Asawin Suebsaeng:
Much of what I witnessed and heard about during my time in Chicago reinforced my preexisting beliefs that far too many so-called elite members of my profession — national political media scribes who fancy themselves as speaking truth to power, but more often just speak words to financially destructive Google algorithms — are mollycoddled hogs who are doing everything they can to fail to meet the enormity of this moment.
There was the bristling “traditional” media resentment towards the access and treatment the Democratic organizers and the Harris campaign afforded to social media influencers. There were times I thought I had been teleported back to 2010, when we as an industry were debating how to treat bloggers. The presence of an army of influencers or online personas made perfect sense in that the stated priority was “media access,” and influencers are objectively part of the media — not to mention that many of these social media stars have significantly larger audiences than dozens of egghead reporters combined. Though many of these influencers do not maintain the august fact-finding standards of publications that helped justify the Iraq War, they should individually qualify for media credentials.
I've been to a couple of these things I'll just add a few related observations:
- The reason 8 million reporters go is because "anyone who is anyone" goes. This is not a good reason.
- Most of the reporters don't do any reporting that they couldn't do from watching TV.
- The above is certainly true of (most of) the reporters whose names you know.
- It is the "big party" but of course it's a horrible party because the logistics are a nightmare and nobody gets to any partying until after midnight.
- Getting mad about "influencers"/bloggers is still hilarious. They mostly aren't claiming to be "journalists" so why do you pretend they are and then get mad about it. I would suggest that there are other people who have "access" to politicians who might be newsworthy!
