Re:How the Internet changed the way we read
by Animats on Saturday January 02, 2016 @04:44PM
(#10828100)
"The truth is that most of us read continuously in a perpetual stream of incestuous words, but instead of reading novels, book reviews, or newspapers like we used to in the ancien régime, we now read text messages, social media, and bite-sized entries about our protean cultural history on Wikipedia."
In other words, instead of reading stuff written by Important Academics like the author ("a lecturer in the English department at the University of California Irvine. .. BA in comp lit from Oberlin College , a MFA in fiction from the University of Notre Dame, and a MA in English and a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from USC"). they're reading stuff by Other People who Shouldn't Count. Aw. Weep for the irrelevant academic.
That's not the problem. The problem is the decline of journalistic reporting. Journalism was all those reporters who went out in the cold and rain and small-arms fire to where something was happening. They knew people who worked in factories and union halls and police stations. They were accustomed to digging out news. ("News is what someone doesn't want published. All else is publicity." - British tabloid owner, circa 1900.) They sent back stories with Who and What and Where and When and Why.
There are still some of those people left. They work for the very few remaining news organizations that can afford them. The rest rewrite press releases and pontificate. They work for Demand Media and Aol, churning out glosses on the work of others and carefully watching their page hit statistics. That's the problem.
In other words, instead of reading stuff written by Important Academics like the author ("a lecturer in the English department at the University of California Irvine. .. BA in comp lit from Oberlin College , a MFA in fiction from the University of Notre Dame, and a MA in English and a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from USC"). they're reading stuff by Other People who Shouldn't Count. Aw. Weep for the irrelevant academic.
That's not the problem. The problem is the decline of journalistic reporting. Journalism was all those reporters who went out in the cold and rain and small-arms fire to where something was happening. They knew people who worked in factories and union halls and police stations. They were accustomed to digging out news. ("News is what someone doesn't want published. All else is publicity." - British tabloid owner, circa 1900.) They sent back stories with Who and What and Where and When and Why.
There are still some of those people left. They work for the very few remaining news organizations that can afford them. The rest rewrite press releases and pontificate. They work for Demand Media and Aol, churning out glosses on the work of others and carefully watching their page hit statistics. That's the problem.