“Asymmetric journalism”
This comment, posted the other day in response to the item about the book on the experiences of platoon leaders, wins the contest in which the prize was my extra copy of the platoon leaders’ book. Mark M., please send me an e-mail so I can mail it to you. ThePL and majors’ books by ...
This comment, posted the other day in response to the item about the book on the experiences of platoon leaders, wins the contest in which the prize was my extra copy of the platoon leaders' book. Mark M., please send me an e-mail so I can mail it to you.
ThePL and majors' books
by MarkM on Fri,10/02/2009 - 12:27am
This comment, posted the other day in response to the item about the book on the experiences of platoon leaders, wins the contest in which the prize was my extra copy of the platoon leaders’ book. Mark M., please send me an e-mail so I can mail it to you.
ThePL and majors’ books
by MarkM on Fri,10/02/2009 – 12:27am
Tom:
Just as we now have asymmetric warfare, which is certainly evolving in both theory and practice, we also now have asymmetric journalism. The platoon leaders compilation you cite and the majors’ book are part of this new, rich, stunning, sometimes-chaotic, multi-pronged way (largely over the Internet) to better understand the various environments of a war — and it’s available through mainstream and freelance media, soldier diaries, jihadi Web sites, policy journals, Osama audiotapes, blogs, embeds by reporters and photographers, YouTube clips from the field, academic papers, foreign media, left-right rants, NGO reports, political and military memoirs, accounts from released detainees, leaked documents from the ICRC, you name it.
Any one of these, taken alone, delivers the classic “drinking-straw view” —that is, a view not inherently inaccurate but also narrow, tunneled and tightly focused. A corporal’s view of a firefight, for example, is not necessarily the definitive one. Nor is a major’s. Nor is an emebedded journalist’s. It’s a Rashomon world.
But asymmetric journalism — or maybe it’s asymmetric history — offers great promise and a fuller accounting of what is transpiring in our wars, ourmilitary, our government and our lives.
I think he is on to something here. The claim journalism makes is, yeah, that other stuff is good, but we move around and talk to lots of people and get the overview, so we’re not just looking through a soda straw. But the platoon leader book gets an overview of that experience better than any journalist can, I think.
Journalism also is being changed by technology. The old line in newspapers was that news was defined by those who owned printing presses — that is, the rich. (The golden rule being that those who have the gold make the rules.) But nowadays everyone who has a laptop effectively can publish a daily newspaper.
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