Mike Arrington sounds like he went a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson. Weary, punched, but feeling good that he didn’t back down.

An old mentor of mine made sure that I understood early on that “if you’re delivering your radically different point of view and are interested in persuading, presenting something difficult needs to be done in a way that causes people to stop, think, and examine their status quo vs. bitch-slapping them with it.” Maybe Mike bitch-slapped them?

In a time of accelerating change, status quo won’t cut it and boy-oh-boy…are we in that time! Journalism has so many faults dragging them down as things accelerate: walled gardens; timidity; lots of process caused by imperative but laborious fact-checking; but all are intended to get the story as objectively as humans can deliver it and to get the story right (Sometimes? Usually? Never? Maybe all three?). Mike’s point about mainstream media’s non-disclosure of their incentives is, in my view, a huge problem but the overriding issue is reporting vs. opinion, speculation and group-think.

Arrington mentioned Digg in his remarks. While I find Digg entertaining, sometimes enlightening and often illuminating to know what the masses think are interesting, that’s NOT where I turn to get my news, balanced coverage or ESPECIALLY not where I go to deeply examine an issue. Even TechMeme, while useful, is too limiting about anything but what’s happening in the moment.

When a bunch of bloggers pounce on a story fueling each other’s
non-critical thinking about an issue and makes it a big deal…is that
reporting?

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