ReadMe | Slate's Shafer On the Web Metabolism

digital culture

tech news

e-business

net art

media

op-ed

digital culture

Slate's Shafer On the Web Metabolism

Web journalism spins into control and Shafer is lovin' every minute of it.

by Christina Jeng | 05.01.2004 ReadMe 4.5 | Print it.

He’s a bulldog who routinely sinks his teeth into big names such as Howell Raines, whom he calls the “delusional figure worthy of a Saul Bellow novel or at least an episode of CSI: Psycho Ward,” and Walter H. Annenberg, whom he considers the “Billionaire Son of [a] Mobster [and] Enemy of Journalism.”

Jack Shafer, editor-at-large for the webzine Slate and media critic for the ‘zine’s “Press Box” column of media criticism, is the 2004 Hearst New Media Professional-in-Residence at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Jack Shafer. Photo: Christina Jeng © Christina Jeng 2004

“At a time [when] everyone’s a press critic, every blogger seems to have some deep, meaningful take on journalism, [Jack] Shafer’s work stands out,” said Sreenath Sreenivasan, associate professor of professional practices, in his introduction to Shafer’s lecture. The lecture was held at the School of Journalism building located in Columbia's Morningside Heights campus at Broadway and 116th Street in Manhattan on April 29, 2004.

As Professional-in-Residence, Shafer gave the annual Hearst New Media lecture titled: “Spinning Into Control: The Good News About the Second Generation of Web Journalism." The lecture drew a crowd of about 50, which included old and new media professionals alike. Among them were prominent figures such as Victor Navasky, Publisher and Editorial Director of The Nation who now teaches magazine writing at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism; Nicholas Lemann, who writes for The Washington Post and The Atlantic Monthly and who is also the dean at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism; as well as Judith Shulevitz, Slate’s former New York editor and now a columnist for The New York Times Book Review.

Shortly before the lecture, Shafer chatted with a crowd of journalistic notables and graduate students. As they mingled in the Joseph Pulitzer World Room in Columbia’s School of Journalism building, sipping Heinekens or red wine and noshing on grapes, cous cous, and brie, Shafer himself remained empty handed. The shrewd columnist, who Sreenivasan asserted “[goes] after the mightiest names in our society […] to slaughter all kinds of sacred cows,” has the build of a football player, towering above the group that gathered around him.

Joseph Pulitzer World Room Stained Glass. Photo: Christina Jeng © Christina Jeng 2004

Shafer’s savage wit is even more intimidating than his physical presence. Shafer, who edited two city weeklies, Washington City Paper and SF Weekly, before joining Slate in 1996, has written on new media, the press, and drug policy for publications such as The New York Times Magazine and Inquiry. In Blair Bliar, a follow up “Press Box” column of Shafer’s New York Times review of Jayson Blair’s book Burning Down My Master’s House, Shafer called the notorious plagiarist’s memoir the “longest insincere apology I have ever encountered.” More recently he called popular gossip blogs such as Gawker and Wonkette “heaving pukes.” Although Blair was none too happy with the book review, Wonkette said, “To be accused of doling out cheap shots by Jack Shafer is, truly, a compliment from the master."

But even the master gets nervous. Shafer, who planned to speak on the Web’s effect on journalism today confessed, “I hope to avoid humiliation. You’re standing in front of a lot of smart people and you just want to be smart and clever.”

When Navasky walked into the room, Shafer gave him a two-handed handshake and thanked him for coming. Later, Navasky said he came because he was “curious” to know the fate of print journalism.

Victor Navasky. Photo: Christina Jeng © Christina Jeng 2004

“I come from an old-fashioned print world,” Navasky said. “I still believe print has more power than cyberspace […] but virtually all of the younger people I talk with who have any role in the Web or blogworld tell me they get more response from the things they do on the Web than they do for print pieces.”

Navasky said he isn’t sure if “getting a response,” as a result of the interactive nature of the Web, is evidence of greater influence than print journalism.

“With each new technological invention, people say it’s going to do away with what came before [it],” Navasky said. “They said movies were going to do away with reading, […] movies were going to do away with radio, television was going to do away with movies, paperback was going to do away with the hardcover. It never happens. It’s always a new add-on.”

At 7:30 P.M., people began to trickle into the lecture hall. Meanwhile, Shafer prepared for his very first Power Point presentation. After an introduction from Lemann and Sreenivasan, Shafer used the Power Point presentation to explain how the Web’s greatest attribute is its ability to fill the “media gap.” Prior to the Internet, he argued, the media could not serve news consumers multiple times a day in a convenient and economically efficient way, as the online media now do.

Sreenath Sreenivasan Photo: Christina Jeng © Christina Jeng 2004

In the past, Shafer asserted, phones could provide instantaneous communication, but [only] to a small audience of two conversationalists; television and radio could reach hundreds of thousands but would be too costly to produce; and newsletters, newspapers, and weekly magazines had a large audience but took at least a day to reach news consumers.

In Shafer’s opinion, the Web’s instantaneousness has leveled the playing field for critics like himself as well as the journalists he critiques.

“Traditionally, press critics have operated on a monthly basis, like The Columbia Journal Review, A.J. Liebling, or The New Yorker,” he said, “[but] I try to use the Web metabolism to provide the same news cycle, with the same demands on me as the journalists I criticize.” For Shafer, the Web metabolism means opening up his newspaper every morning and writing his criticism the same day it hits the stands.

Shafer's Power Point Presentation on Media Gap. Photo: Christina Jeng © Christina Jeng 2004

Ironically, it’s precisely the speed at which news travels on the Net and its ease-of-use as a publishing medium that led other journalists who attended the lecture to question the accuracy of much online media.

“I’ve talked to the fact-checking directors at The Nation, Harpers, and The New Yorker, and they told me [that] it’s a rare piece where they don’t find errors,” said Navasky. "[So] is it that the fact checkers at Slate are more accurate and fastidious in regards to Harpers, The New Yorker, or The Nation?”

Slate has no fact-checking department, Shafer said, but its readers ensure its accuracy. Slate readers are “always looking over your shoulder,” he asserted, and the “rotten bastards will bomb your e-mail box” if you get something wrong. Moreover, a fact-checking department encourages writers to be reckless, he said. “I’ve talked to reporters who admit they won’t dot every 'I' [saying], ‘Oh, the fact-checkers will pick it up.’” Also, added Shafer, his readers are a reliable source of solid information. According to Shafer, writers who choose their e-mail correspondents carefully can potentially recruit scores of unpaid, tireless researchers—which he has. We shouldn’t ignore the Web’s democratizing effect either, he added. Search engines such as Google allow even an amateur to report a story.

Jen Chung, editor of the popular New York City blog Gothamist, attended the lecture and said that "to a degree" she sees herself as a journalist.

“Since I’m telling people about things and they’re reading the site,” she said, “I do feel a sort of responsibility not to mess up the facts [and] I try to attribute things.”

However, in Shafer’s opinion, there is one advantage that the old-media “priesthood” has that the Web journalist doesn’t: the ability to say, “I’m a reporter for The New York Times.” Big-media press passes give print journalists access the typical blogger doesn’t have, he said.

At the same time, said Shafer, old-media journalists, whether print or broadcast, don’t realize they’ve been “webified”—become dependent on the Web for their stories. LexisNexis, and now Google, have made newsroom librarians with their yellowing files an endangered species, he said.

In his opinion, the Web is central to the way journalism is done these days. “When you’re watching TV news, [they] suggest that you go to their website to see news updates or graphics or maps, or analysis or transcripts,” Shafer said. “Newspapers and magazines publish many of their best breaking stories on the Web, always before the paper.”

However, he conceded, not everything has been digitized. If you only rely on the Web, you’ll have a big blank spot in your reporting, Shafer argued. So don’t throw away your telephones, TV’s, or newspapers, he advised the professional and student journalists in attendance.

During the spirited question-and-answer session that followed his 45-minute lecture, one attendee noted the Web’s importance as a cheap publishing medium and asked Shafer what, in his opinion, is the best way to fund Net media.

Never losing a beat, the ever-astute columnist replied, “Pornography.”

RELATED LINKS

Meet the (Meta)Press: Jack Shafer

Media Critics Rave (and Kvetch) About the Internet's Impact

Christina Jeng is a freelance journalist, co-managing editor of ReadMe, and contributing writer for The Washington Square News.

Recent comments by Bill Gates have stirred up a small backlash among copyright reformists

08.21.2004 - 4:06 pm EDT
"Roshan shares a personal anecdote about P2P software"

07.12.2004 - 1:02 pm EDT
"Sanrio's hyper-cute money maker possesses three foot body"

08.21.2004 - 3:52 pm EDT
"Driftnet Writers Too Broke to Bid!"