Note: Updated below.
If you haven’t read this morning’s Wall Street Journal op-ed by Paul Mulshine of the Newark Star-Ledger, “All I Wanted for Christmas Was a Newspaper”, it’s just the kind of arrogant-clueless screed by a newspaperman against the blogosphere that elicits first anger, then pity.
These opinion columns are nothing new. See David Simon’s disproportionate contempt for bloggers for an example of someone who managed to succeed after taking a buyout yet is still consumed by the subject. Such columns have long been a symptom of the industry’s steady decline, but as it slips into precipitous free fall, schadenfreude has given way to Willy Loman-esque pathos. I’ve never found Ol’ Gil from The Simpsons all that funny, in part because he was a poor replacement for Lionel Hutz, but also because it’s no fun to watch the helpless fail and flail.
Still, that does not mean the poverty of their arguments should be excused, especially because they are the squeakiest wheels in this dilapidated machine, and their erroneous conclusions may well be adopted by those watching from a short distance. So far Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit and Robert Ivan at Metaprinter have ably pointed out the many flaws in his piece, but I’d like to tackle another. Here is Mulshine making an elitist argument that is not prima facie incorrect, but is nevertheless undone by its own careless construction:
In his book, “An Army of Davids,” Mr. Reynolds heralds an era in which “[m]illions of Americans who were in awe of the punditocracy now realize that anyone can do this stuff.”
No, they can’t. Millions of American can’t even pronounce “pundit,” or spell it for that matter. On the Internet and on the other form of “alternative media,” talk radio, a disliked pundit has roughly a 50-50 chance of being derided as a “pundint,” if my eyes and ears are any indication.
The type of person who can’t even keep track of the number of times the letter “N” appears in a two-syllable word is not the type of person who is going to offer great insight into complex issues.
All right, well this question about usage of “pundit” vs. “pundint” is easily testable. Let’s go to Google BlogSearch:
- For a search on the single word pundit we find 705,874 results. Sorted for relevance, here are the top three results as of Sunday afternooon:
Already we can see that Mulshine should have chosen a different word to illustrate the alleged ignorance of Internet political commentators. Thanks to those like Instapundit, the word has enjoyed a strong currency in recent years, perhaps more so than any word besides “meme”.
- For a search on pundint we find 1,320 results with the top three by relevance as follows:
Remember, these are not necessarily the savviest bloggers (let alone, strictly, bloggers), just those which (the increasingly unreliable) BlogSearch coughed up first.
As someone who tries to anticipate likely objections while writing, I can’t imagine doing as Mulshine does and simply assuming that others would willingly accept one’s personal impressions as empirical evidence. A quick Internet search reveals his example as, charitably, an exaggeration.
Not only is he wrong, even if he was right it wouldn’t be the damning evidence he thinks it is. In fact, I read a newspaper column two weeks ago that replaced the common phrase “to the … manor born” with the malaprop “to the … manner born.” A mental slip-up of this sort is indeed careless. It may mean the columnist (it was Kathleen Parker) should be scrutinized more closely, but it does not mean that newspaper columnists should be dismissed out of hand.
Smart people make common errors all the time. And Mulshine certainly seems to be among them them.
Instapundit readers 7, Blog P.I. 3: Everyone in the comments (and now Glenn, too) is right about the Shakespeare quote. I didn’t realize the phrase I knew came from the title of a British sitcom, To The Manor Born, a pun on the Shakespeare line. Would it hurt or help my cause to mention I’m an English major?
This is pretty ironic given the subject of this post, and while it certainly means one should always read me with a critical eye, it actually underscores the point about focusing on these things too much. To wit, a Google search of to the manor born returns 500,000 results, while one for to the manner born returns 52,400 results. To make another gratuitous Simpsons reference: “Show’s over, Shakespeare.”
To the list of smart people who make mental slips, one might add yours truly.
P.S. I’ve actually seen Hamlet on screen or stage at least four times, and I’m a fan, but I’ll be sure to read up on this bit now.
FYI: the Reynolds link in the third paragraph leads back to Mulshine’s editorial.
I’ll admit that I haven’t done enough reading on this topic but here’s my (all too obvious) fear: let’s say the country’s collective newspapers do indeed become a thing of the past. Who’s going to do the investigative reporting? 99% of all the bloggers in this country are laymen who blog as a hobby. The rest are along the lines of Andrew Sullivan, pundits who gather stories and offer their own pithy critiques. They’re the internet equivalent of talk show hosts. Who will provide the hard news and investigative reporting? What news organization will have the resources, besides cable news channels and networks, to send a writer to a war zone, out for a year on the campaign trail or pay them as they devote months to diving into an investigative report? Cable news is after sound bites. They’re won’t be much depth or analysis.
Needless to say, there’s also the lack of editors and fact checkers in the blogging world. Besides in a comments section, where’s the oversight?
Thanks, B. Fixed the link.
As to the rest, I’m right with you in wondering where the reportage comes from. If classifieds can’t support newsgathering any longer, what can? Consumer packaged goods? I’m only half-joking.
And it’s a good question what news bloggers will link to, but it’s a mistake to think they are responsible and a mistake to think they will replace newspapers.
The rest is anyone’s guess.
“to the manner born” is correct. It’s from Hamlet.
It’s arguable whether lack-of-news is better or worse than a pack of lies. But if the newspaper industry doesn’t stop trying to sell us lies, we may find out.
Actually, “to the manner born” is perfectly acceptable and probably more correct than “manor”. It’s in Hamlet, for Pete’s sake.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/to-the-manner-born.html
The Google search took me about three seconds, btw ;)
Sorry, but you’re wrong. It is to the manner born. Take it from Hamlet:
BTW, your mistake is a common one.
To be entirely precise, Parker’s phrase is an eggcorn, not a malapropism.
Eggcorn <a>
Reportage is already being done ably by the person on the street. At the Bombay massacre, folks on the street reported more ably and more quickly than any reporter local, national or international.
Most of the stuff I learned and am still learning from Iraq and Afghanistan is blog driven. Newspaper reporting was nothing more than a joke at best. The current news from Israel is mostly from blogs. CNN and the BBC are just propaganda arms at best and a joke at worst.
Newspapers in order to survive will have to change radically. They will probably have to sell news by the bit. If people like your news then they will pay. If they don’t they will go somewhere else. Newspapers will have to become more local and more specific to survive. The New York Times better become the Manhattan Times. If not it won’t have a prayer. People in Manhattan need to know the news in their region (jobs, classifieds, the best deals) the more detailed the better. I would pay dearly to know where to get the best apartment, best medical care and best education. Right now Craigslist does an okay job, but someone with a newspaper’s connections could do it better.
To the manNER born is correct. Just ask Shakespeare:
I am concerned about fact checking, and the unbiased truth itself from the majors. Some bloggers have brought some truths to light that may not have been brought forth without their participation.
I have yet to find any mainstream media outlet come out with the other side of the global warming issue, for instance. It’s lock step. 58 U.N. sanctioned worldwide scientists say we are experiencing global warming. 650 other scientists, world wide, are skeptics at the very least. I never heard about the skeptics from the MSM. One would think ALL scientists agree if your only news source was from the MSM. Obama goes without saying.
Potkettleblackitis alert: actually, it is “to the manner born”. See, e.g., Hamlet:
Ay, marry, is’t:
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour’d in the breach than the observance.
It means “familiar from birth with the custom in question”.
Someone unfamiliar with Hamlet could easily google and get a very good analysis of the manner/manor story at the very first result.
Potkettleblackitis alert: actually, it is “to the manner born” – at least if you know your Shakespeare. Hamlet:
Ay, marry, is’t:
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour’d in the breach than the observance.
A quick Google would’ve indicated this….
I agree with most of this column, but I’m afraid that “to the manner born” was the original expression. It’s from Hamlet, in the scene just before the ghost and the prince meet. Hamlet criticizes the way the Danes drink and carouse, saying that even though he is Danish (his friend Horatio, to whom he is speaking, is foreign) and to the manner born, he considers this carousing to be “a custom more honored in the breach than in the observance.” It is true that there was a britcom called “To the Manor Born” a couple of decades ago, but the title was a pun on the Shakespeare quote.
Dan
“I read a newspaper column two weeks ago that replaced the common phrase ‘to the … manor born’ with the malaprop ‘to the … manner born.’ A mental slip-up of this sort is indeed careless.”
Whoa! “To the manner born” is actually correct. It’s a quote from Hamlet; look it up. “To the manor born” is a common misunderstanding of it. It’s a good idea to do a Google search before sneering at people for not doing Google searches.
On the national level someone, such as Reuters or AP, will figure out how to make a business off the web. Locally this may be a problem. However I have noticed that most local television news will post stories…often in deeper detail…of what they report that evening. They are already doing the work and capturing ad money from traffic is a bonus.
Of course, none of this has to be but the odds that most Newspapers can correct their current course is slim to none.
B. asks, “Who will provide the hard news and investigative reporting? What news organization will have the resources, besides cable news channels and networks, to send a writer to a war zone, out for a year on the campaign trail or pay them as they devote months to diving into an investigative report?”
Here are two examples:
http://www.michaeltotten.com/
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/
Both are independent, subscriber-supported reporters. I’ve occasionally contributed to both, and just did so again. It only takes a few clicks.
“To the manner born” is a quotation from Hamlet.
Speaking of Google skills, please look up “Hamlet,” Act I, scene iv, and read the prince’s fifth piece of dialogue:
http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/hamlet/5/
Then scroll down to Act III, scene iv, and read his last piece — something about a petard… ;-)
That malaprop was good enough for Shakespeare. You may want to try Google.
Both Chris Matthews & Diane Rehm often speak of some place they call Michican.
FYI: there’s a debate about whether the phrase should be “to the manor born” or “to the manner born.” Shakespeare used “manner” and that usage seems to prevail in most formal guides. See … http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/readers/2008/03/manor-vs-manner.html
And who, pray tell, is doing the “investigative reporting” now?
There are so many obvious questions in recent months which cry to be investigated by “investigative reporters” but are instead ignored or skated over. Instead we see Michelle Obama in a toweled bathing suit and Barack Obama followed to a water park with his kids while numerous violations on university and college campuses of First Amendment rights and relationships and deals and connections and political payoffs abound — only to be ignored.
Investigative reporting is hard work. And takes time.
And we’re too cool for all that.
PS: “Manor” is about 10 times more common in a Google search than “manner,” largely because it was used in the punning title of a British TV series. Thus, Google counts can be unreliable as a guide to proper usage.
When the answer is unclear, Just Ask Capitalism!
Obviously, we are still going to need sources of raw news – i.e., information gathered for us through investigation, interviews – through all of the present tools of the real Reporter.
There are people out there who are quite good at that task. Necessarily, they also tend to be intelligent and capable, and aggressive and confident. Sadly, the combination of such traits can also lead to rampant egotism.
It was that egotism that led reporters to believe that we (the Reading Public) valued them for what they wanted us to value them for instead of valuing them for how well they met our needs.
We look for sources of interesting and important current-events information, presented understandably but still accurately, presented truthfully in both its facts and its omissions, and presented to us with the common understanding and acceptance that said sources are NOT picking and choosing and missing and lying in order to further their own philosophies and values.
Because that ultimate judging of the meaning and import of all of those little packets of information is supposed to be OUR job, our privilege, our role in participatory governance. Tell us what’s happened, we’ve always asked of the newsies, so that we can make informed choices.
But the newsies’ egos finally led them all to believe that we were really asking them to make those choices for us, and then to tell us why they chose as they did, but only after the fact. The newsies started to see themselves as our representatives in between us and government.
So, what will bloggers link to now? The smarter reporters – the Reporters – are going to figure out what we will buy from them, and what we won’t buy from them, and will begin servicing the old model of Reporting, through an expanded network of news-gathering orgs similar to AP, Reuters, and the like, whose fees and costs will be borne by the content-servers (the big main-gathering web sites with news, blogs, ads, and the like) as membership fees.
And the news-gatherers – the AP’s, etc – will also need to evolve past the ego-stroke of “they value what I think”, to the more accurate “they value my writing and investigative skills.” If they don’t see that we specifically DON’T value much of what they think, they’ll keep writing crap like Mulshine’s article.
Show’s over, Shakespeare? No quite. The vast majority of those half-million “manor” hits appear to be related to the BBC sitcom. Do an advanced Google search on “to the manor born -TV -BBC,” and you get just over 60,000, comparable to the number for the original quote.
I’m pretty sure all the “investigative reporters” evidently froze to death in Wasilla, Alaska. Other than that I can’t remember any such reporting in the past year or so.
@Eugene Dillenburg
They’re both common, all right. And you’re right, Shakespeare is the one people should know, myself included. As to the initial point, Mulshine makes too big a deal out of malaprops, and this shows why.
As long as we want to get all pedant-y… A commenter on another blog (an Aussie) remarked,
“Because that ultimate judging of the meaning and import of all of those little packets of information is supposed to be OUR job, our privilege, our role in participatory governance. Tell us what’s happened, we’ve always asked of the newsies, so that we can make informed choices.”
Very well said, bobby b. You are entirely correct. When news types move from giving us information on what’s happened (i.e. the facts) and instead start telling us what to think and what to conclude from the facts (which they frequently just gloss over) then they are stealing from us. It’s our privilege to make up our own minds based on a full set of information and it’s our right as free citizens to participate in the governance of the country. We don’t need j-school mediocrities making our decisions for us. That’s not what we hired them for.
I’m quite confused by now. I thought an eggcorn was distinguishable from a malapropism in that an eggcorn is something that makes sense itself, even though it changes the meaning – intentionally or not – of the phrase on which it is based. But, I follow Eric’s link to discover that “eggcorn” is supposed to be an example of an eggcorn: it’s the very derivation of the word. But how does “eggcorn” make sense? Eggs do not have corns, nor do corns have eggs. At least not to my knowledge. Isn’t “eggcorn,” then, a malapropism and not an eggcorn?
Why do I let stuff like this bother me?
Don’t let ‘em get to you, dude. Are you a manor are you a mouse?
These opinion just the kind of arrogant-clueless, Even though Moonshine making an elitist argument but I think it is a careless construction. So far we find Google can search so many things that we search
@Eugene Dillenburg
Both were identical, well spot on ;)
Happy new year to all :)
Im pretty sure all the “investigative reporters” evidently froze to death in Wasilla. Other than that I can’t remember any such reporting in the past year or so.
great article….