very serious stuff! and it seems to go way beyond linking or not linking to things... definitely worth talking about!(if we are still in talking terms...) D.

Posted by: Delia at June 29, 2007 1:10 PM | Permalink

Delia - You're sounding like a bit of a brat yourself . I think he had a very cogent analysis and certainly doesn't need Mother Jones to interview him to assert his authority. This blog is about an analysis of pressthink. That's what he did and what we're commenting about. If it seems to be covering similar ground, well, that's because we're starting to come to a consensus through a sort of Socratic method. If you're bored, then don't read. I'm finding this very stimulating and useful.

Posted by: Ferdy at June 29, 2007 1:24 PM | Permalink

I didn't know anything about the series until it landed in my inbox. I felt they had a great range of people and certainly didn't feel left out. Nor was there any need to talk to me considering who they had.

As far as the interview, you have your facts all wrong. I did not request it. It was Carla Jefferey who suggested we talk by phone when she found out I was writing about this package. The press person said to holler if I had any questions, so I sent some questions and asked if she could help me get answers. That's how I got passed along to Carla. 'Twas I who interviewed her as a source for decision-making at Mother Jones, not her interviewing me as a "left out" source for Mother Jones, which is simply your fantasy.

If I want to examine something in microscopic detail, way beyond your tolerance level, and the tolerance level of 85 percent of my readers... I will; and you should realize that this is exactly what's great about blogging, and why you love it, if you love it.

"Argument is the road to knowledge." I agree with this, Curt. And that is why I think the traditional journalist's evaluation of opinion, as a derivative good, is wrongheaded and misleading. For it is argument that causes us to look for information.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at June 29, 2007 1:30 PM | Permalink

ok, looks like I was wrong (but that's the impression I was getting after seeing you go at it for so long mentioning Mother Jones at every turn) and yes I'm afraid I've reached my tolerance level on the topic...

P.S. I hope you are going to talk about the other issue (corruption of the blogosphere) soon -- I think it would be great if you did a separate article on it... I hope you don't perceive it as "editing your blog," it's just a suggestion and something I'd really like to see... D.

Posted by: Delia at June 29, 2007 1:48 PM | Permalink

I hope you'll address.... is not editing my blog.

Telling me to halt my examination because it's beyond your tolerance level and go on to something more constructive... that is editing my blog.

I am sure the difference is clear to you.

This is from the Huffington Post thread, where they have a new comment system in place.

It widens the frame...

Jay, I know that your focus is on the press, but I think that this topic could be opened a little broader, to talk about how the blogs etc. have had an effect on the left in general.
Since Ronald Reagan was elected, the US left has been either a) basically radical (e.g., Mother Jones) or b) Reagan-lite (e.g., James Carville). Neither has really been effective in promoting progressive causes. Now there's something different from either of those two, and it's making progress.

Mother Jones is a long-standing institution on the left, a magazine that has for decades stood outside the MSM (and explicitly against right-wing media). But one of the things that makes the lefty blogosphere interesting is how little of the established left-wing institutions, people, and attitudes of the post-1980 political landscape have been part of its rise. (In fact, one of the points working in Left Blogistan's favor in its conflicts with Right Blogistan is the fact that the righties keep pounding at the same 1980s-1990s stereotypes about lefties, many of which do not apply to lefty bloggers--if your enemy refuses to learn about you, you have a little advantage.)

But to take an obvious example, people like Markos have wasted no bandwidth defending Rep. Jefferson as a victim of the white power structure on his bribery charges. There's a common-sense attitude that if you're caught with $90,000 in marked