Verlyn Klinkenborg: The Future of Journalism as Told by Hilaire Belloc in 1918
... No newspaper, or TV network, of our own day can stand in for Lord Northcliffe's dominant suite of newspapers, including The Times of London, which embodied Belloc's notion of the Official Press. The balance of power has shifted, and many of the ideals implicit in the free or independent press, as Belloc describes it, have been absorbed by modern newspapers. There is also no shortage of the small, independent journals of opinion that Belloc was championing.
But "The Free Press" is still worth reading, for it describes, with some important adjustments, the evolving relationship between political bloggers and the mainstream media.
The free press that Belloc describes was a horde of small, highly opinionated, sometimes propagandistic papers that arose in reaction to "the official Press of Capitalism." What characterized the free press, Belloc wrote, was "disparate particularism."
As he says, "the Free Press gives you the truth; but only in disjointed sections, for it is disparate and it is particularist." (For "particularism," Belloc offers the synonym "crankiness.") To get at the truth by reading the organs of the free press, you have to "add it all up and cancel out one exaggerated statement against another." But his point is that you can get at the truth.
There are whole paragraphs in Belloc's essay where, if you substitute "blogs" for "the Free Press," you will be struck by the parallels. He notes that the journals of the free press seldom pay their way and that they often suffer from the impediment of "imperfect information," simply because it is not in the politicians' interests to speak to them. They tend to preach to the converted. And they are limited by the founder's vision. "It is difficult," Belloc writes, "to see how any of the papers I have named would long survive a loss of their present editorship."
Belloc's point is not to expose the limitations of bloggers — excuse me, the Free Press. It is to show how, imperfect as they are, they can contribute enormously to our ability to learn what's going on. Anyone who spends much time reading political blogs will hear a familiar note — in far greater prose — among Belloc's certainties. He writes, in short, as a blogger of his own time.
Read entire article at NYT
But "The Free Press" is still worth reading, for it describes, with some important adjustments, the evolving relationship between political bloggers and the mainstream media.
The free press that Belloc describes was a horde of small, highly opinionated, sometimes propagandistic papers that arose in reaction to "the official Press of Capitalism." What characterized the free press, Belloc wrote, was "disparate particularism."
As he says, "the Free Press gives you the truth; but only in disjointed sections, for it is disparate and it is particularist." (For "particularism," Belloc offers the synonym "crankiness.") To get at the truth by reading the organs of the free press, you have to "add it all up and cancel out one exaggerated statement against another." But his point is that you can get at the truth.
There are whole paragraphs in Belloc's essay where, if you substitute "blogs" for "the Free Press," you will be struck by the parallels. He notes that the journals of the free press seldom pay their way and that they often suffer from the impediment of "imperfect information," simply because it is not in the politicians' interests to speak to them. They tend to preach to the converted. And they are limited by the founder's vision. "It is difficult," Belloc writes, "to see how any of the papers I have named would long survive a loss of their present editorship."
Belloc's point is not to expose the limitations of bloggers — excuse me, the Free Press. It is to show how, imperfect as they are, they can contribute enormously to our ability to learn what's going on. Anyone who spends much time reading political blogs will hear a familiar note — in far greater prose — among Belloc's certainties. He writes, in short, as a blogger of his own time.