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November 29, 2004
Adaptability and flexibility
Jay Rosen reviews the charges leveled against mainstream media coverage of the 2004 election. These charges center around the claim that MSM aligned itself with Kerry. But Rosen has his own, fascinating analysis: the failure of MSM in 2004 was not in whether they failed to maintain objectivity, but whether they delivered what the electorate needed.
[O]ur campaign journalism was, almost in its entirety, premised on an informational need that barely existed. This led to journalism that at its best helped us make a decision that 90 percent or more had already made.
Maybe an extremely "partisan" year should have been called a year when people were extremely passionate about politics, and interested in participating. A reportage to meet and inform those passions is not the same as "news to help in your decision. . . ."
I believe the press failed in 2004. It failed to innovate. It failed to move with the times. From what is called the mainstream media, "the famous MSM," we did not get a reportage suited for the political era we were actually living in. That means Big Journalism failed some ultimate test of currency, which in journalism is the test of time. To report the truth about our struggles with politics... in time.
>sigh<
Well.
He's right, of course, in suggesting that it is extremely difficult for a cumbersome institution such as the MSM to exercise adaptability and flexibility, those essential qualities of the successful corporation or subject in a globalized economy: "As complexity and uncertainty become essential characteristics of the new environment in which organizations must operate, the fundamental needs for the management of organizations are those of flexibility and adaptability. . ." (Castells, Manuel. "Flows, Networks, and Identities: A Critical Theory of the Informational Society." Critical Education in the Information Age. By Manuel Castells, Ramón Flecha, Paulo Freire, Henry A. Giroux, Donaldo Macedo, and Paul Willis. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. 37-64.).
The institution of first-year composition suffers from a similar malady. Composition studies has a much-debated but nevertheless widely shared sense of self, a sense of what it is that FYC can/should accomplish. We struggle to adapt; we struggle to devise learning outcomes for FYC that will reflect the established concerns but also embrace the needs of readers and writers in new media. The struggle feels, however, something akin to pinning flowers on an elephant. The flowers are temporary and incidental; the elephant, in all its bulk, remains.
But notice what Castells is saying about adaptability and flexibility: it's not corporations themselves that need it; it's workers and managers who need adaptability and flexibility. I puzzle over this, thinking about how impossible it is for institutions to adjust to change. I think it more likely that new institutions arise to take their place—institutions that were created for current need. Oddly, Castells' analysis of the postindustrial state has some resonance for all postindustrial institutions, including MSM and FYC: "[A] state incapable of keeping up with the rapid, endless process of technological change will become a weak state both internally (its economic basis will deteriorate) and externally (the coercive means of its institutional monopoly of violence will become technologically obsolete)" (49). I think the change that must be kept up with, though, is not just technological but also social. Jay Rosen suggests that the MSM in 2004 failed to provide "a reportage suited for the political era we were actually living in."
Posted by senioritis at November 29, 2004 07:56 AM