Jay Rosen's naive, idealistic cororavirus coverage ideas

Rosen may make a great prof, but as I've noted before, he's not in the trenches, and ideas before coming from him have shown that he doesn't fully get the trenches.

Ditto on his five ideas for coronavirus media coverage.

Idea No. 1 would require upsetting editorial as well as corporate mindsets. It would also probably, if done on a big enough scale, require the DOJ suspending antitrust laws during at least the "new normal." Funny that Rosen doesn't consider any of this.

Flip side? Jay, imagine this thing called the "Associated Press." But yet, larger dailies and daily chains want to do their own stories even though, via the AP and some collaboration with it, what you propose already exists.

Idea No. 1, problem 2? Rosen wanting to call in big philanthropic organizations. Seeing the Texas Trib upfront at its 10-year anniversary, Jay, I can tell you that, maybe that will help, but probably not as much as you think, and not without problems itself.

Idea No. 2? It's called data-driven journalism or similar, and it's being done as we speak. Weekly, if not daily, updates on testing, along with cases and fatalities. Really, Jay?

Idea No. 3? This is at best about semi-iffy news analysis. A lot of independent websites have noted we may NEVER fully go back to the old normal. And if we do get there, nobody has a good idea of when.

Idea No. 4? Some teevee outlets have cut away from Trump pressers in medias res. So, this is to some degree happening there. Print folks? As the likes of Lakoff know, never printing a lie in the first place, rather than printing it and doing news analysis, is the best way to refute it.

BUT ... there's this thing called the Interwebz, Jay. If readers of, say, the librul San Francisco Chronicle want to read the blow-by-blow from Trump's latest Rose Garden speech, they'll go to the AP. (Speaking of, insert paywalls observation here.)

Idea No. 5? It would be nice, but where do you get people to do that???? Actually, Muck Rack may do it for you.

Jay Rosen isn't the biggest idiot among Gnu Media gurus. That would be Clay Shirky and Jeff Jarvis tied for first, and the two of them have a big lead on the pomposity.

But Rosen and Mathew Ingram would be leaders of the second tier.

More than a decade ago, Rosen opposed paywalls. Dunno his current stance, but I don't think he's ever admitted he was even partially wrong. (All four of these biggies opposed them, for that matter, and AFAIK, none have fessed up to being even partially wrong.)

Of direct relevance to his Item 1? Also more than a decade ago, Rosen proclaimed the end of media atomization. If it were only true, you wouldn't be writing about Idea 1, amirite?

Nearly a decade ago, CJR took Rosen (and even more, Shirky, Jarvis and a few others) to the cleaners, and over other things besides just opposition to paywalls. This too is directly relevant to the new round of drivel from Rosen.

I quote:

The irony, though, is that in the second decade of the twenty-first century—thanks in no small part to FON thinkers, including, sad to say, Rosen—journalism is now enslaved to a new system of production. Publishing is now possible all the time and in limitless amounts, forever and ever, amen. And, given the market system, and the way the world is, that which is possible has quickly become imperative. Suddenly, the “god” of the old twenty-four-hour news cycle looks like lovely Aphrodite compared to the remorseless Ares that is the web “production routine.” And this new enslavement—trust me here—hurts readers far more even than it does the reporters who must do the blogging, tweeting, podcasting, commenting, and word-cloud formation until all hours of the day and night. This is why, IMHO, journalism is great these days at incremental news, not so good at stepping back and grabbing hold of the narrative. In some circles, this is frowned upon. 

And, of course, since then, the push for video and other things has only made this worse. Lots to apologize for there, Rosen.

One of the biggest? Rosen's idea of network-driven news has been imploded by the biggest "network" for fake news, aka Twitter.

Finally, and also pretty directly relevant? A little over two years ago, in fellating Yascha Mounk, Rosen had a boatload of mistakes, starting with calling an op-ed column a news story. He's right about avoiding the he said-she said model of journalism, but that doesn't mean calling opinion columns news stories.

Speaking of he said-she said, I don't think Rosen has really stepped wider than the two traditional American political parties on that issue. The fellating of Mounk would also support that.