The people’s news judgment
: The great, vaunted talent/skill/art/gift from God that editors supposedly have is news judgment. I had to work my way up in the business until one day a light shone from heaven and it was decreed that I had news judgment. Editors have it. Mortals don’t.
Or not.
Glenn Reynolds puts together a bunch of opinions from many quarters that say the news business has no news judgment regarding the murder of Nick Berg.
He’s right. And now we have the means to prove he’s right. We can look at what people are talking about on weblogs. We can look at what people are searching for online (see this Google search for “Nick Berg“). We can see what people are linking to on Technorati (this takes you to the latest links on “Nick Berg“). We can look at the traffic on stories about an evil enemy killing one of our innocents versus stories about — to go to Page One of the NY Times today: stories about our “abuse” and even a story blaming us for the murder of our innocent.
The people have news judgment. And it beats the judgment of many an editor.
The people have their own newspaper now. And you’re looking at it.
: UPDATE: Even Jimmy Breslin, an old-time newsman if there ever was one, gets the new religion:
Here is the new news reporting. If something is too gruesome, too ominous for the newspaper editor’s taste, it matters not. The Internet will decide what you print, and if you don’t care, if you want to stay in the past, then stay there with your dead newspaper.
[via Leonard Witt]
