aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

What bloggers do

In the ongoing discussion of what’s a blogger? I am inspired and informed by a comment a few weeks back from Lolis Eric Elie is a metro columnist for The Times-Picayune in an On The Media discussion of how the narrative of Big Easy rebuilding is not what it appears to be:

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What do you think hasn’t been covered? What’s the story that still isn’t being told?

LOLIS ERIC ELIE: The great thing about American media is that most of the stories get told, but unless they are told repeatedly, unless you have one media outlet breaking a story and another one attempting to come up with a better day two story, the stories aren’t important.

I cannot think of anything that has not been reported, but it does not get analyzed and it does not get viewed in the context of the national implications. So I suppose I would say that what has not happened is a discussion of the lessons to be learned for the rest of the country.

My role in the media ecology is not that of the reporter. I’m typically not going to go out and do original reporting; that’s not what I do and it’s not what is needed from me.

I can, however, help keep a story going day after day after day until it gets the attention it deserves. And I can be part of the feedback mechanism that analyzes, contextualizes and draws lessons from what the traditional media does.

That’s plenty good enough for me.