Let’s hear it for traditional media

Wow, a month between updates? Amazing. Doubly so, considering that it’s less than a year to Election Day.

Last weekend I took some time to prune my RSS and Twitter feeds. If we’ve exchanged emails or worked together, don’t worry — I was pruning people who didn’t know me and probably didn’t care whether or not I was following them anyway.

I read fewer weblogs, too. I am a shadow of my former social media self.

In the process of weaning myself from outrage I’ve discovered that I don’t want to hear news and opinion immediately any more. I’d prefer to get a broader, more complete picture. That’s something that really can only happen with the passing of time and the attention of a skilled, dedicated writer. Not a professional journalist, necessarily, but someone dedicated to gathering facts and telling a story.

Turns out there’s something to be said for the less personal, more narrative longer-form writing. Something weblogs aren’t good at.

The problem with the day-to-day, build-a-regular-readership form of weblogs is that they rely on that regular readership. The communities become insular, with their own lingo and inside jokes. This is even true of very large communities like Reddit, which has an entire language of cartoons. It makes it difficult to get into reading one of these. Like leaping into Lost in the middle of the fourth season.

What we need is something that takes a longer view, assembles facts from many sources, then tells the story in a compelling and interesting way. Something that’s willing to sacrifice responding in the same thirty-minute news cycle to gain some perspective and not report the first available rumor (and the next and the next…). That sounds like something we used to have a long time ago. Something called a mmm… mmmm… mmaa…

Magazine!

Remember magazines? Ones you actually pay for? They used to be excellent at these kinds of things. I hear there are still a few good ones out there. Ya’ll read any? Which ones?