Journeyman and Blogs

There are elements to the new show Journeyman that I am not sure are sustainable over the long run, so it’ll be interesting to see how they handle it.  One thing I forgot to mention in my quick post last night was the mention of blogs.  He’s a journaist and was troubled by the need to get confirmation from a second source.  In making a case for just running with it, he said that this was the age of blogs, so you have to publish fast and get it right later.

That’s kind of a reversal of the reputations of mainstream media and blogs, by someone who doesn’t understand, wants to affect perception, or is focused on just one aspect of how blogs work.

Currently it’s papers that are noted for pushing out stories that are wrong, sometimes even for the sake of an agenda.  Yet papers have a longstanding reputation as accurate and fact-checked, the way Journeyman tried to depict.  I learned as a young pup that reputations are too often just that, and nothing of substance, in those cases often inflated by the expert spin and marketing output of the well-reputed.  I also learned that in the workplace you usually have to do a degree of that marketing and spin, even if there is something there, just to compete.

Blogs are by their very nature an expedient form of publishing, and lend themselves to on the fly refinement of details from an initial story that may or may not be entirely accurate.  However, sooner or later, they usually get it right and actively self-correct.  Often it’s sooner to the truth than the mainstream press, and when wrong, not as slow and obscure about correction.

What the show did get right was the fact that blogs exist and are competition for the traditional press.  It just struck me that it broadly brushed the traditional and modern presses in excessively good and bad light, respectively.

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