Blog Awards Challenge 7 Winner (Excellence): The Philippine Daily Idiot
Winning Entry Title: THE RELEVANCE OF OLD MEDIA AND CARLOS CONDE IS THAT THEY ARE IRRELEVANT [Original Link]
Winning entry is reprinted below.
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A B S T R A C T
I am suddenly marshaled into answering these QUESTIONS at the Blog Awards Challenge blog. I’m hooked:
1. Is Old Media still relevant in the blogosphere?
2. Are there means to regain the glory of old journalism?
3. Is blogging light years away from being acceptable means for credible journalism? What are the alternatives and where do you think is the proper place of blogging in the grand scheme of media consumption in the 21st century?
OKEY, blogging is ascending and Old Media is supposedly taking a beating. BTW, Old Media is our shorthand for the traditional tri-media of print, radio and tv.
My conclusion: Scroll down.
FIRST QUESTION. So, is Old Media still relevant in the blogosphere?
Answer: A big It is.
FIRST OF ALL, in the unlikely event that I, self-important blogger, will be weaned from my daily cud of self-important Op-Ed pieces in the Philippine Star, I’d be sad.
I would miss thrashing Old Media.
FOR EXAMPLE, I’ve been asking no end: How the hell did Dr. Charles Chante become an Op-Ed page columnist at the Philippine Star?
With kindof due respect to the doctor, I am nevertheless shocked by his writing, which I could do by Googling and cut-and-pasting.
BUT MORE THAN THAT, I would terribly miss pseudo-meta-analyzing the news stories in Old Media.
HENCE, with no Charles Chante to thrash, without the source to bash and parody, with no media reference to footnote my thrashing fits, I’d be like being cast adrift at sea with no land in sight.
What would be the point of my existence now?
SO GET READY FOR THIS. I’m seeing daylight. The paradox is beginning to be clear: Old Media’s relevance is that it is irrelevant. Get the idea.
(Ok, I’ll give it to you. Old Media’s pretense is the perfect foil for our free-wheeling blogosphere. Naks. What dya think?)
SECOND QUESTION: Are there means to regain the glory of old journalism?
Answer: Yes, by becoming relevant in ways other than the relevance of irrelevance.
All of Old Media is SELF-CONSCIOUS about the rap of irrelevance.
By putting up websites and hiring bloggers, the old doddering media has co-opted the blogosphere, and is thus relevant anew.
POT AND KETTLE
Those bloggers accusing Old Media of crap and lost glory are a case of the pot taking, well, potshots at the crappy kettle. Yawn.
You see, Google a keyword and hope you don’t end up in a blogsite that’s either half-crappy or well, just downright full of crap – like one pseudo-blog put up by a jilted lover out to spite her lover-priest.
To illustrate more: CARLOS CONDE’S MAKING A MOLEHILL OUT OF A MOUNTAIN
If I were this expletive-deleted Carlos Conde, and blogged that the Eraserheads reunion gig at the Fort was a sham, I’d still be able to lure with the right tags and keywords the thousands of netizens into buying my belittling of the Eraserheads.
IN OTHER WORDS, most of the blogosphere is bereft of self-censorship and editorial oversight. It’s cold and violent and misleading out there unless Google directs you ASAP to the commonsensical blogs.
In that sense, Carlos Conde, complicating himself as a member of Old Media, inadvertently self-critiqued himself as a blogger, sortof, in an outstanding case of foot-in-the-mouth disease.
NONETHELESS:
1) The blogosphere is no doubt FREER than the supposed free Free Press, radio, and TV.
2) The blogosphere is more democratized than Old Media as it even empowers the common grammarless blogger.
3) It is unhindered by the need to have ads and commercial breaks.
4) It allows for the GENUINE conversation on issues among anonymous+unnamed+self-identified commenters+bloggers.
IRONY OF IRONIES
IT’S IRONIC and HYPOCRITICAL that people from the Old Media, those who have turned to blogging, like the notorious and caricaturized Eraserheads detractor Carlos Conde, decry the anonymity of commenters whose candor is brutal.
These Old-Media types are now nostalgic for the censorship and editorial oversight in Old Media.
I MEAN, I forgot to mention the reason for the hypocrisy there: Aren’t the Old Media people adamant in protecting the ID of many of their story sources so that these sources can speak their minds freely?????
DOWNRIGHT HYPOCRITICAL AND IDIOTIC!
The keyword here is freedom. It is what the blogosphere is running on.
STILL, let’s not go overboard
In spite of the transcendent nature of the blogosphere, the geopolitical reality means that we Filipinos are still tethered to the dynamics of the Third World.
THAT IS, the question How can Old Media regain old glory? is premature at best. To ask such a question assumes that the glory is lost and smacks of being out of touch with the 3D reality on the ground, and of too much internet surfing.
Glory lost? Where?
In the Third World where internet penetrance is third-worldish, Old Media is still king. It could be relevant if only for that reason.
The blogger is cut down to size. The netizen is just a citizen. The net is the fish net.
THIRD QUESTION/S: Is blogging light years away from being acceptable means for credible journalism? What are the alternatives and where do you think is the proper place of blogging in the grand scheme of media consumption in the 21st century?
The place is right here right now.
Bloggers doing credible journalism are just sooo now, man. (Maybe except Carlos Conde.)
Heard of TalkingPointsMemo.com?
In the US where internet is accessible, a lot of Old-Media outfits are downsizing in the face of blogs that do Old-Media journalism (like TalkingPointsMemo.com). This is aside from the websites of the Old Media.
PLUS, blogging quickens the reporting via the grammarless common tao performing real-time citizen’s journalism that’s less authoritative but never bogged down by editorial oversight and worry over ads and style and grammar and formats anathema to subheadings like the “NONETHELESS” subheading above, which is bleeding to the margin (or is it just my browser?).
FOR EXAMPLE, when the Eraserheads planned the reunion concert, bloggers blogged about it ahead of Old Media.
Now, if you will excuse me, before I even thrash Old Media, I need to read it. On a lazy Sunday, maybe the one shining relevance of newspapers is that they can withstand my short attention span. While I source the internet for quick bites of data, the newspapers and FHMs are for easing out and lying back for a long leisurely read on a lazy Sunday morning.
Good morning. Later, the thrashing.
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