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RT @NiemanLab: Good morning! The Pentagon adds WikiLeaks to its list of "enemies threatening the security of the United States" http://j
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From their "about" page:
I think it's still a little too early to know if this is going to be cool or not. The site looks nice enough, kind of plain though. None of the stories really jump out a me. It looks like a big "watch this space!" sign.
Boy, I'm glad they got all that money to do "public-interest journalism" like this:
http://www.chicagonewscoop.org/cab-accepting-credit-priceless/
Even the Red Eye doesn't run stories this trite.
My question is will it be a straight news outlet or just another boring left-wing propaganda site like the Sun-Times and Chicago Trib are?
That's an interesting question.
Can I ask you a few things?
- What are some "straight news outlets" based on your definition?
- Where do you place the S-T and Tribune on the political spectrum relative to eachother? I always thought the S-T was for hard core urban libs while the Tribune was the voice of the conservative suburbanite.
The Trib used to be more conservative. But for the last several years it has been indistinguishable from the Sun-Times. The Trib's new editor is a raging lefty and the paper has gone left accordingly.
On your other question, what is a "straight news" outlet…. there isn't one. 95% of all "news" outlets are liberal propaganda. Some are conservative ones. But, here is the thing, ALL the liberal news outlets pretend they are serious, straight news and have NO left-wing leanings.
So, my question is, what is this new news outlet in Chicago characterizing itself as?
The "liberal media" trope is a great way to rile up a journalist. I've never understood the objection. News organizations are about uncovering and digging up new information. Their core job is to change the state of information from intelligence into public knowledge. Change is the essence of liberalism. Hence news organizations are inherently liberal. I've never understood why this could be considered a knock against them or why news orgs didn't head off the criticism with a line of thought like this.
I agree, it'll be interesting to see how this site develops. Hopefully they fire the designer who put their logo together...
There is a difference between the benign ideal of "digging up new information" (and I'd argue against saying it is a liberal idea), and actively pushing left-wing ideas and policies. I am for the former and against the later.
Still, even that aside, I find it wholly legitimate to say "we are left-wingers and proud of it and here are our ideas." THAT is honesty. That is real.
The problem is that ABC, NBC, CNN, etc all PRETEND that they are merely news reporters and not activists. That, however, is an out right lie.
Then there is the lie that there IS such an organization or history of the news being just "the news." There has never been a time in US history where news outlets are straight news with no agenda but reporting. In fact, there was never a time in the US that anyone even expected this to be du jour until just after WWII when the media turned exclusively left-wing and then began to pretend that they were non-partisan and unbiased.
Heck, in the early days of the Republic candidates created their OWN newspapers to push their candidacy. It was expected. In every town there were at least two papers, one conservative, one liberal (essentially). Some had three four and five papers all backing their own candidates and agenda. Go back to the 1920s or earlier and bring up the absurd concept that newspapers were to be non-partisan ad you;d be laughed out of town!
My battle with "news" outlets today is that they are liars from the top by pretending they are non-partisan. They are not. They are Euro-esque, un-American, left-wingers. And they are lying to the public by pretending to be "just" the news.
Where do you think the stories posted to the WC fall, politically? Do you see a trend? I've heard people say they think the site's too liberal; others, conservative.
Well, let's face it. Most Chicagoans are liberals and so is the city itself, so it is a bit hard to have a Chicago centric site and have it filled with conservatives! LOL
I'd say that WindyCity is for sure a very liberal site. Still, there are some great links to Chicago specific stories here and the site is very useful on that level. One just must accept that a site about a liberal city is going to have predominantly liberal members.
I am sure that you can count the number of conservative members here on one hand. You'd get me and…. well, maybe just me! LOL. Seriously, tho, I fully understand that I'd be outnumbered here. Nature of the beast, I'd say.
I can say for certain that there's more than just you on here. Perhaps others are a bit more guarded.
Yeah, I know. I was just joking. I realized as I was typing that "outing" them might not be a good idea.
RedEye's transit reporting is pretty excellent. They are, after all a commuter paper.
Who's the audience for this?
Maybe just the out of work journalists that want to join it?
The audience is whoever's paying the bills. So that's the MacArthur Foundation and the NYTimes. They're writing whatever those guys want them to be writing.
So they ARE writing for other journalists and not an audience!
Is it my imagination or are there only about four short pieces on that site?
Dude, if your journalism is THAT good, you don't need more than four pieces. Duh.
Brad, Mobilevulgus, etal.
In general, I tend to agree with M.Vulgus. As someone coming from a generally Libertarian/conservative point of view and an avid consumer of news from a wide variety of media platforms, it's hard not to get a bit frustrated at an alleged "unbiased" MSM that conducts itself in a blatantly biased way.
As example, there are reports that AP assigned 11 reporters to fact check Sarah Palin's book. Do you think anyone fact checked either of President Obama's two books? My guess is no.
Recently, reportedly even the NYT newsroom had a come to Jesus when they finally realized how many legit news stories Fox News was scooping them on.
In a related manner, there would have been no need for right wing talk radio or Andrew Breitbart's growing news organization if the MSM had tried harder to cover some of the stories important to those of us right of center.
While I get frustrated with what I see as a heavy liberal bias, my solution is to consume even more news and try to filter out the perceived biases.
I read the Trib, Sun-Times, WSJ, NYT, Drudge, HuffPo, listen to NPR, BBC, Rush Limbaugh, Savage, Hannity, Levin, etal, and even the painfully boring Air America from time to time. From there, I make my own judgments.
Personally Brad, I like the democracy of WC. It seems fundamentally fair to me.
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