Brian Williams of NBC News wants you to get out of your bathrobe, stop wasting your times reading blogs, and…turn on the television. Williams addressed the NYU School of Journalism. Here are some excerpts.
“You’re going to be up against people who have an opinion, a modem, and a bathrobe,” said Williams. “All of my life, developing credentials to cover my field of work, and now I’m up against a guy named Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn’t left the efficiency apartment in two years.”
Modems are so 20th century, Brian.
Williams added that “On the Internet, no one knows if you’ve been to Ramadi or you’ve just been to Brooklyn and have an opinion about Ramadi.”
“If we’re all watching cats flushing toilets, what aren’t we reading? What great writer are we missing? What great story are we ignoring? This is societal, it’s cultural, I can’t change it. … Like everybody else, I can burn an hour on YouTube or Perez Hilton without breaking a sweat. And what have I just not paid attention to that 10 years ago I would’ve just consumed?”
OK. Big stories like the one leading the NBC Nightly News website right now. “This version of Harry Potter is Making a Difference. Featured from Friday night’s broadcast: NBC’s Lee Cowan reports on a unique publishing house working overtime to be sure its readers, get their version Harry Potter on time. It’s an effort that’s Making a Difference.” Video for “Can Musharraf survive trouble in Pakistan?” is underneath.
And I’m up for checking out Vinny’s blog. Couldn’t he be the great writer that we’d have missed in prior decades?
July 21, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Good one, Matt. I laughed so hard I thought my pants would never dry. Keep it up!
July 21, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Plus they are now recycling there attacks.
CNN Johnathan Kline said during Rathergate “Bloggers have no checks and balances . . . [it’s] a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas.”
As a result PajamasMedia.com was later launched.
It is always funny to watch the MSM attack blogs. They brag about editors while reporting stories that don’t even pass a basic smell test. The Hurricane Katrina coverage was horrible with all the false stories about people dying in the aftermath. With Jayson Blair, Dan Rather, and hordes of others you would think they might blush a little when attacking bloggers.
They also never make the same distinctions that apply to their own business. They wouldn’t equate something like the National Enguirer and USA Today (though sometime I would) and yet can tell the difference between the varying quality of blogs and which one can be taken more seriously and which should be ignored.
I think it is even funnier when “journalists” who are talking heads and hardly ever write their own copy make such criticisms.
July 21, 2007 at 6:38 pm
the condescension is what kills me. Just because I’m writing with an infant in my lap and a two year old is throwing a ball to me at the same time I have nothing important to say. it’s bad enough my kids believe I have nothing important to say but now brian williams. et tu brian.
July 22, 2007 at 8:43 pm
We do indeed have a system of checks and balances. It’s that little thing at the bottom of the page that tells us how many visitors we have. The print media is not the only one that makes note of its circulation.
July 23, 2007 at 12:39 pm
if you’re anything like me, you look at that counter way too much. i need to limit myself.