Soccer Dad

Nice beginning, MSM vs. Blogs

I liked John Tierney's first op-ed column in the NY Times today, "The Smart Money." Was there a point to the column? Maybe not, but on the Times' op-ed page that's welcome. But it was fun. And informative.

Many of the traders probably know little about Vatican politics and are basically recreational gamblers, perhaps sentimentally betting on their local contender. But these amateurs serve a purpose in the ruthless ecosystem of the market.

They are the sheep who attract the wolves. The amateurs' money entices serious investors to spend time scouring cardinals' past statements and other sources. The sheep's money also offers a temptation for those with inside knowledge to cash in, even though that's against the rules of Intrade - not to mention a 1591 papal bull forbidding Catholics from betting on a conclave.

The bull was prompted by rampant betting during previous conclaves. In 1549, the Venetian ambassador tracked the odds with Roman bookies and reported that "the cardinals' attendants in Conclave" were going partners with local merchants "in wagers which thus causes many tens of thousands of scudi to change hands."

The church's ethical standards have improved a bit since the Renaissance, when one pope had eight illegitimate children and another got the post by giving electors written promises of promotions. I don't expect today's cardinals to be smuggling BlackBerries into the Sistine Chapel and placing trades between votes.

A little history. A little speculation. And a little fun.
Nicholas Kristoff ought to have a little more fun. In "A Slap in the Face" he laments the media's loss of stature in the eyes of Americans.
Maybe he should get a clue from his new neighbor. Tierney's speculation centered on markets being "smart" enough to predict who the new Pope will be. Well markets have had a lot to say about the prestige media.
For too long the media operated like the Wizard of Oz. They would tell us solemnly what the news was and tell us to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Well people started to pay attention to the man and discovered he was no less fallible than the politician or businessman or actor whose dark secrets the media had exposed.
Even look at what bothers Kristoff so much. A federal judge is holding two reporters in contempt for refusing to answer questions. Kristoff says that journalists can't or shouldn't be forced to betray confidences that are at the heart of the their profession. But what is being investigated was urged on by the media. When some of the targets turned out to be journalists instead of executive branch employees, the press cried "foul." It 's hard for most of to work up a lot of sympathy for people who want everyone investigated except themselves.
The Jawa Report does a nice job of explaining how the media may be biased even if

[a]n overwhelming majority of MSM reports are factually correct. Rarely does the media get the facts wrong, and when they do they usually correct the error.

But facts without context are meaningless. How an issue is framed is often times much more important than the issue itself. And how we frame an issue is directly affected by our predispositions and worldview.

He comes by his explanation, through Noam Chomsky (surprise). Jawa tacks the grain and ignores the chaff.

And then there's the reason blogs are more honest than the MSM:

Often times bloggers on one side of the ideological gap that divides the blogosphere cry that the other side has a post that is bias. The fact that all such accusations are completely correct makes such accusations meaningless. Of course they are biased. That is the nature of the business we are in.

What is different is not that we aren't biased, but that we admit that we are.

via Secular Blasphemy we have Eugene Volokh's reasons why people blog and read blogs. Similar the Jawa Report, Eugene focuses on how different media operate. I particularly liked Eugene's ways of thinking about blogs:

For most blogs, think magazine, not newspaper: Mostly analysis and opinion on news events (and sometimes on broader topics), rather than original news cover-age.

A magazine or an op-ed page or letter to the editor. I usually find the opinion pieces more interesting for they give me prism through which to view the news.
Before I blogged, I was letter writer. Eventually it reached the point where I'd work on a letter and it wouldn't get published or the folks who edited it would botch it terribly. (Once I wrote "predicated" and had it turned into "predicted." Arrgh!)
Now I just go directly to the people. Surely not as many people read me but at least I get read when I want to be instead of whenever a gatekeeper decides that it's my turn to have a letter published.
Apparently independently Treppenwitz laid out his criteria for blogging. He, of course, is much more successful than I am having achieved ten times the number of hits that I've received in a shorter time period.
However, success is relative. I have been slowly building an audience. Not as quickly as I would have liked. And perhaps I may never reach the readership I once thought was reachable and sustainable. But as long as I still have a number of loyal readers, I'll be keeping this up. (Speaking of bee keeping check out Treppinwitz's account of his new hobby - bee keeping. And how he runs afoul of a neighbor! I guess it could be called the "The Land of Guilt and Honey.")
So read and enjoy this and get a few of your friends to read Soccer Dad too!

Posted by SoccerDad at April 13, 2005 04:25 AM | TrackBack