"keep your eye on the ball."
First Draft by Tim Porter: London Bombings: The Unread Newspaper
The fact that I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle tells you much about the trust I place in newspapers as an institution. The fact that I didn't give them more than a fleeting glance this morning speaks just as strongly to their uselessness on a day of major news.
Well, this post was the proverbial last straw.
A great tragedy occurred today. There is a mounting toll of casualties in London. By most accounts it is the worst attack on London in three decades. The top of a bus was ripped off like it was a tin can.
This is not the time for more blogger self-congratulation.
Especially when so far, the one stupid blurry phonecam shot being linked around appears to be the sum fucking total of your "reporting." The already much vaunted flickr pool seems to mainly consist, ironically enough, of people taking pictures of televisions tuned to news channels. And we get the inimitable "Doc" Searls. His main take on the tragedy: how it's affecting Technorati's most popular searches.
Shame on you, you fucking self-involved assholes.
I found this sort of bragging disgusting during 9/11. When I finally got home from one of the most terrifying days of my life, I found the usual asshats talking about how much better they were than "moribund media." Perhaps you could "report" on what's actually happening rather than the cynical exploitation of this tragedy as yet another opportunity for another round of back-patting blog triumphalism.
And from a New Yorker to London: our hearts are with you.
Comments
A car sits undriven in my driveway.
It is an expensive car, and its carefully waxed exterior along with the fresh, pine-tree-shaped air freshener dangling from the mirror tells you much about the stock I place in its reliability and usefulness.
The fact that I didn't drive it in to the bathroom this morning speaks just as strongly to its uselessness on a day when I really, really needed to take a dump.
Posted by: mph | July 7, 2005 3:04 PM
For a little more nuanced take...
http://bayosphere.com/blog/dangillmor/070705/where_i-turned
"We need the citizen journalists' coverage, and need better ways to get at it. But early this morning, for the context I craved I turned to the professionals first -- online, of course, because as Tim noted the print editions of newspapers were already so far out of date as to be quaint."
Posted by: Ed Heil | July 7, 2005 8:34 PM