The epistemology of post-Pilger journalism
1. Practice
As I set out here it was refreshing last week to do some work with a left-leaning journalist less interested in trying to become a member of the self-obsessed, self-referential commentariat than she was in recording the voice and the interests of the working class and the dispossessed.
This was ‘proper’ journalism, of the type Jon Pilger in his heyday would have approved. Conversely, it was not the sham journalism of the ‘get in, stereotype the masses, and get back to the comfortable office’ that this piece typified (and which I assessed here and here).
In fact there have been a couple of instances of this in the last month or so which deserve mention for their ‘proper’ approach, not least because they’ve got me thinking about the challenges that face leftwing journalists today – challenges which I think perhaps are greater than they were when Pilger was doing his stuff on the front line, and which need to be recognised before they can be tackled.
The first ‘proper’ journalism I’ve noticed recently was a longish piece by Amelia Gentleman, setting down the experiences of elderly people in a care home, using their own words to do so. It was well written. You could almost smell the sadness, and in so doing you felt that such a way of dying simply cannot be right. It didn’t take us further than that; that was not its intention, but it was a good first step.
The second piece was by Rowenna Davies at Liberal Conspiracy. This piece was not so good, and not only because of the word count constraint. It was not so good because less than half the article was about the real experience of Yasmin, a Bangladeshi asylum seeker living with her son in Bolton on £5 a day. More than half was about how very brave Rowenna was to attend a Conservative conference fringe meeting and ask a question about payments to asylum seekers, and to feel a little embarrassed in a terribly English kind of way about having done so.
Yes, Rowenna slipped back into the self-adoring, liberal intelligentsia style of self-effacement-for-effect which is the hallmark of just about every boradsheet magazine in the country, but let’s give her her due. At least she went a little way out of her comfort zone, went to Bolton, stayed, with Yasmin, and at least for half a short article paid witness to Yasmin’s experience.
That half article is enough to make me wonder whether, amongst the new generation of the liberal Guardianista/Labourlist/CommentisFree set there isn’t some quite serious wine bar and nibbles about the need to get back to the roots of journalism, and actually start to report on what’s happening rather than comment on the commentary of others.
While this was an interesting enough notion to be going on with, of greater interest than Rowenna’s article itself was the reaction in the comments, and I think it is here where we start to see the real challenges facing a Rowenna-wanabee-Pilger.
First, Rowenna gets the to-be-expected criticism that she’s ‘personalised’ the issue by setting out Yasmin’s current living conditions and, and the fact that she’d like to work but is not allowed to. The criticism suggests that by doing this, but not providing the whole life story of Yasmin, what is set out is somehow less reliable as evidence, as though whether Yasmin arrived in the UK by boat or plane is a decisive factor in whether it’s now ok for her and her son to live on £5 a day. In short, what is being suggested is that individual stories simply don’t count.
Then, when Imran comes to Rowenna’s defence, quoting Home Office study of the reasons asylum seekers end up in the UK, and based on 65 interviews, we get the response:
‘As for your HO research, 65 interviews, ‘does not claim to be representative’, ‘Many of those in the sample were fleeing persecution… are more willing to engage in research of this kind’, an interesting document but hardly conclusive and far too small a study to be of general use in asylum discussions.’
This begs the question: what information is useful in discussions about the treatment of asylum seekers, if it is not to include findings from asylum seekers? The answer is implicit is the question: what asylum seekers have actually experienced, and what they now need, is not important.
This is just one case where qualitative information about a single case is downgraded, because it is a single case (and indeed downgraded because there are ‘only’ 65 cases), and of course I pick up this one case in reasonable detail precisely to make my point – that where it suits the dominant agenda , individual cases are portrayed as invalid/unrepresentative, and the journalism behind that case reporting flawed.
Of course when the boot is on the other foot (the right rather than the left), individual case reporting is just fine. Where it’s the case, for example, of a mother from an impoverished estate who has committed a heinous crime, or two brothers so brutalised by years of domestic violence that they’ve acted out their violence towards others, then this is validly representative of our ‘broken society’, and of the problem with the underclass. No matter that the reporting is never ‘testimonial’ in the true sense of hearing what the individuals have to say, for on these occasions these single events speak are seen to speak for themselves.
Of course, such bias is not limited to journalism. As a local councillor I see it all the time. When single events reflect well on the local Tory council, there is no shortage of publicity, but when things go wrong and I complain on behalf of residents, these occurrences are treated as one-offs which can be corrected, or as evidence that an individual has failed to meet the council’s requirements for getting a service, rather than the other way round.
At a wider political level two, it is in abundant evidence. When I attended a Fabian seminar about Equality in the Recession last month,Stephen Twigg, PPC, gave us the usual list of Labour’s achievements, apparently unaware that we might possibly have heard the list before. In the list of course, was the 3,500 children’s centres in the country by 2010. In the Q &A session, a Labour member from Salford got up and said that her Children’s Centre was no good, because it wasn’t well used and certainly didn’t attract in the people who might be expected to benefit from it most. Stephen Twigg said that he really didn’t know about individuals cases, and moved on.
This then, is the problem the left faces broadly – that individual cases only matter when they’re in keeping with the dominant narrative – but it seems to me that it is a challenge for leftwing journalism in particular, and perhaps a great deal more than they did when Pilger was doing his frontline reporting thing.
It is, then, a problem that leftwing/liberal journalists need to really understand before they can start to challenge, in solidarity with each other (e.g through the NUJ) and with the people whose stories they seek to tell.
To understand and challenge properly, moreover, journalists would do well to get develop between themselves not just a coherent argument in defence of witness-based reporting, but also how wha it brings to journalism is in many ways actually epistemologically superior to the other more sterile methods of reporting now dominating the scene. That is, they need to be able to argue the case for witness-based journalism in terms of the simply ethic of journalism – to seek the truth without fear or favour.
In the next section I set out briefly, therefore, what I think might act as an epistemological framework for (critical) journalism
2. Theory
To set out my proposed epistemological framework for critical journalism, I’ll call what remains one of my my favourite books, Andrew Sayer’s (1992) ‘Method in Social Science: A Realist Approach’, 2nd edition (London: Routledge).
What Sayer does is to challenge the positivist ‘dominance of ordering framework conceptions of theory which tend to encourage the belief that objects are relatively simple and transparent and that the main problems concern their quantitative analysis’ (p. 99). He provides a detailed critique (ibid: 99-103) of the orthodoxy of ‘generalization’ in social science, drawing out a number of methodological problems. These problems include:
a) the tendency to give ’a transhistorical, pancultural character to phenomena which are actually historically specific or culture bound’ (ibid: 100);
b) the tendency to confuse contingent and necessary fact in the search for explanation: (ibid: 100);
c) the risk of ‘ecological fallacy, that is, the ‘spurious inference of individual characteristics from group-level characteristics. (ibid: 101).
In short, Sayer sets out a coherent critical challenge to the general assumption, that findings based on statistically aggregated data of the type that makes up so much newspaper coverage, from reports on the British Crime Survey through to the latest opinion polls, are ‘facts’.
Life, he says, is a bit more complicated than that – because it concerns people.
Similar challenges to the orthodoxy of generalisation, and hence to the enduring importance of quantitative methods and associated claims of representativeness and external validity, are to be found in many other texts (Lincoln and Guba 2000: 29-36; Hammersley and Atkinson 1995: 5-6; George and Bennett 2004; 19-20; Yin 2003: 32-33; Scholfield 2004: 69-71).
Conversely, from a realist (and ethnographic) perspective, the validity of single or small ‘n’ case studies lies not in its applicability to other situations, but in the capacity for ‘naturalistic generalization’ (Stake 2000: 22-23:) and its ‘verisimilitude’. Hence Stake says : ‘A text with high verisimilitude provides the opportunity for vicarious experience, the reader ‘comes to know some things told, as if he or she had experienced them?’ (Stake 1994: 240).
3. Back to practice
All of this can be summed up easily enough.
‘Small n’, witness-based journalism which seeks out the vicarious experience of individuals, and sets them out for its readership, is as intellectually valid now as it ever was, and an essential counter to the mainstream.
Leftwing journalists need to be proud of their ‘truth seeking’ tradition, but also to be able to argue that ‘their’ truth is every bit as valid, if not more so, than what has become dominant, and they need to seek consciously to recapture, in solidarity with each other and then with the people they are paying witness to, some of the sense of truth-seeking integrity that many young journalists will now feel has been lost from the profession.
As I have said, and as I suggested last week, I am hopeful that this may be starting to happen, as a new post-Murdochisation generation of young journalists arrives on the scene, eager to make their own way with their own integrity.
I hope their heroes will not be the self-serving commentariat of the type that have betrayed the working class, but an older generation – Pilger if you like, but perhaps even one further back than that. Robert Blatchford, perhaps?
References
George A and Bennett A (2004) Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: MIT Press).
Hammersley M and Atkinson P (1995) Ethnography: Principles in Practice, 2nd edition (London: Routledge)
Lincoln Y and Guba E (2000) Naturalistic Enquiry (London: Sage)
Sayer A (1992) Method in Social Science: A Realist Approach, 2nd edition (London: Routledge).
Scholfield J (2004) Increasing the Generalizability of Qualitative Research in Gomm R,
Hammersley M and Foster P (Eds.) (2000) Case Study Method (London: Sage).
Stake R (1995) The Art of Case Study Research (Thousand Oaks: Sage).
Yin R (2003a) Case Study Research: Design and Methods (Thousand Oaks: Sage).
Hi Paul,
Excellent piece, but rather unfair to attack Polly Toynbee – who wrote one of the most influential books about the reality of life as a worker on the minimum wage, using the principles and techniques that you are argue for – as the main example of journalists who are part of a self-obsessed elite. There’s plenty of better examples!
Perhaps this is why left-wingers are so crap in getting their ideas across – they have to write a thesis on every subject.
You could have summed this up as: ‘go out there and do some more real-world reporting like Kate does’. Job done. End of story.
Part of the problem here is that you’re also trying to fit things into a narrative. As Don has pointed out above, Polly has actually spent time trying to humanise those people too… and in a very effective way.
And:
More than half was about how very brave Rowenna was to attend a Conservative conference fringe meeting and ask a question about payments to asylum seekers, and to feel a little embarrassed in a terribly English kind of way about having done so.
That’s because she’s writing a longer piece about Yasmin for the Guardian, and in this case I asked her to focus on the Tory fringe event, which she linked in with the piece she was already writing because she was fuming about Tory hypocrisy.
As I said – you’re also trying to fit things into your own narrative without realising there are other things at play.
Yes we would all love more front-line reporting. But the problem is manifold: the person doing it usually doesn’t get paid; the person editing it for mass consumption also doesn’t get paid; while it is useful to have such good, grounded journalism – it also needs to be reinforced by the kind of polemical stuff Polly puts out.
In other words – there is space for all kinds of writing, and just because a certain class of liberals don’t do what you’d like them to do, I don’t see any need to sneer at them.
This is hardly a thesis, Sunny. I’ve written four of those in my lifetime and this doesn’t measure up.
Oh wait, you meant it’s a bit longer than you’re prepared to read through or longer than you think the average person is prepared to read through? Well no one is asking them to. Paul has identified his audience, and since most of them bang words together for a living or a hobby, I’d say the length of this piece, which is relatively short, is eminently justified.
On the article itself, I can spot a number of problems. The most important of which is that the article addresses the ideology inherent in journalistic methodology far too briefly, focussing on one example, and the unspoken ramifications for epistemology are defined only negatively without looking at the positive epistemological contentions from whence a proper practice should flow.
You might say, “Well, what does it matter?” but then either you are unconcerned with a world-encompassing system of thought or you dispute its possibility.
If the former, well that numbers you amongst the vast majority of people – and like the vast majority of people, it renders you likely to simply pick up stray thoughts and nail them together, replete with their inbuilt ideological connotations, without bothering to analyse every feature of the system you’ve cobbled together. Which is another world-encompassing system, insofar as it forms the basis for how you look at every issue that comes your way.
We simply attempt to render the process explicit so that it may be rationally critiqued on the basis of epistemology, methodology and ontology, whereas you prefer to leave it implicit. I won’t insult you by imagining that you dispute the possibility of world-encompassing schemes of thought because you’re not a post-modernist. Leaving these methods of thought implicit is fine when it comes to a gut-feeling for sloganeering, but that’s not what this website is about.
Paul and I write to analyse whether we have the right slogans and programme.
None of this bothers with attempting to fit things into a narrative, except insofar as it addresses elements of stories which have come up before. Paul has not drawn a comprehensive picture – but your assertion, Sunny, that you asked her to do X, and she was already doing Y for the Guardian doesn’t challenge Paul’s conclusion. In fact, it could bolster it; Rowenna wrote the article as-was because that was the information she had to hand because that is the information she was trained to have to hand – the individual story etc.
Over which CiF commentators will have the sort of reaction Paul describes. A very English embarrassment or an outright (hypocritical) attack on the validity of individual stories as a guide to drawing conclusions, which differs from the traditional reactions of outrage by the Right over Stephen Lawrence, Baby P and eighteen other examples where an individual tragedy has provided the opportunity for a witch hunt.
Understand, I’m not saying I agree with the way Rowenna’s article has been used – I haven’t even read it – but nothing you’ve said, Sunny, challenges what Paul has said – narrative or no narrative.
Finally, if Paul was sneering, I didn’t detect it. Rowenna’s writing, good or bad, explicitly or implicitly ideological, employing X or Y methodology is open to analysis. So is mine, for that matter; so is Paul’s. I usually post at length only about those writings I find fatuous or hypocritical and let those I like speak for themselves – but Paul has chosen something of a type that he liked, which he felt could be improved upon.
Surely that’s not to be regarded as sneering?
If a certain class of liberals don’t do what we’d like them to do, isn’t it valid to ask why? You can dispute the answer to “Why?” if you like, but you can’t really dispute the premise of the question – because you suggested it.
Let me link this to Polly Toynbee; Paul is not attacking polemical stuff and has never attacked polemical stuff. I write polemic all the time. What Paul has criticized of Toynbee is exactly what the rest of us who have followed the vicissitudes of her “position” over the years have criticised: she’s a fatuous prat who makes Mystic Meg look positively talented and who has a penchant for giving full rein to her own prejudices on the basis of anecdotes and a media-based self-referentiality that is truly nauseating for those of us who aren’t part of that milieu in which the Queen ‘bee moves.
But she is not alone; a lot of the Guardian articles about the Labour Party – polemical or not – have been staggeringly weak on the analytical side, on the grounding of the polemic in anything but the most ephemeral reality. Right there is the basis of the attack on Toynbee, if such it is, and for my money it’s entirely justified.
Paul may have a different take, but there’s my tuppence.
Dan @1: Point taken. I was so riled by her piece in the Serco magazine that I forgot myself. Should do an edit really. Who would you like in her place.
Sunny @2: Thanks for this hones appraisal. There are aa number of points to come back on there:
1. Sneering: that’s actually made me take a step back and look at what I’ve written and how I’ve written, so thanks. I do not consider myself a sneery kind of person, and if it’s coming across like that in what I write I need to beware.
While I could argue the toss that it’s not within my gift to know that a longer article is planned and that you adivsed on the conference trip,and that each article needs to stand on its own feet, I should also apologise to Rowenna if what I’ve thought is fair critique sounds like an ad hominem attack on a person who is clearly doing what she does with an admirable level of integrity.
Tracing back the late night writing, I think what I have seen as ‘sardony’ around the earlier reporting I refer to (a Giles in the Times writing about East Lindsey), which I do think is contemptible, patronising rubbish, has moved over into my critique of Rowenna’s piece, and if I’ve offended then I regret it.
Having said that, I have to say that when I read the piece (which I commented on charitably at the time, if you follow the comments thread), I did get the ‘oh, here we go again’ feeling when it moved into the Tory fringe bit, and I think it is reasonable of me to say that that is what I felt. In fact, this sense was compounded by Laurie Penny’s short ‘Excellent piece, Row’ comment, which reinforced my sense that the article had drifted too far back to the cosy, though slightly alternative and zany world, of quasi-commentariat journalism that gets my goat. I was acually going to write something on that in the article above, but left it out (thankfully).
Anyway, good lesson to me: don’t let gentle sardony become chip on the shoulder sneering.
2. On the tendency to theses by left-wingers, and my need to fit things within a narrative, two main points:
a)This is not an article for Liberal Conspiracy, and it’s not an attempt, immediately at least, to encourage a whole set of young journalists to do things differently tomorrow. This is an article that will be read by a relatively small number of people who are interested in the relationship between theory and practice, as am I.
My strong contention is that leftwing journalism won’t change for the better simply by saying ‘Kate’s done this, and you sould too’, because sucn a message will very soon get adulterated to mean that it’s now a little bit trendy to get out amongst the masses, in excatly the same way as I accuse Giles of The Times (primarily a fashion reporter.
What journalism of the left needs is a strong intellectual basis for a new direction, and this piece is about suggesting what some of the basic tenets of that basis might be.
While you see in me a tendency to chip-on-the-shoulder sneering, I see in your commentary something of an anti-intellectual thrust at a time when a new intellectuial basis is needed if the mistakes of past leftwing revivals are not to be repeated. But that’s a wider matter….
b) Related to this, I have no problem at all acknowledging that I do have a ‘grand narrative’, within which much of my analysis fits. I accept that on this occasion the article is a little bit ‘clunky’ because, more as a trial run than anything, it co-opts some of the theoretical stuff from an earlier thing I wrote, but the very reason I’m doing that is to suggest that there is indeed a wider narrative of capitalism within which events happen. This isn’t to dispute, as you seem to suggest I am doing, that the world is a complex place; indeed the fact that much journalism is flawed because it doesn’t acknowledge the complexity of the real world is a core reasoning within the piece.
Thanks as ever for your engagement, Sunny.
Dave @4: I’d agree with lots of that. I am very happy to ackonwledge that this is a very long way from one of my better pieces, and certainly it suffers from a ‘if I don’t get this done and out of the way now, it’ll never happem’ feeling which I think many bloggers experience.
I also write some stuff not because I have a complete analysis, but because I’m testing stuff out and am more than happy to get critical comment. This site, and the culture of proper engagement in the comments (incl from sunny), allows me the luxury of doing that. This is one of those pieces.
I’m glad you don’t detect a sneer either, but I stick with my comment to Sunny that if that is what comes over to him, or to anyone else, it is regrettable and something I must guard against in future.
Many thanks for the sentiments, Paul. I’ve transcribed all the interviews and will be posting the first articles soon.
Re: this thread: the thing is – it’s a matter of balance.
Sunny is right to say that it is difficult to get out and about all the time with interview work, because people don’t get paid for it, and so they have to make time where they can. That’s very true, and problematic. Because my background is in journalism, that’s the part of the work I enjoy the most and have most experience in, so I make time for it, in the way that everyone who writes online makes time for those areas that interest them.
It may also be worth mentioning that one of the main reasons I personally don’t write much comment is because I’m quite shit at it. I simply don’t have the personal passion for topics that a lot of commentators and bloggers do. That being the case, my gig has to be writing about others and their passions. It’s all about living at one remove, etc.
I agree entirely with your sentiments about the likes of Polly Toynbee, though. Whatever she was, she has become a New Labour apologist of the most appalling kind, and there are days when I could throttle her. Fatuous prat is putting it kindly. She earns a great whack, yet barely bothers to get off her behind anymore and get out there and talk to real people and report their views. I guess her heart is in the right place (where her brain should be, to use a Clive James) – I saw her a couple of years ago at a rally to save voluntary services in the newly-Conservative Hammersmith and Fulham, and she was informed, clever and – or so it appeared – genuinely sympathetic. Alas, that no longer comes across in her writing. Most of her pieces these days are little more than New Labour press releases. She never engages with people in CiF comments, either, as far as I can see (people can correct me if I’m wrong on this,though). I am very much of the opinion that this latter part of her career has just about obliterated any memory of the good of her earlier work.
I think a lot of the ‘name’ Guardian commentariat is guilty of the same, though – their top commentators have the time and they have the money, but they just don’t get out to talk to people in the numbers they should. I’m talking about the people who (apparently) make a good living from writing comment – the Toynbees, Ashleys, Kettles, etc. Every report they do should have interviews with real people with real issues. If the papers were made up primarily of stories with everyday people, instead of yap about celebrities, and endless circle-jerk political speculation, the world would be a considerably better, and a better informed place. That’s not to say there isn’t good stuff there, or that all Guardian comment is rubbish – there’s just nothing like as much reporting as there should be. Those commentators I’ve named above must take a great deal of responsibility for not covering the reality of the New Labour project in the detail, and with the honesty, that they should have.
Great topic for discussion. Good post.
I agree with most of this post. I agree that Rowenna’s article may say more about what Sunny thinks his audience wants than about what Rowenna wanted to write about – it depends entirely on their arrangement. Nonetheless, Rowenna could’ve said she didn’t want to write an article on Tory conference, and offered a different article instead. Paul is justified in saying that the failure to do so makes her no worse than the existing commentariat, and slipping in half an article about Yasmine makes her rather better, but that he wants even better.
Toynbee is now beyond the pale. There is no excuse for writing for Serco.
Generally speaking, I think real-life journalism will eventually win out over political commentary, because there’s no reason why a paid commentator should be any better than someone doing it in their spare time, and the barriers to entry are so much lower than they once were. Why pay for something you can get for free? The problem is that the real-life stories that will become more precious will be sifted through and selected to fit the dominant narrative just as Paul shows.
The only thing I think is missing from Paul’s article is an analysis of the power relations inherent in the political commentary type of journalism – essentially the political commentator is begging for influence without challenging the hierarchical power structure she or he finds herself or himself in. Sunny has identified the need for polemic, but most political commentary isn’t aimed at inspiring resistance but at achieving the coveted status of “opinion-former”, and in doing so, reinforcing the structures that say we need opinion-formers to be told what to think.
Going back to the OP (and quickly cos I’m on my spanking new consumer luxury waste of money): to what extent are people like rowenna constrained by a shrinking industry that doesn’t want to put money into proper reporting and only allows it when there’s a ‘human interest’ angle which is part of the modern media sale strategy.
Come on marxists, I want an account of how the productive forces impact upon the labour intercourse of workers in the situation of journalism in a a dying industry!
Kate @5: Thanks for dropping in. You’re like, my hero, *swoons*. Even if you called me a confused twat at Dave Osler’s place.
Tim @6 : I agree that bit’s missing. Actually, it’s a bit of a crap post, which ran out of steam. Heh, it happens, but i’ll pick it up again in another post about local media at some point.
Paul S @ 7: Yes, that would be good (see above re: plans for further article above).
Glad you’re not Libdem by the way. Can’;t say it kept me awake at night, but I did wonder.
But when did I ever say I was a Marxist?
Actually Kate and Paul S, I realise I’ve not answered your main contention here (and indeed Sunny’s) about the reality of the pressure on journos to conform to accepted standards or not be able to earn a living.
That is of course correct, and that is why the left needs to seek an alternative non MSM ‘business model’, along the LeftNewMedia lines set out by Dave here in previous posts. My own view is that now might be a time to start seriously trying to re-invogorate those discussions and take them from the theoretical/aspirational and on into the practicalities. Sunny has agreed in principle to ‘advise’ on this and that should be welcomed, however rude he was @1 here…
Possibly it’s something that could be configured into the LRC AGM taking place in a couple of weeks, though that may be a bit too exclusionary.
I suppose you didn’t.
I guess I just associate everything on TCF with the ideological hegemony of Dave Semple.
He is a Marxist in all but name, don’t listen to him. But even within that framework, not sure what ‘labour intercourse’ even means. The article could do with a brief relation to some of Gramsci’s ideas right enough, since you mention hegemony though.
It was a tounge in cheek reference to the whackier parts of the german ideology, that’s all.
I’m tired right now, so apologies for the short ish response.
1) I didn’t want to come across as too snarky – but I did think there was an element of sneering in the article. Probably because you’re attributing motives to Rowenna that are not true. She’s spent ages writing up that piece on Yasmin – even writing a detailed 5 day diary for the website that she didn’t get paid for.
Of course you don’t know this – but my point is that people on blogs too easily ascribe motives or leanings to people based on a few shreds of evidence to fit a narrative.
2) In fact, this sense was compounded by Laurie Penny’s short ‘Excellent piece, Row’ comment, which reinforced my sense that the article had drifted too far back to the cosy, though slightly alternative and zany world, of quasi-commentariat journalism that gets my goat
I have no idea how that makes any sense. I write drive-by comments like that on CIF articles all the time when I agree with what people say. In fact I’ve probably said the same on Kate’s articles.
3) What journalism of the left needs is a strong intellectual basis for a new direction, and this piece is about suggesting what some of the basic tenets of that basis might be.
I’m not sure that point comes across. And also, sorry to be blunt, but you’re not a journalist. To be one you have to write stuff that goes by word-count and has a news hook and be succint enough to draw in significant audiences to have an impact.
Otherwise you could just write vast tracts of stuff for an obscure website and call it journalism.
My point is that journalism has to be effective as well as ‘real’. And therefore there are constraints that you don’t seem to recognise. Rather you seem to have an idealised version of how journalism should look while failing to ask whether it will actually work in practice.
4) I see in your commentary something of an anti-intellectual thrust at a time when a new intellectuial basis is needed if the mistakes of past leftwing revivals are not to be repeated
Should I assume this to mean that you think the likes of Tony Blair happened because left-wing journalism is so shit?
5) Tim f: I agree that Rowenna’s article may say more about what Sunny thinks his audience wants than about what Rowenna wanted to write about
of course. As an editor I have to make editorial judgements on the content I think works and what I think doesn’t work. I’ve never pretended otherwise. Partly because I think successful journalism of any kind also requires discipline, codes and focus.
6) Nonetheless, Rowenna could’ve said she didn’t want to write an article on Tory conference, and offered a different article instead.
Why? What’s the problem with offering some commentary on Tory policies and how they illustrate hypocrisy with real life situations? If you don’t like those sorts of articles, fine. But I don’t see how that means the person writing isn’t able to write a range of material or doesn’t have integrity.
7) Generally speaking, I think real-life journalism will eventually win out over political commentary, because there’s no reason why a paid commentator should be any better than someone doing it in their spare time, and the barriers to entry are so much lower than they once were.
Not so sure. Firstly, the spaces for mass-exposure to commentary are still limited. Secondly, a lot of commentary out there is absolute tripe (in the papers included) and people are lazy. So I think the market will remain.
Although I think that real-life journalism will become more the Daily Mail human-interest sort of journalism, or it will migrate to the web.
On a related note, the guardian is now seeking people to report from individual cities:
http://mariaahmed.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/the-guardian-seeks-beatbloggers/
8) sunny has identified the need for polemic, but most political commentary isn’t aimed at inspiring resistance but at achieving the coveted status of “opinion-former”
Depends on who you’re writing for. would you say John Pilger fits under that narrative? George Monbiot? Even on the right there are plenty of people agitating/writing for overthrow of the system.
Even if I mostly agree with that sentiment – that’s because most mass-market outlets are fairly in the middle. By definition you’re not going to get a revolutionary title to go mainstream and mass-market and therefore people writing for those titles would never be part of the mainstream consensus anyway.
9) That is of course correct, and that is why the left needs to seek an alternative non MSM ‘business model’, along the LeftNewMedia lines set out by Dave here in previous posts
Happy to still listen in and advise but let’s be clear about this: if you’re not going to follow at least some practices of real-world journalism then the audiences are going to be very small, the revenue is going to be virtually nil and the impact is going to be minimal.
Furthermore, I’m a believer in having lots of different kinds of journalism. From hit-and-run short polemics to real-world reporting to longer tirades against the establishment and political strategy discussions. Different strokes for different folks.
Once I start expanding LC (having technical and time problems) then you’ll see more examples of this, though you already have seen.
10) Dave: A very English embarrassment or an outright (hypocritical) attack on the validity of individual stories as a guide to drawing conclusions, which differs from the traditional reactions of outrage by the Right over Stephen Lawrence, Baby P and eighteen other examples where an individual tragedy has provided the opportunity for a witch hunt.
Huh? Real-world stories by definition use real-life examples to paint a picture of what is happening. Kate herself has written about a demo by unions against cuts by councils – and how the council is coming back on services to people – making a very political point by drawing upon local situations and stories.
If you’re against this when I’m not even sure what kind of real-world journalism you guys are advocating unless its just going to be abstract theory all day long.
It seems to me that your main problem is that these writers don’t have the ‘grand narrative’ that you want to advocate and therefore you think their journalism is limited only to anecdotes and stories which can be used to justify any side of the coin.
If yes, my response would be that any real-world journalism relies on personal stories that can be dismissed as anecdotes brought together to fit into a prejudice.
For every article by Kate on cuts by councils – the opposite side could write up a real-life story on how some kid got an extra present because their parents saved some council tax.
What’s your alternative? Analytical pieces only using broad opinion polls that offer a grand view? Or avoiding personal stories entirely?
“I have no idea how that makes any sense. I write drive-by comments like that on CIF articles all the time when I agree with what people say. In fact I’ve probably said the same on Kate’s articles.”
Quite. I often write drive-by CIF quotes purely in solidarity for the poor author, who is usually being assailed by hundreds of rabid fuckwits.
I think relating personal stories is a great idea – though of course it has been corrupted through cheque-book journalism, unreasonable editorializing and a variety of other measures.
My point, in any case, wasn’t for or against personal stories, it was more that the stunt of attending CPC09 was likely to produce embarrassment amongst supporters, while the rest of the article would be dismissed by opponents as merely anecdotal.
It reminds me of the embarrassment I felt when watching Fahrenheit 9/11, when Michael Moore took the soldier’s mother to Washington; I thought it was a cheap stunt, even though the point was valid. Whether a plucky journo confronting the beast in its lair or a grieving mother demanding justice from her government, I think there are better ways to make the point that these – which feel tscky.
I am sorry I can’t come up with a better way to explain it, actually, maybe I should go away and think about it – I just feel that this sort of thing is all too prevalent in left-liberal writing.
As to your quip about us not being journalists; you’re right, we’re not journalists – but let’s not pretend that it requires some specialised intellectual skills that takes years to acquire. If someone came along and said “I want you to write about this, and you have to do it within X parameters” it’s easily doable – I just choose not to.
Your point about us having an idealised view of journalism thus smacks of ad hominem rather than pointing out what the idealised view is and correcting it, since you are a professional journalist. Were I to stick my neck out a bit further, I’d also say that what is currently practicable might well not be enough, and if that is the case then we need to develop something new, even while we work within the current parameters.
Quite. I often write drive-by CIF quotes purely in solidarity for the poor author, who is usually being assailed by hundreds of rabid fuckwits.
Exactly. And why could it not have been in the same spirit?
Dave, to quickly respond:
though of course it has been corrupted through cheque-book journalism, unreasonable editorializing and a variety of other measures.
Well, we don’t live in an ideal world. Money in journalism is going down all the time. If you have any solutions then let us know
My point, in any case, wasn’t for or against personal stories, it was more that the stunt of attending CPC09 was likely to produce embarrassment amongst supporters, while the rest of the article would be dismissed by opponents as merely anecdotal.
That seems somewhat intolerant to me. Sometimes publicity grabbing stunts work because some people are more influenced and moved by big emotional acts, than just rational, abstract theory. You can’t discount that if you’re planning to build a wide coalition. I enjoyed Farenheit 9/11. sure it was simplistic and populist at times. But it never had any pretense otherwise – and it worked as a piece of political polemic that influenced a lot of people.
Rowenna wanted to illustrate the hypocrisy of Tory party policy, and contrast it with the experiences she was going through at the time. It may not appeal to you but it appeals to others.
Don’t be a hater because that is exactly the sort of infighting and small disagreements over tactics (blown into massive turf wars) that has always paralysed the left.
I’ve said this repeatedly on this blog: any political broad movement has to be populist too. If you can’t handle populism then you’ll also just reach a small subsection of people who think exactly the same as you – and the revolution will never happen.
In my defence, I didn’t write the article; and in Paul’s defence he pointed out that he thought Rowenna was doing a good thing, even though he had stylistic differences. I don’t deny the value of populism, for that matter.
Sunny
Thanks for coming back with this level of detailed response; while as ever the dialogue seems a little confrontational, I think we are making progress.
First, just one point of clarification: there are two Paul’s commenting here (me and Paul Sagar) and I think your ‘Quite’ comment refers to something Paul S said about commenting occasionally just to be supportive.
On that same issue, though, I’ll reiterate that on the Libcon piece itself I did indeed leave a wholly supportive comment, and in this piece I did seek to make clear that I liked the general approach – a real story about a real individual – that Rowenna had adopted.
And as I’ve also already said, if I have come over sneery rather than gently and unoffendingly sardonic as a way of getting my point over (and your reaction at least makexs clear that you’ve taken note), I am regretful of that and I will seek to learn my lesson. I’m not sure that I can go much further than that.
That doesn’t, though, get in the way of my saying what I said about my reaction to the piece – my slight dismay that the ‘scene’ changed from Yasmin to the Tory conference hall.
On the matter of your bluntness about my lack of journalistic skills/training: as Dave has suggested, I make no claim to be a journalist, or to do journalism, or to want to do journalism. Nor is the OP a piece of journalism. If you are suggesting that my approach to jounalism is reflected in this piece, then I think we are at cross-purposes.
In fact, as far as the ideas around LNMF are concerned, what I’m interested in for myself is not doing the journalism, but creating an environment in which leftwing people can become journalists-earning-a-living-doing-leftwing-journalism, and leftwing journalists can write more of what they want. Creating that kind of social enterprise/co-op buisness environment IS what I’m good at (with a proven track record of lots of investment into it), not the journalism itself (and that’s why I invited Kate B to West Lancashire the other week, recognising that I don’t have her skillset, but in the knowledge tha I might be able to help make her way of doing things ‘stick’).
The specific thoughts around LNMF are around filling the gap left my regional/small town print media through the development of smallscale, cupboard-based, one/two person bad, web-based local journals (moving towards hard copy with volunteer deliverers), with a very local advertisding model which allows it to become near or totally financially sustainably (so v roughly, a turnover of 80-100k per year paying out two mid-level regional salaries and with soeme other bottom line costs provdied for by e.g local union sponsorship). There are plenty of examples of stuff like this happening (e.g. yourthurrock.com) but without the appropriate level of leftwingery. Yes (and as you say to tim), this kin of thing can also be done by the right, that’s clear – but I want to get in first in places and do it for the left.
This is where, as I’ve noted, I’d really value your input, because in many ways LibCon’s mix and style could act as a real model to be spun out on a local basis, and I admire what you’ve done with LibCon).
Practically speaking, then, I am talking with Dave offline about the potential for dragging in some kick start funds to get something going in the context of a reinvigoration of a stalled (and if I’m honest somewhat London-centric, where I’m not so sure the model works as easily) LNMF, and your input would be welcome as and when something more concrete happens (don’t hold your breath).
Paul C
I’m going to edit my wordpress profile and try and end this annoying overlap.
You bloody name thief.
Guys, we’re all comrades here – I hope my original post wasn’t taken as some aggressive attack, though I was perhaps a bit irritable at the time. I’m also defensive as I was involved in that decision to commission an article in the way it was written by Rowenna.
Oh whoops – didn’t spot that the other Paul had made that point. Anyway, that’s what I was trying to say.
That doesn’t, though, get in the way of my saying what I said about my reaction to the piece – my slight dismay that the ’scene’ changed from Yasmin to the Tory conference hall.
Your dismay seems to be stylistic. Or perhaps it is that you find it shallow and indicative of a wider problem. Or both. All I’m saying is that it is a different style and it does not say anything about her politics or writing generally – Rowenna has done loads of real-world journalism in the past, you can search the web if you like. Which is why I don’t buy the simple characterisation.
On the matter of your bluntness about my lack of journalistic skills/training: as Dave has suggested, I make no claim to be a journalist, or to do journalism, or to want to do journalism. Nor is the OP a piece of journalism.
No no – it seems to me that you’re criticising various forms of journalism in the hope of re-inventing it. That is what I find hard to believe. that is what the criticisms come across as.
In fact, as far as the ideas around LNMF are concerned, what I’m interested in for myself is not doing the journalism, but creating an environment in which leftwing people can become journalists-earning-a-living-doing-leftwing-journalism, and leftwing journalists can write more of what they want
Well they can’t necessarily write about what they want because people would quickly get bored.
Look, I used to be part of a blogging collective called The Sharpener in 2005 which was quite popular for a while. It was an assortment of very talented and interesting bloggers (and me) and some of them are now part of LC. The point being – any of the collective could write about anything.
That worked for a little while, but any endeavour that did not have editorial direction, a mission, and some focus, was eventually going to fail to my mind. I still contributed to it occasionally but went on to set up LC. The rest, as they say, is history.
LibCon may also die one day. But my only point here is that any journalistic endeavour, to be successful, has to be slick, professional, focused and have high standards.
If you let just any leftie write anything you’ll soon find it becomes a waste of time and money. Even with potentially unlimited space on LC I wouldn’t let that happen. People would get bored of wading through crap.
This is why I’m sceptical of the idea that people can somehow ‘reinvent journalism’, so to speak.
I think your idea is nice in theory but would only be successful, IMO, if you avoid the pitfalls listed above. That is my principle advice.
also, for a start, I don’t think you need funds. But you do need to understand the technology (to create the infrastructure), recruit people who already do it for free, and then start publishing. And you’ll need plenty of time.
Get the model going somehow, perhaps in a way so the work is more distributed (am gonna have to do this soon with Libcon) and see if that works.
I don’t deny the value of populism, for that matter.
But you accept that’s what Farenheit 9/11 was? Hence my point.
“That worked for a little while, but any endeavour that did not have editorial direction, a mission, and some focus, was eventually going to fail to my mind. I still contributed to it occasionally but went on to set up LC. The rest, as they say, is history.”
Mikhail Bakunin turns in his grave.
Sunny
I grant that ‘write what they want’ was an awkward late night phrase – ‘write in keeping with their own political beliefs’ might have been better.
In fact, I don’t think there’s much space between us here. One of the versions of LNMF that Dave put together stressed the need for ‘journalism training’, and I quite agree that what goes out in local web/paper editions has to have the usual journalistic requirements of actually being readable/getting read by a reasonably wide section of the public.
In my defence, while I choose to write more discursively in most of my blog stuff, I’m not a total duffer at this kind of thing. I did engineer a 700% increase in the Labour vote in my own small area, and become its first ever Labour councillor, largely on the basis of a regular, well-read, punchy newsletter. I’m not suggesting I’m a specialist, but I understand the basics enough to know that any local leftie paper will need decent editorial direction and focus, not least around the follow-up on stories so that people can pick up the threads as they a) see the paper/web edition for the first time b) move into the area.
I disagree somewhat on funding. While there are exceptions (and LibCon may well be one), in general I think this kind of thing needs a kickstart of money to allow people getting involved a living wage over the first year or so while readership/advertising/sponsorship kicks in. Yes, lots of input can come in for free, but I’ve seen enough voluntary enterprises fail over the years through sheer exhaustion on the part of willing people tring to do 11 things at once to know that to make the model work consistently you need paid, motivated, time-resourced people to do it. Why is Dave Semple not a full time political activist? Because he’s got to earn a living.
Couple of things – the resourcing issue is a big problem, as I said earlier, and I for one have to be at work atm for many more hours than I’d like. There’s no question that this affects productivity to some extent. My aim is to drop a day or even two as soon as possible so I can spend more time on the journalism. Guess we all have that dream.
That said – there are many advantages to being at work if you’re a journalist, the most notable being that it keeps you close to your source (mercenary as that is). You meet heaps of different people and have a lot of different experiences that you don’t have when you work full time as a journo (I’ve done both, and actually, I don’t think that I’d want to work full time as a journalist again. It removes you too much from people- at best, you just tap into this and that and faff your way through a pile of press releases, unless you go and live with a subject group for a while, etc. You’re also restricted by your publication’s political views).
It was through working at councils when I moved to England that I got heavily involved in trade union work, and got a really good look at how a lot of people live and work in my adopted country. I made heaps of contacts and – cute as it sounds – discovered various elements that had been missing from my reporting until then. So – although it’s time consuming, tiring and often pointless in the greater scheme of things, working out in the real world has a lot of advantages. You can be a while waiting for perfect writing conditions – ie, unlimited income, unlimited time & space, etc, so you can’t hang round waiting for those things to somehow miraculously turn up. You have to do the work regardless of your circumstances. (I think that’s why I get so pissed off with the likes of Toynbee – such people DO have plenty of time, space and money, and do nothing with it except re-nose New Labour press releases).
Blah blah blah. Hope the Skelmersdale stuff I’m doing lives up to the billing…
Sunny –
“Why? What’s the problem with offering some commentary on Tory policies and how they illustrate hypocrisy with real life situations? If you don’t like those sorts of articles, fine. But I don’t see how that means the person writing isn’t able to write a range of material or doesn’t have integrity.”
It doesn’t mean that the person writing isn’t able to write a range of material or doesn’t have integrity. It also has little to say about the quality of their writing, or what their favourite colour is, or what they had for breakfast. In fact, I said that the least valuable parts of Rowenna’s article were no worse than the crowd of political commentators who write for the Guardian/Times/Telegraph et al, and the best parts were considerably better. Whether that’s mixed praise or enthusiastic praise depends on your view of such commentators. In your terms they are clearly “successful” – they have an audience, people talk about their views etc, so comparing Rowenna to them is a compliment if viewed on your terms.
I’m clearly no more a journalist than Paul is – my perspective on journalism comes from my relations to it as a consumer and as an activist. Because you’re embedded in a journalistic world much more than we are, you’re likely to have views about what makes good journalism that are related to the internal goods of journalism as a practice. There’s no reason why we should share those. Our view on what is valuable within journalism comes from our preferences on what we’d like to read ourselves, and from what we think is most useful in building social movements (unless you’re Dave, when it comes from a strictly scientific application of Marxist theory ;p). The most useful kind of journalism, in my view, is allowing working class people to speak about their own position for themselves. Clearly this can require some editing, but better if the journalist’s voice does not come through as strongly as the protagonist’s voice. Rowenna’s full-length piece, which is one of the best MSM articles I’ve read for a while, does this not-too-badly, with lots of quotes from the asylum seeker she stayed with and examples of her own activism, although I still notice her (Rowenna’s) own voice come through a few times.
None of that is to say that anything at all is not “good journalism” when considered in relation to journalism as a practice, but that some kinds of journalism do not fit my own political agenda as well as others do, and of course I want to promote the kind of writing that fits my political agenda better.
Wow – I had no idea all of this was going on – thanks to Tim for drawing it to my attention.
The blog for LC was a tiny off spin of what I was actually doing in Manchester. If you want to see the full length feature about “Yasmin” check out today’s Society Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/oct/14/asylum-seekers-struggle-benefits-cut
And if you want to see the full set of diaries day by day detailing what life is like for her, you can read them here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2009/oct/14/asylum-seeker-diary-benefits-cut
Although for all those worried about the future of good journalism, you are slightly vindicated that I wasn’t paid for those.
You WEREN’T paid for these?
That is appalling. Does the Guardian get young journalists to write for free?
Perhaps Polly could spare you some of her lolly.
What a disgrace. I got a few bob for writing for the New Statesman – not many bob, I’ll grant you, but a few at least.
Paul: One of the versions of LNMF that Dave put together stressed the need for ‘journalism training’, and I quite agree that what goes out in local web/paper editions has to have the usual journalistic requirements of actually being readable/getting read by a reasonably wide section of the public.
Well, then what exactly are we disagreeing over? One of the reason polemical journalism is paid higher is because people demand it and it’s read more highly. If you’re trying to make money – you may soon go down that road too.
, in general I think this kind of thing needs a kickstart of money to allow people getting involved a living wage over the first year or so while readership/advertising/sponsorship kicks in.
I disagree, because I think you spend the first year ironing out the mistakes and learning how audiences work. I would prefer to receive funding now than when I started Libcon because now I have a more focused direction.
I think that’s why I get so pissed off with the likes of Toynbee – such people DO have plenty of time, space and money, and do nothing with it except re-nose New Labour press releases
Kate – I disagree with Polly a lot of times. But I think our efforts would be better served trying to organise a populist alternative, and not just criticising people who don’t aren’t as radical as us.
I would only disagree with someone from the Labour party if they’re identifiably not being leftwing.
Tim f:
Because you’re embedded in a journalistic world much more than we are, you’re likely to have views about what makes good journalism…
to be clear: I’ve never undertaken a journalism course ever. I studied economics and then went into programming. I stumbled on to writing even though I hated writing at uni.
However I’ve had to develop publications (online) from scratch and know a little bit about what makes websites successful, develops community, and makes for successful writing.
I go by my instincts and experience I’ve developed, not some establishment view of what journalism should be (in case that’s what you’re thinking).
Lastly – Dave’s favourite John Pilger has written a piece on Iran which is full of fatuous polemics that can be easily taken apart by actual evidence. Will he write something criticising Pilger too?
http://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2009/10/iran-nuclear-pilger-obama
If you want to know what’s happening in Iran, far better to read someone actually informed on the issue:
http://plutonium-page.dailykos.com/
*shrugs* Never said I liked Pilger, or even agreed with him most of the time. I simply said he’s not a racist, Sunny. So a bit of misdirection there.
Sunny, having read both pieces, I’m struggling to see what your point is, actually. Yes, Pilger’s article is full of fatuous polemic…but I don’t see how the polemic can be contradicted with the evidence.
That the American government is seeking a solution to the problem of Iranian nuclear proliferation doesn’t seem to be in dispute. In fact the two articles don’t seem to be in dispute with each other at all.
Pilger concentrates on the military side, which isn’t addressed by the daily kos article. Side by side, it’s highly possible that the US has some military options it wants to consider (and didn’t I read a spending report this week outlining Pentagon spending to that end?) alongside the diplomatic options.
The nuclear question is not the only difference the US has with Iran, after all.
The polemic, the bizarre moral equivocation of Iranian proliferation with Israeli proliferation and so on – all of this is pretty ridiculous; it’s not factually incorrect, it’s just bad argumentation, allowing outrage to cloud the point he’s trying to make – which is that we may yet have to act to prevent a third major war, and the press aren’t exactly helping.
Is that particularly controversial?
Rowenna @24: Thanks for stoppong by. First I should re-iterate ‘in person’ my apoloigies if I’ve come over all sneering about your LibCon version. My intention had been to praise it (as I did in the comments there) for its testmonila approach, while offering reasonable critique (and at the time I had no ideas about the Guardian piece as the main story). I am, however, pretty impressed by the vigour with which Sunny has defended someone he’s been ‘editing’ (and of course his own editorial direction).
I look forward to reading the Guardian piece later today. This story, along with Amalia Gentlemans’ in old people’s homes, seems to suggest that there is some decent editorship of the type I wish to see over at The Guardian, except of course (as Kate notes) the work is not paid.
This does seem unacceptable. Is the NUJ aware of/challenging such practice? I know nothing of this world but it seems to be that it’s a bit like the parliamentary internship issue, now being taken up by UNITE, about a lot of young people seeking very few prized jobs and being squeezed to the limit to ‘make it’, while at the same time effectively excluding people without other incomes that allow them to survive (I think more so with internships, which are full-time with lots of overtime, but the principle still applies).
Sunny: I don’t think we are disagreeing that much. Tracing back, my OP was about the need to challenge the current orthodoxy that says piece’s like Kate’s lack validity because they are ‘small n’/not representative (though this orthodoxy is not felt to apply where the circumsntances suit a rightwing take). It was not about saying all other journalistic practice is invalid, but that is the way it has come to be interpreted through the commentary (and I have allowed it to).
I think we have a lot of common ground and the recent to and fro has helped clarify that.
On funding, I think we’ll have to agree to diagree on that for now, but my question would be: if funding is not needed, why are localised LibCons not springing up around the country?
On Pilger, I don’t think we should confuse Pilger 2009 with Pilger 1989, just as (as Don P points out) we should, if we are to be fair confuse the two vintages of Toynbee. Mind oyu, in Toynbee’s case, i’m mucg less inclined to be fair.
Sunny – sorry, the implied smear that you had a journalism degree was not intended! I think it’s fair to say you’re more embedded in the world of journalism than we are, though – you have written for various publications, you have more contacts in the MSM, etc.
Neither did I mean an “establishment view of what journalism should be” by “journalism as a practice”, although the two obviously overlap to some extent. I meant it in the MacIntryrean sense of a “practice” with “internal goods” etc.