The Press Sphere as the Sum of the Parts of Journalism

The New York Times and the blogs that I’ve been reading have been rather complementary of each other. For the most part, The Times and the two blogs I’ve been keeping up with, The Daily Dish and FiveThirtyEight, have focused on the same stories. This, however, has not become repetitive, because each website has their own characteristics that make their take on the news to be unique.

For blogs, the inherent limitation is that it is oftentimes just one person’s opinions regarding current events. Obviously, someone would not want the entirety of their news to be filtered through a singular person (e.g. a blog). Because blogs are based, for the most part, on one person, they create a sensibility that other websites lack. The New York Times is very informative and formal, and Sullivan’s blog is also informative, it simply has a different feel. The New York Times has its advantages, such as its use of multiple writers covering a plethora of topics (ranging from health care to Halloween costumes, for example). The fact that The New York Times has so much breadth makes it hard to discern its sensibility. The blogs, however, are not limited by this. Just after a few weeks, I feel that I know the personalities of Sullivan and Nate Silver. I don’t know if it is possible, on the other hand, to be able to discern the personality of The Times.

The fact that these different entities have different characteristics benefits the overall press sphere. FiveThirtyEight, The Daily Dish, and The New York Times all report on the same major issues, but their unique characteristics makes them each distinguishable. In Sullivan’s “Why I Blog,” he analogizes that blogging is to journalism as jazz is to music. The idea that blogging adds to journalism as a whole relates to the idea of a press-sphere existing. The press sphere, or news ecology, is the sum of all of the unique, individual parts that relay the news to people. Usually, the more unique parts there are, the greater the sum is.

Jarvis, Sullivan, and the Neverending News Cycle

Sullivan and Jarvis, while describing different things to different audiences, both articulate similar points regarding how the structure of journalism is changing. When describing how blogging contrasts to traditional journalism, one of Sullivan’s primary points is how blogging is more of a continuing story. Sullivan describes blogging as essentially a journalistic journey in backwards chronological order, without an ending. Jarvis has a similar belief regarding, describing a never-ending news cycle. Jarvis states that this new news-cycle shows how a story develops over time and becomes endless. The relates to Sullivan because his blog offers continual follow-up analysis on a story, without presenting a clear end to it.

Regarding this idea that news cycles now never end, Sullivan offers more insight and explanation for how this changes journalism. Sullivan describes this new journalism as rather conversational. He describes news as being reported hourly as opposed to daily, and mentions how much of the content of his blog is reader-generated. Jarvis mentioned how people are more likely to get their news from a variety of sources that are within a close proximity to them, and this relates to Sullivan’s claim that readers now effect how the news is reported. Both ideas support Jarvis’ claim that the press editors now have a diminished role, because the focus is now generated more by the reader.

Jarvis, more so than Sullivan, explains how this change in journalism will affect how people will seek out their news. Jarvis explains how this new influx of available information will make news-gathering effortless, explaining how many don’t look for the news because the news essentially finds them. It can be argued that this idea coincides with Sullivan’s theory about how journalism has turned into essentially a collective conversation. There is such an availability of news and analysis of said news (e.g. Sullivan and The Daily Dish), therefore how people go about gathering the news will change as well.

Jarvis' Press Sphere

The “press sphere” is Jeff Jarvis’ way of explaining the difference in news-gathering today as opposed to previously. Jarvis first explains “the way things were” – that the public was essentially dependent on the press in order to be informed. Because the public has almost infinitely more access to information, Jarvis asserts that it would make logical sense that the public would then receive the news differently.

As opposed to the press, which the public was dependent on, the public now uses the “press sphere.” This “press sphere” describes the sum of various sources that “add up a story.” Jarvis also mentions how news is often obtained via one’s peers, and this coincides with our class’ findings about how my generation receives the news. By saying this, Jarvis is implicitly stating that news and information are self-perpetuating. Essentially, if more people are informed about the news, they can tell more people, allowing for them to now tell more people, and so on. As information becomes more easily accessible, it is an interesting thought to consider that this accessibility would create more of a reliance on one’s peers for information.

Jarvis also suggests an idea of a never-ending news process. I’m not completely sure of how he came to the conclusion that our new news system will never end. One of the comments on the article mentions how after 20/20 hindsight is available for a story it is no longer news, it then becomes history. Because there are so many different avenues for gathering information and for public discourse it is not a stretch to say that journalism will change. I wish Jarvis’ article expanded more on potential ramifications for these changes, as opposed to simply provided neat charts that describe them.

The New York Times vs. The Blogosphere

The New York Times, for the most part, has covered the same stories as FiveThirtyEight and The Daily Dish. There are, however, some noticeable differences between the Times and the blogs I have been reading.

The most apparent difference between The Times and the two blogs I’ve been reading is the fact that the blogs are largely opinion based. Sullivan and others will voice their opinions on news stories while The Times is more likely to simply offer nonpartisan coverage of the news. While it should be noted that The Times has an editorial section, the majority of the paper is not opinion-based, as opposed to the blogs. Also, because The Times is perhaps the most influential newspaper in the world, it has a large focus on international news stories. The two blogs I’ve been reading, however, have had more of a focus on only national news.

Something that The Times offers that the two blogs don’t is a very wide-variety of news stories about an array of topics. When I read Sullivan, I expect to read about politics and current events, with a random youtube video thrown in for “mental health” purposes. When I read FiveThirtyEight, I expect to read about politics and public opinion trends. The Times, on the other hand, has a relatively large variety of stories. The front page has included over the last few days, stories about international news, financial news, and even sports news. (And yes, I do find The Times to be biased – they are clearly pulling for the Yankees).

I would say that The Times has influenced my habits in terms of gathering the news. Now usually I will read The Times as a way of becoming informed about an issue, and then I would read the two blogs I chose for further analysis of the stories. My new method usually involves me reading a story from The Times, and then reading Sullivan’s opinion on it, and then reading FiveThirtyEight for an additional opinion and data about public opinion regarding the issue. Fortunately for me I feel that The Times and the two blogs I chose complement each other very well.

The Daily Dish and FiveThirtyEight

The two blogs I will be following are The Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan and FiveThirtyEight by Nate Silver. The primary reason why I chose these blogs is because I was aware of each before this class. I knew who Andrew Sullivan was and occasionally read his opinions. I’ve always respected his intellect and status as an ideological independent, so I feel that reading his blog will be enjoyable. The name Nate Silver didn’t ring a bell with me; however, his website has. I learned about fivethirtyeight.com during the 2008 presidential campaign because of its reputation as being the single most accurate election-prediction website on the internet. While researching Silver, I found out that he’s essentially a mathematics genius who has an economics degree from the University of Chicago and has developed player-performance algorithms for professional sports. Being the avid sports-nerd myself, I was aware of the increasing use of mathematic formulas to evaluate players. Given his background, Silver’s blog is obviously going to focus on quantitative assessment of the political discourse sphere. His blog also involves his opinion on current events and he describes himself as an independent who leans slightly to the left. It will be interesting to read both him and Sullivan concurrently because Sullivan is an independent who considers himself to be a conservative.

I was slightly hesitant to choose Sullivan’s blog because I’m afraid that half the class will. This, however, isn’t necessarily a bad thing considering the quality of his blog (I guess it’s popular for a reason). Knowing Sullivan’s viewpoints for awhile, I think his blog and FiveThirtyEight are good compliments of each other. For example, Sullivan’s blog will provide me with a thoughtful and independent take on a current event, while FiveThirtyEight will provide statistical information about public opinion regarding the same issue.

I originally had considered reading a liberal blog and a conservative blog to hear opposing sides on an issue, but I ultimately decided against it. I stay up on the news well enough to by and large know the various sides to a given issue, and I’ve long had respect for both Sullivan and FiveThirtyEight, so my final decision was relatively easy.

Surprising

I make a conscientious effort to stay informed on current events, and what was surprising to me was the fact that I seemed to be in the minority in that sense. The central theme to Unit 1 was how the internet has changed our culture’s civic literacy, and with passive news almost unavoidable now due to the internet, the idea that we gather news in different ways now is not surprising. Unfortunately I’m not completely aware of how our sample of young adults compares to the news-gathering habits of other generations prior to the existence of the internet.

Something that I found to be interesting is the sense of guilt associated with not following the news. I don’t mean to say that someone who follows the news is in anyway better than someone who doesn’t, but if you felt guilty about not following the news, why don’t you? Now I can understand it in a sense that many people are “guilty” that they don’t work out more, or that they don’t go to church more, etc. but I find it interesting that this still occurs in an era where news is more readily available than ever before. From my limited perspective there seems to be a negative correlation: that as news is more available to everyone, the less interested they are in knowing the news. I’m not saying that correlation equals causation or even that our time is much different than others in this respect, I just find it interesting. This coincides with Carr’s jet-ski analogy, considering that it appears that many internet users don’t appear to have either the time or inclination to keep up with current events.

Word of mouth appears to be a reliable news outlet for many of my classmates, and one reason for this is maybe perhaps because of the vast availability of passive news. If one can stay functionally informed just from their Yahoo.com newsfeed, then the need to actively seek out the news no longer exists. It should be noted that this is pure speculation on my part, however it seems to me that the reliance on passive news is increasing while the reliance on active news may be diminishing.

The Blogs I Will Follow

I will follow fivethirtyeight.com because I occasionally visited that webite during last year's election. Given the small amount of time I spent there I liked what I saw, and they seemed to be pretty nonpartisan. I'll also follow The Daily Dish by Sullivan because I've always liked his moderate and intelligent viewpoints.

The reason

In general, I get my news from a variety of outlets. I do this for two primary reasons. First, if I were to only get information from a single news source, I would be limited to only seeing from said news source’s point of view. Secondly, what type of news I’m interested in also dictates where and how I receive news. For example, I’d go to find news about the status of the health care bill in a different place than where I’d find out who’s on this week’s NFL injury report.
To find local news, I’ll read the Courier-Journal, mostly because there really are no other alternatives. (I refuse to ever watch local TV news).

Something that the internet has undoubtedly provided for is a venue for receiving almost infinite information very quickly. For news, this is especially true. If a major breaking-news event happened, the first place I (and many others I presume) would go would be to the internet to find out more. Oftentimes I’ll find out what the news is on the internet, and then I’ll utilize the internet and other resources such as a newspaper or TV to find analysis of that news. A variety of news sources I feel is important here, because the news can be interpreted in different ways, allowing for it to be affected by bias.

I especially try, when receiving news about current events or politics, to get my news from a variety of outlets. I do watch cable news, but I make a concerted effort to watch some of CNN, FOX and MSNBC because each network is, frankly, not very good. Because watching TV is an entertaining thing to do, it’s an easy place for me to get my news. I’ve watched a good share of MSNBC, FOX, and CNN, and in all honesty The Daily Show on Comedy Central is probably the most journalistically responsible. One of the roles of the media is as a watchdog, and Jon Stewart and The Daily Show essentially act as the watchdog’s watchdog. If the media, especially the cable news media, is being blatantly biased or just simply silly, The Daily Show will expose them. Here is an example of Jon Stewart eviscerating CNN last week. (It’s a relatively long video, but it does a good job to articulate The Daily Show’s role as a watchdog for the media).

If a person were to only watch FOX or MSNBC for their news, they'd be limited to only the conservative or liberal side of it. Using a variety of news sources fixes this problem because it exposes you to a variety of biases, allowing you to form your own opinion.

Draft 2

My graded draft can be found here