Jay Rosen Lets Himself Get Played by Jim Rutenberg

Jay Rosen writes:

PressThink: Last Week That Man Tried to Run You Over. Why Are You Having Dinner With Him?: It’s good news that journalists at the New York Times will no longer participate in the bloated and compromised White House Correspondents Association dinner.... Two weeks ago, Jim Rutenberg, a Times correspondent in the Washington bureau, interviewed me about the upcoming Correspondents dinner.... Rutenberg’s article made me wish I had followed, in this instance, blogger Dave Winer’s policy. When asked for a phone or e-mail interview, he usually declines. “If you have a few questions, send them along, and if I have something to say, I’ll write a blog post, which of course you’re free to quote,” he said last week.... Jeff Jarvis wrote: “The interview is outmoded and needs to be rethought.” I know I’m rethinking it. Rutenberg and I had a pretty detailed conversation.... But what Jim needed me for was the bloggers vs. journalists debate.... (Subtext: Wow, the left is as angry with the press as the right was. Just listen to the so-called Net roots attack us for not carrying their message.)

Notice that it is “activists” who are upset with the White House press, and it is their conflict with civil, professional and reasonable journalists that creates friction enough for a story. I wanted nothing to do with that narrative.... But Rutenberg recruited me into his narrative anyway.... [Rutenberg wrote that the]

blogosphere... is populated by people who “feel that the press was run over, and kind of told itself some story to avoid confrontation and lapsed into a phony kind of balance,” said Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University. It is enough to make some reporters bristle. “Some of them seem to want us to hate the people we cover,” said Ken Herman, a White House correspondent for Cox Newspapers and an association board member. “They don’t seem to understand that you can have a professional relationship with them where you don’t hate them, and you can sometimes talk to them, and maybe have dinner with them.”

Herman’s “bristle” has nothing to do with what I think. But I was not misquoted. I was used to make a point Rutenberg wanted to make before he talked to me.... Still, Rutenberg didn’t violate any of the rules for interviewing sources.... I knew what I was getting into when I called him back. Reporter and I talk for 30 to 45 minutes; he decides which twelve seconds he wants to use. If he has a pre-existing narrative that he wants me to ratify, chances are good I will say something he can use to do just that. Them’s the rules. I would have been better off blogging about his e-mailed questions. As Scott Rosenberg observed last week, “In the online conversation, the reporter doesn’t get the last word. And the reporter doesn’t get to filter which parts of the conversation are available to the public. No wonder journalists want to stick with the phone”...

Jay Rosen should have listened to Brad DeLong and Susan Rasky's First Rule for Sources: Know Your Customers:

Nieman Watchdog > Commentary > Twelve things economists need to remember to be helpful journalistic sources: 1. Know your customers. Is the journalist... looking for a broadcast soundbite, for two paragraphs of context, or help in understanding... [the issues]? Is she on a tight deadline?...

If the journalist is looking for a particular quote, figure out whether you want to be the person who gives that quote--and if not, get off the phone. If the journalist is looking for two paragraphs that can be dropped into the story as "experts say the real issues are..." give the journalist your best two paragraphs quickly. If the journalist is looking to educate him or herself, you can have a conversation--but at the start reserve the right to approve whatever quotes they want in the end to use, so that you can be sure that they are quotes you are comfortable giving.

If not--well, then, the journalist will play you like Jim Rutenberg played Jay Rosen. It's not "them's the rules." It's the interviewee who sets the rules. It's "I let Rutenberg turn me into a sock puppet, and I'm unhappy."

But Rosen got something back: Rutenberg's desperate attempts to pretend to himself that things are OK with him and his slice of the journalistic profession:

The most revealing moment... Rutenberg[:].... “But don’t you think Bush is paying the price for that now?” he said. Here was a way of acknowledging press failure that allows the story come out all right at the end. Presidents are supposed to pay a price if they diss the press, and look!... The system worked.... But consider what Bush quit first. His chief of staff denied that there was any fourth estate role. “In our democracy, the people who represent the public stood for election,” said Andrew Card. “I don’t believe you have a check-and-balance function.” Bush told reporters the same thing at an August 2003 barbeque in Texas: “You’re assuming that you represent the public,” he said, “I don’t accept that.” Back ‘em up, starve ‘em down, and drive up their negatives--that was the policy. Allies in the culture war were eager to help the White House marginalize and discredit the Washington press. In Scott McClellan, a stooge figure actually took over in the White House press room. Strategic non-communication became normal practice—-itself an extraordinary break with the past...

Comments

[Kate G.]

Brad,
an excellent and thought provoking post. I think Jay Rosen's education was worth being forced to feel like a sock puppet for a moment. I especially like the DeLong and Rasky rules for "knowing your customer." Its become increasingly clear that, as you so brilliantly limn, there aren't good journalists and bad journalists there are simply different kinds of piece work being done by people calling themselves journalists. The question for the interviewee is whether they want their answers to be made into a sweater, a throw, or a darling little shrug.

One of the most interesting things about blogs and blogging, and there is a killer conversation going on about Jon Chait's piece over at Eschaton and Hullabaloo, is the way in which blog readership makes reader response a bigger part of the writing and editing process than it has been in the past. The ability of blogs and bloggers to go back to something that used to be fixed, like an interview, and amend or criticize the record is also something really new. Rosen's idea of taking the interviewing function back and making it visible on his own site rather than "giving away the milk for free" is one aspect of this.

Before blogs and blogging I used to read political think pieces in order to gain tiny glimpses into the ideas of people very far removed from me physically or socially--I had to read someone like Rutenberg to find out what so and so in washington thought about some issue, and then read who rutenberg though would be a good counterpoint to that perspective, and then read some economics guy quoted in the wall street journal. Now I'm much more likely to have read all those people independently, on a blog, and I don't need Rutenberg to gatekeep for me and cherry pick quotes for a generic opinion piece.

Kate G.

[ken melvin]

Enlightening. Thanks for the post.

[Barry]

I feel that this 'new professionalism' is merely a reaction to the election of a Democratic Congress, and the likely election of a Democractic president.

Expect many quotes wherein 'journalists' talk about how they were too soft on Bush, and will correct themselves on (Dem Pres).

[C. L. Ball]

Rosen/Jarvis/Winer lost me on the interview v. blogging -- a journalist can rip a quote from a blog and from an interview to serve a narrative, so declining to be interviewed does not solve the problem Rosen identifies.

Moreover, the interview -- if it entails a conversation, not a stock question-response sequence -- allows the journalist to clarify points and the interviewer to correct misconceptions in the journalist's questions and follow-ups.

But I have a problem with Rosen's problem with the narrative. Journalists are trying to tell a story - not the story that the people interviewed want told or what other readers want told, but the story as the journalist sees it. The problem with the Iraq coverage was that the Bush admin.'s narrative was being adopted by too many in the press. That's why there should be a diversity of publications. Once they coalesce on a narrative, there is a problem.

But Rosen's apparent position -- if I think the journalist's narrative is wrong, I'm not going to be interviewed -- is stupid: the interview is your only mechanism to 'correct' the narrative. If Rosen doesn't return the call, someone else, far less astute, will.

[Kevin J-M]

To me, the most telling element in the NY Times's self-serving and self-dealing (as evident in the quoted portion of Rosen's post) is that Karl Rove attended this year's WH Correspondents' Dinner as a guest of the New York Times. There's no more damning bit of exposure of the thin membrane between the so-called MSM and the GOP establishment than this little bit of log-rolling.

[Michael]

As for Kevin J-M

I realize that subtlety is a quality that must be cultivated but still ...

Is it possible, just vaguely possible, that the NYT looked at the circus, again, looked at the guests etc, and then reconsidered? Had second thoughts?

Call me crazy but isn't that healthy?

[kharris]

CL Ball,

I think you have misstated Rosen's position. It is not that he won't participate if he disapproves of the story the reporter intends to tell. It is that the game has changed, and he intends to play in a new way. His goal isn't to take over the reporters brain and have the story told as he likes it. He doesn't seem to presume to know what story the reporter intends to tell. Rosen's goal, it seems to me, is to get his own story out. He will do it through a blog, and the reporter is free to quote him from the blog. If the reporter quotes Rosen in ways that do a disservice to Rosen's view or to reality, Rosen's view will be available to the public through a blog. That was not the case in the past. That it is the case now means there is a way to reduce the reporter's ability to serve his or her own interest at the expense of the interviewee.

[Michael]

Brad lays out a reasonable way for dealing with those of my ilk, albeit always with that touch of splendid self-righteousness that makes one wonder if he's aware that he works at a prestigious school that employs professional advocates of legalized torture. (Does this mean that UC/B has ten more years to exist ... ?)

But whatever ...

C.L. (above) has it right. Reporters try to synthesize narratives, or points of view, sometimes well, sometimes not. To the extent that someone wants to tend to their blog knitting (and I'm a fan of blogging ... ) and put their carefully crafted 27789 nouns and verbs there and not leave themselves open to interpretation or misuse? Well,that's fine and their privilege but also, I'd argue, a retreat into an intellectual ghetto.

Many reporters already adhere to what Brad suggests: They turn to academics, wiseheads, in hopes of open ended conversations that shed unexpected light and that suggest avenues of future inquiry. In these circumstances reading back quotes with an eye towards greater accuracy--not just of fact but of nuance--serves all concerned.

Then there is the more prosaic daiily need to search for a smart opposing voice, a quick take on the issue of the day. I'm not sure that I buy Brad's two-paragraph sound-bite approach but he's not far from the truth. And right enough, probably some should not play that game.

[Brad DeLong]

If we keep tenuring more people like John Yoo, we'll be lucky to last ten years...

:-)

[wkwillis]

Bail
If a reporter quotes you out of context from a publically available source (like your blog) then anyone who actually cares about the subject will use google to find the qoute, see that it is our of context, and call him a liar.
They are spending their credibility. It's a permanent thing. When I realized that Ley had lied (or greatly exagerated) much of Engineer's Dreams, I never believed anything I read by him again. I set the "National Enquirer" bit to positive for the read filter.