Dan Rather vs. Ted White

Presidential electoral success has been variously attributed, but the last two generations of historians and reporters accepted the Theodore White model. His pathbreaking "Making of the President, 1960" chronicled the triumph of John F. Kennedy. The author's focus was on the media, and the battle between Nixon and the Kennedy image. White was a Kennedy man throughout, but his concise style was both entertaining and convincing. White won a Pulitzer prize and followed with accounts of the next three Presidential races. And it's hard to dispute that the beneficiary of the mass media theme de jour (Goldwater's a nut in 1964, the new Nixon in 1968, Washington outsider needed in 1976, what's a bar code? in 1992, Dole is mean in 1996) usually wins.

Not so fast, Dan, Tom and Peter. So, what's the next meme?

1. The media monopoly's broken, thanks to Dan Rather. And another of Dan's victims is the late Ted White--or at least his thesis. For the first time in 40 years, major media's confused: they're being bypassed; their themes are ridiculed or ignored. If you listen carefully, you can hear all the post-Watergate "broadcast journalism" graduates moan "It wasn't supposed to be this way!"



2. Blogs are here to stay. Blogs deserve plenty of credit in general (and, of course, kudos to Powerline and LGF for providing verifiable facts to rebut Rather's blather).



3. Holmes, your market awaits. Almost a century ago, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Chief Justice of the United States, advanced the now-accepted rationale for free speech:

   [T]he ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas--that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution. Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 630 (1919).

   Various imperfections in that market (transaction costs and barriers to entry) left Holmes' ideal un-realized as a practical matter, and news filtered through big media. In Time Magazine, Andrew Sullivan explains Holmes' triumph:

   The Web has done one revolutionary thing to journalism: it has made the price of entry into the media market minimal. In days gone by, you needed a small fortune to start up a simple magazine or newspaper. Now you need a laptop and a modem.

4. Though any given blogger may be nuts, the blogosphere isn't. Former CBS-er Jonathan Klein contrasted blogs and traditional media attempting to defend Rather:

   You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at '60 Minutes'] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.

   But, of course, the pajama boys got Ra^therGate right when CBS lied/goofed/coordinated-with-Democrats. TechCentral's Frederick Turner explains why Klein is clueless, calling Internet blogs:

   an extraordinary example of what chaos and complexity theorists call spontaneous self-organization. Out of a highly communicative but apparently chaotic medium an ordered, sensitively responsive, but robust order emerges, acting as an organism of its own. Suddenly a perfectly-matched team of specialists had self-assembled out of the ether.

   Andrew Sullivan shows the similarity between blog and broadcaster:

   One of the best [blogs] is a site started by a law professor in Tennessee, Instapundit.com. This "amateur" has earned the trust of his readers simply by his track record--just as the New York Times did a century ago. . . . [T]he beauty of the blogosphere is that if you make a mistake, someone will soon let you know. And if you don't correct immediately, someone will let you know again. And again. . . . It's the market at its purest.

   With every man a publisher, Holmes wins again. And this time, "a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters" (or MS Word) outdid traditional publishers.



5. The media not dead, just changing. Many folks won't trust bloggers, even including Internet-savvy columnist Cathy Young: "what finally settled my doubts [about the forged memos] was reporting by mainstream media such as ABC News and The Washington Post." So, as Andrew Sullivan captures:

   Blogs will not replace major media. Blogs depend on the journalistic resources of big media to do the bulk of reporting and analysis. What blogs do is provide the best scrutiny of big media imaginable--ratcheting up the standards of the professionals, adding new voices, new perspectives and new facts every minute. The genius lies not so much in the bloggers themselves but in the transparent system they have created. In an era of polarized debate, the truth has never been more available.

The lesson of the past two weeks isn't blogs are the answer; they're part of an answer. I wish it were more. But, in truth, I'd never thought they--we--would get this far this fast. So roll over, Ted White--and tell Dan, Tom and Peter the news.