Categories
News, Spin

Agora sweater

Looking good in an agora sweater

Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock

Monday, July 19, 2004: I raised a somewhat complex question in my previous essay. I’ve thought more, and I have a rough answer. The nature of a Web log such as Brick, however, is that it puts the newest material first. It’s Jeopardy: Here’s the answer, what’s the question? So I will wait while you review the Friday 7/16 entry.

Done? The name of the void has been called the marketplace of ideas, or agora. It’s an old concept. The news as presented by responsible journalist organizations is one booth in that bazaar.

If the latest facts, the most even-handed explanations and clearest analyses get lost among the hawkers of shiny trinkets, well, that’s to be expected to some extent. But our passers-by do prefer quality, and if they cannot find it or cannot discern it, well, that’s largely the fault of the journalists. The forum is a given, a constant and pretty much unchangeable.

Newspapers and the responsible broadcast and online journalist outlets simply have not figured out yet how best to market their information in the 21st century.

The problem of the major media is not so much sleazy or unethical reporting (Jayson Blair et al) but that they allowed some lazy reporting of trusting the government, following polls and so forth. This not only made for inaccurate journalism but boring, too. Enter the shouting TV shows into the agora.

What really got us into Iraq? Is John Kerry the best the Democrats can come up with? Good questions? Yes, but it’s too late to answer them.

If quality news outlets want folks to buy from their stands, they must hurry to find the current questions and begin to sell the answers — in ways that have appeal now, that fit people’s data-gathering habits now. How? A future Brick or 20 of them. -30-

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