The problem is, he seems to be conflating journalism with himself.
Cohen begins by quoting sociologist Max Weber, who noted almost a century ago that a journalist's job is "at least as demanding intellectually as the achievement of any scholar." So, OK, we get the ground rules: Journalists deserve respect. And Cohen, who is still in the prime of a distinguished career, certainly does.
"To be a journalist is to bear witness," Cohen writes. "To bear witness means being there -- and that’s not free."
Fair enough. But then: "No search engine gives you the smell of a crime, the tremor in the air, the eyes that smolder, or the cadence of a scream."
That's true except for the minor detail that it's false. A search engine will indeed give you the smell of a crime, the tremor in the air and so on, as long as someone who was a witness wrote about it or made a video or snapped a picture. That witness might be a journalist. Might also be a participant or a bystander.
"No news aggregator tells of the ravaged city exhaling in the dusk, nor summons the defiant cries that rise into the night. No miracle of technology renders the lip-drying taste of fear. No algorithm captures the hush of dignity, nor evokes the adrenalin rush of courage coalescing, nor traces the fresh raw line of a welt."
Dang. That fella can write, can't he? Still: Same answer. Just because a journalist employed by the New York Times or some other newspaper can't provide those things because the New York Times et al. don't have the budget to put a journalist on the scene, which isn't free to do even though the fair-market value of the resulting journalism just might be "free," that doesn't mean those things don't exist.
Isn't it possible there are journalists on the scene without American newspapers funding them? Perhaps some journalist, or non-journalist who can write a little, happens to live in the part of the world where big news is breaking and posts on her blog about it. Perhaps a local or regional news organization has reporters on the ground.
Or perhaps, as we saw in Iran, and as we're seeing in Honduras, though for some reason it's not getting one-thousandth the attention, ordinary people are blogging and tweeting and texting and e-mailing and flickring about what they are seeing, hearing, feeling and fearing. In the newspaper newsrooms I worked in we called those ordinary people "civilians." Now they're "citizen journalists."
Cohen then turns to his own feelings about having to watch the Iran story unfold from afar. But I read his column as an endorsement of the new paradigm.
Cohen didn't leave Iran because "being there" is "not free." He left because it was untenable and unsafe for him to stay. That's no different than what might have happened in a totalitarian crackdown 10 or 50 or 100 years ago. The difference is, we now have all those tweeters and bloggers and flickrers in Iran telling us what's going on.
Cohen writes that he was one of the last Western journalists to leave Tehran, and about how painful that was to do, knowing that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's goal was plain: To grab power and leave "no eyewitnesses to the crime."
But then, in the next paragraph, Cohen writes:
"Of course, Iranians have borne witness" -- remember: "To be a journalist is to bear witness" -- "with cellphone video images, with photographs, through Twitter and other forms of social networking -- and have thereby amassed an ineffaceable global indictment of the usurpers of June 12.
"Never again will Ahmadinejad speak of justice without being undone by the Neda Effect -- the image of eyes blanking, life abating and blood blotching across the face of Neda Agha-Soltan."
Isn't that good? The citizen journalists are on the job.
Cohen's column can be seen as a metaphor for this whole conversation about the state of the news business and the Future of Journalism. The traditional journalist, forced to the sidelines, laments his diminishing relevance and worries about a world in which he's not able to provide his valuable service in the old way.
The world, meanwhile, eagerly gobbles up far more information than was ever available under the previous model and wonders how it ever survived in the old way of doing things.
There is no shortage of need for journalists with Cohen's prodigious skills. But there is now more to journalism than people like Cohen. That's a great thing. Journalism's task isn't to lament the dying of the old way. It's to figure out how to keep people like Cohen in position to do what they do best -- when circumstances beyond the economics of the industry, such as a totalitarian crackdown, don't prevent them from doing it.
That we can still get information in those circumstances now is something to be celebrated, not lamented.
mandalp1
Richard Davis
Chris Rywalt
Blue Roses
whitenoise
Anupum Mehrotra
Salon.com
Comments
Looks like the debate about the nature of "real" journalism may not actually be resolved any time soon. Yes it's to bear witness. And it's also to put things in context, and to offer opinions and to connect the dots, and to understand whatever the situation is as best we can. And sometimes NYTimes journalists are good at that, and sometimes they're not.
Still, I'm with him, in that it's a great thing that we feel more connected to these political events than we have in the past. Let's hope that actually translates into more freedom for those citizens involved.
Sixty five years ago there was - Ernest Hemingway.
Add Ernie Pyle, Edward R. Murrow, and others.
Most of your article before that sentence seems to be stating that journalists like Cohen are not that important when compared to all these other sources. Then you end by saying that it does matter.
Why do you think it matters? I think it does because, in part, expertise with a track record makes for a stronger source. A reader can learn the strengths and weaknesses of such a writer. Evaluating anonymous sources is harder, particularly given how easily they can be faked.
But I'm not convinced that you think that it matters if reporters like Cohen are in the future of journalism. So if you think it does matter, you might take a moment to say why?
I believe you're asking me to defend a statement I didn't make. You say, "Most of your article before that sentence seems to be stating that journalists like Cohen are not that important when compared to all these other sources."
Can you show me where I said that? I didn't mean to, and re-reading, I'm sorry but I don't see that I did. Am I being dense or are you reading more than what's there?
It seems to me self-evident that journalists like Cohen are important. The point here is that they are no longer the totality of journalism, and that that's a good thing, because they can't always be on the case.
There were no journalists like Cohen in Iran after all the journalists like Cohen left. There were no journalists like Cohen on that Bart platform in Oakland on New Year's Eve when the cop shot the guy. And yet, we got the story.
The story wasn't as reliable or readable or professionally done as it would have been if a journalist like Cohen had been there. But it was a damn site better than it would have been back when it was necessary for a journalist like Cohen to be there for the story to get told in the first place.
king
Second, when these same journalists became embedded during the Iraq War and their only source was the Pentagon briefing, I think they abdicated all privileges of deluding us, the readers, to their eyewitnessing skills.
Still I worry about objectivity and verification. The tweeter/blogger/videographer is able to post his/her content without oversight. The reader must sort it all out. You could say the same is true of traditional journalism but at least there were checks and balances - the credibility of the reporting institution, the concern for ethical newsgathering, the threat of legal repercussion. None of these gatekeeping mechanisms apply to citizen journalists.
And there's the issue of words as an art form. I lament the passing of gifted storytellers who know the flavor of words, the way to set a table with pacing, and the virtues of structure that transform an ordinary story into a feast for the mind. That, I fear, will be our greatest loss.
"As we Americans celebrate the Declaration of Independence, let’s stand with Iran by recalling the first democratic revolution in Asia. It began in 1905 in Iran, driven by the quest to secure parliamentary government and a Constitution from the Qajar dynasty."
Mr. Cohen, there are two things about this paragraph that disturb me. One, the United States is almost 56 years too late to stand with Iran, and a minimum of eight years too late to celebrate the Declaration of Independence.
Don't weep for Iran, Mr. Cohen, if you can't tell the citizens of the United States the truth about their own country. It is this country that overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, installing the Shah and supporting him and Savak, his secret police.
It is this country that has been committing constitutional hara-kari at least since the enthroning of George W. Bush:
"He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good."
"He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers."
"He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries."
"He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power."
"He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation"
"For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury"
"In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury."
To greater and lesser degrees, this is what George W. Bush and Congress, both Democratic and Republican, did for eight years, and what Barack Obama continues to do now.
Until our government and our journalists start speaking truth to the population, start recognizing the crimes that this government has committed and does commit today, we will be ignored by all others who practice tyranny.
I appreciate your response. I think it would help me to understand your perspective better if you could elaborate on this sentence: "But I read his column as an endorsement of the new paradigm."
What is this new paradigm? Is it simply the ability of many more people to make their voices heard? Certainly that's a profound change that makes possible new flows of information. But it does not do much when it comes to syntheisizing those voices, to turning a myriad of sources almost randomly coming into and out of existence into a set of stories, or into analyses, into what has sometimes been called the first draft of history.
That's where experience matters. And that, for all their myriad flaws and biases, is where the best journalists in established news organizations excelled, in the creating of first drafts of history.
What I fear in this new paradigm--if I'm understanding it correctly--is not these newly heard voices. It is a wonderful thing to have them; in a more perfect world they could and should challenge established journalism, forcing it to improve.
What I fear is that if they simply replace journalism as a profession that we will be replacing that first draft with something less substantive and less coherent. For those people who have the time and skill to make their own first drafts, this may not be a major disadvantage. But no one has the time to do so over the full range of issues and events that are important today. As a result, as many better intellects than I have noted, we may know more facts and become less knowledgeable simultaneously.
That's what I fear, and to the extent those fears led me to misunderstood your point, my apologies.
PS You rightly note that some of those newly heard voices could be writers of equal skill to Cohen. That's a good point, but it still leaves the question, how do we best insure that people with such skills have a chance to observe, to report, and to be heard consistently.
What paper can now afford to pay for the time it takes to research and develop stories that require more than a cursory glance at the police blotter?
Major locals can no longer afford the time it takes to dig out a local scandal let alone investigate a national travesty hidden under the wraps of burecratic doublespeak.
This type of journalism takes "boots on the ground" , something your average blogger doesn't have the resources for.
Some things need to be ferreted out; I'm afraid that is what will be lost in this new "paradigm".
I think a lot of his column is directed at his bosses, a explanation of why they should continue to pay him more than anything else.
Here's my take on things. Can the average "citizen journalist" write a column like Roger Cohen, heck no, that's why he's Roger Cohen. The salient question though are columns written by Roger Cohen relevant in our digital world? I think they are but only as part of the larger picture of whatever story is being written about.
I don't think the news reading/viewing public wants to abandon the MSM as their main news source, there's that old shoe quality there, an established trust that what they are reporting on is factual and objective (nix that for the WaPo). But the MSM has to realize, accept and learn to work with the plethora of news sources available to them, the blogs, twitter accounts, other social networks, even SMS messages. Their role is no longer of one talking to many but as an moderator of the many talking to many.
Its their role of not only doing traditional reporting but also of taking all this other source material, fact checking, cross referencing and milling it all into a picture of events that are happening.
He writes: "No news aggregator tells of the ravaged city exhaling in the dusk, nor summons the defiant cries that rise into the night. No miracle of technology renders the lip-drying taste of fear. No algorithm captures the hush of dignity, nor evokes the adrenalin rush of courage coalescing, nor traces the fresh raw line of a welt."
To counter this point, what do I receive from Roger Cohen? Observation, he saw this happen or he saw that happen, or someone told him of this happening or that happening. If he is at the right place at the right time he may very well write a piece on someone else's suffering that could move me to tears. But I have read first hand accounts on blogs, what it is like to see your little brother hauled off by the Basij to Evrin prison, being in the prison itself, the abuse, the feeling of someone for the first time expressing their desire for freedom on the streets of Tehran.
Sure, we still need Roger Cohen. But Roger needs to realize that he has to share the stage with us as well.
But of course, that's not what we're saying at all. We don't criticize the MSM for being journalists - we criticize them because they don't practice journalism, or at least don't practice good journalism. We're unhappy because so many "reporters" in places like the NYT are little more than stenographers who never bother to check the facts behind the statements they write down.
We want more journalism, not less. And we recognize that real journalism by a blogger is far more valuable than fake journalism by someone at the NYT.
But the die is likely cast. No one seems to be able to stem the tide of thinking that somehow the news should be free now. I fear we will get what we pay for.
And, one more thing, can we stop using this pompous damn word "conflate" when all we mean is "combine"? Every time I read something or listen to the airheads on the airwaves, this word seems to be de rigueur now. Yikes.
"Here's my take on things. Can the average "citizen journalist" write a column like Roger Cohen, heck no, that's why he's Roger Cohen. The salient question though are columns written by Roger Cohen relevant in our digital world? I think they are but only as part of the larger picture of whatever story is being written about."
Just because you can say in 59 words what it took me 900 words to say doesn't mean you're a better writer than I am.*
king
* OK, it does
But let's not forget the role that an entity like the NY Times plays in this -- with the multiple editors who edit and vet every story, and the system of ethics and professional practices that such an institution enforces vis-a-vis its employee-journalists and their reporting.
We need these institutions -- I'm worried that we are losing them.
Can I have a job? : D
Just to counter your statement somewhat:
Jayson Blair
Judith Miller
Katharine Weymouth
I'm just saying, that pedestal is not that high.