Look, I'm not about to compare my experience with yours---but I'd like to see some evidence that you actually accept that my experience was real and not some made-up fever dream. I've had absolutely horrible experiences with mainstream journalism.
I've submitted letters to an editor from a mainstream journal that literally changed "is" to "is not" with regard to lived personal experience. I've shoved actual peer-reviewed, articles from reputable scientific journals into the hands of professional reporters only to have them tell me "what do you expect me to do with this?"
I held a news conference during a municipal election where I unveiled a literal illegal toxic waste site that was in the middle of a residential neighbourhood. We had regional tv news show up and give us a lot of coverage---but the local daily wouldn't report until much later. And then, it made no reference to myself or the group I was involved with, and instead took pictures of the back of the sports editor crawling through a hole in the fence around the property and implying that they had broke the story through their 'intrepid local journalists'.
In many ways old-fashioned, mainstream journalism was a complete and utter cesspool---long before the Web and bloggers came along. I agree that there are problems with the current system. But it is profoundly misleading to compare the best of the old system to the worst of the present one.
This is all kinds of tragic. Thank you for this wonderful piece.
Look, I'm not about to compare my experience with yours---but I'd like to see some evidence that you actually accept that my experience was real and not some made-up fever dream. I've had absolutely horrible experiences with mainstream journalism.
I've submitted letters to an editor from a mainstream journal that literally changed "is" to "is not" with regard to lived personal experience. I've shoved actual peer-reviewed, articles from reputable scientific journals into the hands of professional reporters only to have them tell me "what do you expect me to do with this?"
I held a news conference during a municipal election where I unveiled a literal illegal toxic waste site that was in the middle of a residential neighbourhood. We had regional tv news show up and give us a lot of coverage---but the local daily wouldn't report until much later. And then, it made no reference to myself or the group I was involved with, and instead took pictures of the back of the sports editor crawling through a hole in the fence around the property and implying that they had broke the story through their 'intrepid local journalists'.
In many ways old-fashioned, mainstream journalism was a complete and utter cesspool---long before the Web and bloggers came along. I agree that there are problems with the current system. But it is profoundly misleading to compare the best of the old system to the worst of the present one.