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Conservative radio journalist Glenn Beck, a talking head a la Rush Limbaugh, wrote an opinion piece for Foxnews.com on Sunday, crying that the death of print journalism is fine, grand and American.
He decries journalists for presuming importance. Last I checked, when it comes to exposing corruption and informing the public on the most important issues in America, the score was about 10,000 to one – print news the victor over Web.
Beck says the Internet is better than newspapers at “getting you information that you want, when you want it.” Is instantaneous, 24-hour news that important? As I click CNN.com right now, what’s the critical value of learning about “90-year-old pilot finally has his license” and “Toddler falls three stories to strangers’ arms”? Minimal. I should, however, be familiar with the stories on the front page of this morning’s New York Times and Bangor Daily News.
Yes, Glenn, the Internet is how increasingly more Americans “choose to be informed.” Does that mean it’s what’s right? Should every newspaper fizzle out and have a half-baked blog take its stead? Just like thinking before you speak, taking a day to put together quality information, pass it through the grinder of editing and production, and printing it after the process has significant merits instant Web news does not.
Beck says “the Internet blows newspapers away” and follows up by claiming no more inky fingers from newsprint as his first reason. Without even delving into the sentimental American heritage grounds for caring about newspapers, I’ll call Beck out on the actual process of reporting. While I’m a proponent of blogs as valuable media, bloggers and even some reporters for Web iterations of major newspapers simply don’t have the back-and-forth with editors and the fundamentals of reporting that make print news the ultimate.
I am all for innovation. I love blogs and Web versions of papers. I keep up with the current events from my hometown online. I don’t think the government should fund newspapers, as Maryland Sen. Benjamin Cardin proposes with his Newspaper Revitalization Act – the impetus for Beck’s tirade – first and foremost on the grounds that there are more immediately pressing things requiring funds. But it’s ridiculous to say that hoping newspapers survive is un-American.
Near closing, Beck says “the newspaper . alienated their readership and strayed so far [from] the sensibility of the American people.” He doesn’t offer any support for this last-minute jab, but sticks to a simpleton’s “I’m just sayin’. . .”
You are just saying, Glenn. You’re a born-and-bred radio and television veteran – you call yourself “mad as hell” in a New York Times profile about yourself, and you let your emotions dominate your program on a major news network. Let the real reporters call the shots on their medium.
It’s in no way un-American to embrace the Internet and the future of journalism while simultaneously enjoying and respecting print and allowing it to find its new place without demeaning the format that started it all. Journalism is the fourth estate, a bastion of democracy for the U.S., and no medium does it better than print.
Zach Dionne is style editor for The Maine Campus.
Bangor Daily News