Henry Farrell and His Commentors Say Smart Things

I was going to point everybody to Henry Farrell saying smart things about the Washington NPC journalists-and-webloggers lunch:

Crooked Timber : I was at the bloggers-meet-journalists lunch a few days ago which Matt Stoller and others have been talking about, and even tried to say something, but was shut down by the moderator, who thought that I was going to say something else altogether. What struck me (and what I was going to say) was that the journalists there didn't seem to understand.... I can understand how the people at the Post would get upset at hundreds of commenters from Atrios's or Kos's comments sections showing up... while they're nothing on, say, the denizens of the slimepit at LGF, their manner of criticism can be... robust....

But even so, the incomprehension... seemed to me to point to something more fundamental. Journalism and blogging have different internal systems of authority. Newspaper articles aspire to presenting a comprehensive, neutral and authoritative judgement.... Blogposts are quite different -- they're arguments in an ongoing debate.... They comment on, and respond to, what others are saying. The point is that they have very different -- and clashing -- notions of where authority and responsibility come from. Each newspaper article has the form of a discrete statement, which is supposed to be as authoritative as possible on its own ground. Each blogpost has the form of an intervention in an ongoing conversation -- the blogger's authority rests in part on her willingness to respond to others and engage in argument with them.... These forms of authority are difficult to reconcile with each other, because the latter in large part undermines the former. If journalists start systematically responding to their critics, and getting drawn into conversations about whether or not they were right when they made a particular claim, then they're effectively admitting that the articles they have written aren't all that authoritative in the first place.... Thus... the tendency for journalists like Jack Shafer to dismiss criticism from bloggers and their commenters as "organized riots" and lynch mobs. It's a fundamental threat to their notions of where journalistic authority comes from....

But the gerbil that powers Crooked Timber appears to have worn himself out, so there's no point in going there now.

However, here are three comments I added to Henry's thread. Looking at it again, I am once again reminded of why people interested in learning about stuff should visit Crooked Timber at least once a week.