Read the "catfight" (Eric A is a bitch, isn't he?). I agree with you--who gives a shit.
 

*I* give a shit, because there's a category mistake here. Eric Alterman is not a journalist. He's a historian and a critic of journalism. If he weren't unpleasant (to journalists) and unpopular (among journalists) he wouldn't be doing his job.

The fact that he has a column at The Nation does not make him a journalist. In the first place, it's The Nation. Nobody reads The Nation. In the second place, most of his work appears in his blog at "Media Matters." If you don't know what Media Matters is, you should; and OF COURSE the kewl kids of Washington journalism dislike it. It's about them and how they've fiddled around with stupid crap for roughly eight years (I'd date it to Whitewater) while the country has gone stepwise and recently quite steeply into the toilet.

Compare and contrast Halberstam. Check out Glenn Greenwald's homages. And don't pretend that being in a catfight with a journalist makes one a journalist, or even a cat. Eric Alterman is neither.

Read his book When Presidents Lie (and no, not W: FDR, JFK, LBJ, and Reagan) if you think he's into ephemera. Just because some kids at the junior high walk up to a parent after Career Day and insult him, that doesn't make them cooler than him. It's a category mistake.

But here's the other thing: journalists DO matter. Millions of Americans think of Time as their sole source of SERIOUS news (since the TV is obviously crap). They are being profoundly misled. Kristol? Krauthammer? Are you kidding me?

And where, by the way, is the outrage at Bill Kristol, who's never done anything or been right about anything, having a job teaching at Harvard?

Standing Eagle
 

Eric Alterman has been unpleasant since long before he was a "historian," and it's not because of his incisive criticism of the field. It's because he's an arrogant, self-important windbag.

And you know me, SE—I'm not generally into saying nasty things about people, though I may, on occasion, criticize their work. For Mr. Alterman, I make an exception.

Everyone knows what Media Matters is, SE, don't worry, and no one thinks it's uncool. It's a fine organization. You do have a bit of a superiority complex, you know. (Are you Eric Alterman? Because, well, that would also describe him.)

Millions of Americans think of TIME as their sole serious source of news?
 

"Millions of Americans think of TIME as their sole serious source of news?"

Yes. God help us, yes, they do.

Four million a week in circulation (The Nation has less than 200,000).


Alterman's dislikability (or that of my persona on this blog) is a point I'm happy to concede. I wouldn't know. But his work is important -- like that of Al Gore (who wore earth tones), John Edwards (who got a $400 haircut), Bill Clinton (who had a disgusting extramarital affair), and John Kerry (who married an extremely wealthy woman). Are those four peccadilloes in any way equivalent to each other, or relevant to public life? Seeing how gossip aficionados handle them, and how political operatives leverage them, you would think so.

If you criticized Alterman's work ALONG WITH his personality then I might be interested in both claims and how they go together.

Ana Maria Cox's work, on the other hand, is not important. I don't think she'd even be offended by that statement. It's ephemera. I'll be glad to be corrected if I'm wrong about that in a case or two; my general impression is not the result of paying much attention to her.

It's all too easy when one gets into gossip mode (and I don't mind that mode any more than Alterman says he does) to distort facts and roles, and make it seem as if (like politicians) "journalists" are "all the same." So who cares who's right?

Well, I care who's right. Many of Time's editorial decisions have been irresponsible (consider how much the Virgin Mary, or 'angels,' have been cover stories in this time of crisis; consider Ann Coulter getting a cover story that presented her as if she were a serious participant in civic life).

And these people are not all the same. AM Cox is a gossip columnist on the White House beat. Alterman is not only NOT a beat journalist in any way --

--he WASN'T AT the White House Correspondents' Dinner. He was at a brunch the day before.

Should you print a correction, Richard? You're the only one I see in this incident that got that fact wrong. Alterman isn't a White House correspondent (at least in my reading), and he WASN'T at the dinner.

A gossip columnist would hardly bother with the correction I am suggesting to you, Richard; a journalist would have gladly printed it in the past but would be grudging and defensive these days; an historian would get it right the first time. These are different kinds of jobs. All are valuable, but some are more valuable than others (call me elitist if you like). I think part of being a blogger is thinking deliberately about which role to occupy when.



...Yes, I'm being a pain in the ass, but why not? This is a public forum and being liked is not the point. Cheers!


Standing Eagle
 

...Interesting that Gawker says the brunch was the day after the dinner while Alterman says it was the day before. Who's right? I'm guessing the guy who was there.

Not all journalism is created equal.

SE
 

Oh, Standing Eagle, you're right: historians never get anything wrong.

Of course I am happy to correct the fact that Alterman wasn't at the White House Correspondents Dinner, but at a brunch beforehand. If your point is that he wouldn't go to such an insidery thing, well, the conversation—"John's party for Walter!"—suggests otherwise.

You are comparing Alterman to Edwards, Clinton, and Kerry? On the one hand, Eric would love that comparison. But after thinking about it for a second, he'd probably come to the conclusion that he's better than that....

And by the way, SE, I'm familiar with Time's circulation. IT was your presumption that its subscribers think of it as their "sole serious source of news" that I was questioning.
 

"It was your presumption that its subscribers think of it as their "sole serious source of news" that I was questioning."

Yeah, I should have been clearer. My main point wasn't the size of its circulation but the reason people subscribe to it. (Evidence I suppose would be in the way it markets itself; too much work to find.)

I know many, many people who DO think of it as exactly that -- a way to be serious about what's going on in the country, and to get unsensational news and insight.
It's *quite* common for busy un-intellectual people to think of it as the multivitamin of civic seriousness -- no other nutritious intake necessary.

It's a fair point you make about Alterman as 'insider.'

SE
 

Was I comparing Alterman to the politicians? I thought I was comparing the gossipy treatment of his worklife to the gossipy treatment of their worklives.

SE
 

No correction yet, Richard...
(but that's not why I'm posting another comment; I've been pain-in-the-assy enough already. Maybe that should be the name of my blog: PITA, rather than SITD).

Is it name-dropping if I cite Halberstam at you on the topic of journalistic likeability?

Halberstam's speech to the Columbia School of Journalism, 2005: "One of the things I learned, the easiest of lessons, was that the better you do your job, often going against conventional mores, the less popular you are likely to be. (So, if you seek popularity, this is probably not the profession for you.)"

Standing Eagle
 

SE, I'll correct the post, though I'd thought the correction below was adequate. No biggie.

Halberstam was talking about being liked by people in power. As you can tell from your local paper, he was quite liked by journalists. Alterman is liked by neither. (Although he did use to like to tout the fact that he is/was "best friends" with George Stephanopoulos...which I find entirely believable.
 

But these days, Richard, the journalists ARE the ones in power -- or WAY too close to them. Can you see daylight, for example, between Bill Kristol the pundit and Bill Kristol the shaper of foreign policy? Between Tony Snow the anchorman and Tony Snow the White House press secretary? Between the people listening to Stephen Colbert last year, and not laughing, and the other people listening to Stephen Colbert last year, and not laughing?

Good back-and-forth here. Respeck.

Standing Eagle
 

More on nexus of journalism and power:
The potential for alliance between journalists and politicians is the reason that Halberstam uses the phrase 'the conventional mores' rather than a phrase like 'the interests of politicians.' Convention can include, or be constituted by, journalists, just as much as it can exclude them.

In fact, Halberstam's 2004 Vanity Fair essay (also via Glenn Greenwald) makes this point explicitly:

"Very early on I became a target of the war's supporters in the White House, in the Pentagon (which had lots of powerful publicity machinery to use against wayward reporters), *and among hawkish journalists,* because of my pessimistic reporting."

Moreover, popularity among journalists *now* for Halberstam is rather easier to achieve, because hindsight is 20/20. He was, after all, right, according to the current conventional mores (which have themselves been created with the help of historians). Woodward and Bernstein were infinitely more popular in 1991, as old lions of the profession, than they were in 1971.

Standing Eagle
 

Just a bit more puking fodder (and I forgot to say, Richard, that I liked that header):

http://mediamatters.org/items/200602100005


SE
 

Uh-oh, Richard! Looks like you're wrong about journalists liking Halberstam.

At the time, many of them found him to be a jackass (and perhaps he was):

http://www.slate.com/id/2164960/

This compendium of anecdotes that insult Halberstam and make him look bad is all located in the past, of course, since in recent years he was shown to have been right about important things from back then, and therefore not safe to attack. Conventional wisdom then congealed around admiration of him rather than dislike.

But what's this? A negative cite from 2001? Halberstam being called "A windbag with periodic clarity"? This throws my theory into a cocked hat! I thought people were only called windbags when they threatened people in power! And journalistic writers are never the ones in power --

http://www.slate.com/id/2000286/entry/1008234/

--But wait again! Who is the author of this little item that accuses Halberstam of writing with a bloated and insufferable prose style, and of resting on his laurels as a nostalgic and out-of-shape "literary celebrity"?
It's some fellow named Ted Widmer.

And what's his literary or journalistic credential as a reviewer? He tells us himself: "I worked in the National Security Council from 1997 to 2000, and I wanted to know how a great journalist would interpret the issues that seemed so important at the time."

Game, set, match.

Both in the rule and in the exception Halberstam's claim about journalistic unlikeability holds true. You gore someone's ox, you become unpopular with that someone; it turns out to deserve goring, you are lionized. Your being a jackass, or not, has nothing to do with it.

And this applies equally whether the owner of the ox is a powerful figure in government, a reviewer, a journalist, or (as in the case of Ted Widmer, in a phenomenon that has become increasingly common as the media world has become more permeable to those in power, and vice versa) some combination of those roles.


Standing Eagle


PS. The question of Halberstam (or Alterman, or Standing Eagle) actually BEING a jackass, or his book actually being bloated, is not relevant to this larger point about the imperative journalists should feel: to not care what people think of them.
 

Wow, Alterman's posted something on his blog in response to this thread that's actually quite catty.
 

I would expect no less. Which probably goes to show that Eric has a Google search on for himself....
 

Hey Standing Eagle—I'm not the only one who got the place/time of the conversation wrong—so did Eric Alterman!

http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=12539
 

Oh snap! I was ready to chalk up a point for you and against Alterman -- for whatever that's worth.

But then I followed the link and found that you're referring to Alterman's calling the exchange a "cocktail-party conversation." But this is a figure of speech. He doesn't literally mean he had a cocktail. And in fact in the next paragraph, literally three lines later, he sets the scene quite clearly at the same 'brunch' that he and others referred to elsewhere.

A cocktail-party conversation is a type of conversation; Alterman is neither wrong nor misleading about where this exchange happened. Nice try.

None of which is to disagree that he might be a dislikeable person... but I say, we need more of such jackasses in this society! (if perhaps not in DC Society).

SE