In the wake of the scandal surrounding the LATimes’ coverage of Tupac Shakur’s death and the related Sean “Puffy” Combs’ “conspiracy,” I keep thinking about all these accusations of “unprofessional journalism” and the lack of “appropriate verification.” Is it readers’ disappointment? Self-loathing on the part of the Times? Other media outlet’s schadenfreude? Perhaps all of the above. Journalism’s commitment to the truth, and the public’s right to know it should lead to that kind of buzz. But…
…I used to be a particularly self-righteous finger-wagging reader, the kind who leapt onto every journalistic mistake, saying “We are owed better; this is embarrassing.” But now that I’m learning about the day-to-day rhythm of journalism, the rigor, the deadlines, the dead *ends* and the ever-present possibility of error under-pressure, is it really fair of me, or any of us, for that matter, to harbor such resentment toward the Times and its reporter, Chuck Philips?
I hope not to be biased. I worked at the Times for a year, and I maintain only good memories of the experience, but my “step back” from accusation doesn’t only apply to the Times. As a working journalist, my respect for the veterans has grown. But I also have to say that the Times’ swift, unprecedented apology shows 1) a surprising integrity, and 2) perhaps that feverish worry now plaguing the print media. The “if we don’t abase ourselves, make ourselves unimpeachable, how will the already waning interest reignite?” “Print is dying” is something readers and writers alike are saying. TV is more digestible, the web seductive and timely in its information distribution.
I don’t shy away from the web frenzy; hell, look where I’m writing from. I’m in a glasshouse if there ever was anyone in one. But even as an online-addicted individual, working for that online “man,” I can’t help being sad… not just because the death knell of print could very well be the end of an era and what was once thought of as “modernity,” but because there’s something…elegant, beautiful and private about interacting, much as the term is now applied to the internet, with paper and the little black dots gracing each page.
In class and among friends, I keep coming across the idea of personally tailored television and internet. The first already exists, the second is on the cusp of existing. But the thought of having the web tailored to the interests I would have exhibited based on previous clicks, links and visits is not only terrifying, not only the signal of what I see as a personally post-apocalyptic, Orwellian, Bradburyian future, but also…*the end of the information age in general.*
If one of the points of having something so remarkable and endless as the internet at our fingertips is for expansion from the comfort of home and access to any manner of knowledge, how can limiting that knowledge be a good thing? We don’t know what we don’t know. My dad always compares that kind of possible personalization to the radio v. iPod argument. In the first, there’s no control. Satisfaction isn’t always guaranteed. I’d be lying if I said I always chose the radio over the iPod. I am obsessed with my iPod and use it around seven hours a day. But in the second, there’s a narrow, finite scope. Tunnel vision for the ears, if you will.
There’s a Borges story called “El Aleph,” named after the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Why Hebrew? Who knows…it’s an old language Borges found fascinating and linked to the holy, and in set theory it stands for the size of infinite sets. In the piece, there’s a tiny little aleph in the basement of a house, and whoever looks at it could see the past, present, future…anything that was, is and will be, a kind of God. Well, many people have called the internet what Borges dreamed as the aleph…the portal into a vast vat of uncontrollable information that limitlessly enriches the viewer.
I invariably leave my web searches the more informed. I more often than not spend hours lost in a journey of links from one site to the next tracing a route through facts and photos I would never have seen, let alone known about had my internet been cut to fit my past “excursions.”
I don’t want journalism to lose its standards.
I don’t want print to disappear.
But I also don’t want to find that sort of last frontier, the internet, made into a corset that would restrict the mind, making each person a little narrower and far less interesting.
Tags: chuck philips, digital generation, digital native, intenet natives, la times, sean puffy combs, tupac
Deborah:
Your article is very brave, literary and thought provoking. Your defense for journalists is wellcome at a time when they are daily under fire. Glad that you included Borges and his Aleph, one of my favorite stories of literature. Keep on writting like this and you will become one of the greats.
Personally tailored internet? Like a fine hand-sewn suit two sizes too small. Borges’ “El Aleph” . . . interesting. In his poem “El Golem,” Borges refers to the Maharal of Prague and his creation of a mystical animated clay-creature, a Golem. Although not explicitly mentioned by Borges, according to Jewish mythology or certain Kabbalistic lore, the Golem can take life when the word “Emet” (beginning with the Hebrew letter Aleph, spelled ×מת): “Truth,” is written on its forehead. Eliminating the Aleph in the word “emet” on the Golem yields “Met” (מת): “Dead,” and the Golem dies. The Aleph, representing eternal knowledge and literally the determinant of “Truth,” without which “Truth” becomes “Death,” (literally and metaphorically, wild!), the Golem’s sine qua non—and when likened to the availability of real-world knowledge, information and it’s accessibility, is just as indispensable for every one of us. Without it we die (at least metaphorically, but what else really is there?). A coincidence in Borges? Perhaps, but fodder for thought nonetheless. Terrifying indeed, as much as flesh-eating spiders and woozles.