BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Wednesday, July 28, 2004
NO-READING ZONE. Four years
ago - I think it was at the Republican National Convention in
Philadelphia, but it might have been at the DNC in Los Angeles - my
then-Phoenix colleague Seth Gitell and I were walking through
the media center. A little while earlier we'd been writing pieces for
BostonPhoenix.com.
Now we were checking out the media circus before doing whatever it
was we were going to do with the rest of the day.
But rather than having a few casual
conversations with other journalists, we saw that everyone was
chained to his or her keyboard, pounding away. I stopped by the
Washington Post's space so I could say hello to media reporter
Howard Kurtz, whom I know slightly. We politely exchanged a few
pleasantries before he returned to his seat and started typing again.
He was writing twice a day for the Post's website plus once
for the paper. He looked like a haunted, exhausted man.
"Everybody's writing," Seth said,
shaking his head. "Nobody's reading."
Seth is now the spokesman for Mayor
Tom Menino, but I'm still here, writing more than ever. For those of
us in the print media, especially, technology has drastically changed
the way we do our jobs. When I covered my first convention, the
Republican gathering in San Diego in 1996, I had one story to write
for the Phoenix, one short piece I'd contracted to do for
Salon, and that was it. I could actually relax and take it all
in. At the conventions of 2000, I was up to one Web piece a day in
addition to my piece for the print edition. Now I'm updating Media
Log several times a day. Many journalists I know are doing the
same.
Everybody's writing. Nobody's
reading.
My heart sinks when I grab the
Boston Globe and the New York Times from my doorstep in
the morning. Most of what I see is for pure political and media
junkies like me, and I could easily spend hours poring over it. But I
can't. Who can? We've all got to get back to work.
So much output, so little input.
There's a price to be paid for all this, and that is that there's
less time to think, less time to read, less time to talk with smart
people without try to wheedle a quote out of them that you can use
within the next hour. There is no news taking place in Boston. It
ought to be a chance to listen and learn, and to get ready for the
campaign ahead.
But that's not the way it works
anymore. Instead, we've got thousands of journalists producing
non-news from a convention whose work, such as it is, was preordained
on Super Tuesday, way back last March.
RIVERS WHACKS JACKSON
(AGAIN). The Boston Herald today blows out the front on
the Reverend Jesse Jackson's criticism
of Boston. Reporter Maggie Mulvihill quotes the Reverend Eugene
Rivers as saying of Jackson, "Jesse's talking trash and blowing
smoke. This is Jesse's showboat."
As Mulvihill notes, Rivers is "one
of the city's most respected leaders on racial issues." However, he
is also a long-standing Jackson critic. In fact, three and a half
years ago, there were even rumors that Rivers had something to do
with exposing an extramarital affair Jackson had had - rumors that
Rivers denied.
Here
is what I wrote about Rivers (and Jackson) in February
2001.
DEPT. OF SELF-PROMOTION.
PR Week interviews
me about Media Log in its
July 26 edition. Also, Timothy Noah of Slate took
odds on how long Bill
Clinton would speak on Monday night. As you'll see, I was too
pessimistic, but what the hell - there was no prize.
DEPT. OF NON-SELF-PROMOTION.
Speaking of everybody's writing, if you visit Media Log directly
without going to BostonPhoenix.com first, well, take
a look. Phoenix
staffers have been posting like crazed weasels since
Monday.
posted at 1:07 PM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
