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Armed Liberal presents two must-reads inspired by the LA Times recent front page sneer-piece on Michael Yon.
Two.
It's only fair to note that if the mainstream media holds Yon in any contempt, the feeling is not mutual.
My thoughts on all that later. There's much to discuss.
Update one: From the LA Times piece:
But Carl Prine of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a National Guardsman and former Marine, saw platitudes, thin reporting and a lack of context in Yon's work.Those comments are from several months ago - for a more in-depth examination see Chap's response."As someone who has seen a great deal of combat in my life and who earns his daily bread as a reporter," Prine opined on the Internet, "I can assure you that a lot of what Michael Yon writes is misleading, inaccurate and vapid."
Prine's real problem with Yon is that he's not a mainstream journalist - he explains in some detail why he thinks the work of the NY Times reporters is much better. But his critiques are somewhat contradictory:
He’s not a very good writer. He doesn’t understand, yet, that not every detail needs to go into a dispatch. Not everything is relevant.Is followed closely by:
He’s not a good reporter. He misses things that should immediately trick up some imagination. Here’s something he wrote the other day:In other words - too much detail I don't want, and not enough detail I want - "I" being the key word. And yes, the headlines and focus in a media story about a mission would likely be on the gear that failed, so we must credit Prine with having the "nose for news" that distinguishes today's successful mainstream journalist from guys like Yon. What he misses is that this is exactly why readers find Yon appealing.“So, of course, glitches and snags started occurring the first day. Among other things, key gear failed; but overall, the Surge was going well.”
Uhhh, what gear failed????
But this quote is even more revealing:
I’m not sure who is “raving” about Yon. Nor am I exactly sure how Yon can continue to do what he’s doing and make money. He seems to be scraping by on donations.Actually he did much better than "scraping by". Prine's "marketplace" is "what mainstream media wants" - the market Yon tapped is what people want. That those markets aren't one and the same is but one of many reasons why so many old-guard media producers are seeing plummeting ratings and sales.In the marketplace is the arbiter of value, then Yon has little. If he was so beloved, if there were so many raves, then he mgiht [sic] be a bit more successful.
Update 2: By the Numbers
More from the Times:
Although the profusion of links gives an indication of Yon's growing popularity, the blogger has yet to draw an audience as large as many traditional news outlets, which measure their traffic in millions. His blog has not hit the threshold of 360,000 distinct monthly users to be tracked by Nielsen/NetRatings.There's a reason the LA Times obsesses over this fact. Their own numbers, while significantly greater than Yon's, are disturbing. Here's a quick calendar year in review:
1Q:
Circulation revenue at The Los Angeles Times fell in the first quarter, according to Tribune Co.'s first-quarter results.2Q and 3QCirculation revenue for all newspapers under the Tribune umbrella was down 9 percent. However, Tribune said the two biggest drops occurred for the L.A. Times and Newsday in New York.
For the six months ended Sept. 30, 2005, the Los Angeles Times reported a six-day Monday-Saturday average circulation of 869,819, a decline of 3.6 percent from the prior year, and Sunday circulation of 1,247,569, a decline of 3.5 percent from the prior year, according to figures filed with the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC).The fourth quarter - could they finish strong? No.
Fourth-quarter earnings tumbled 38 percent at Tribune Co....LA Times/Tribune Co. folks will acknowledge some reasons for declining circulation - one is the competition they face from their own online version of their paper - and their competitors'. Long accustomed to being the only game in town, major metropolitan newspapers now struggle to come to terms with business models shifting at the speed of thought. On the internet they now find themselves competing for a share of online readers from around the globe - a huge potential audience - but local car dealers and other businesses have little incentive to advertise to folks from the other side of the Mississippi (or the Pacific, for that matter). And local readers unhappy with the local paper are free to click elsewhere.Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dennis FitzSimons said circulation revenue from the company's 11 urban dailies are still down but cited progress and said paid circulation is stabilizing.
Wall Street was not impressed. Shares in Tribune fell 30 cents, or 1 percent, to close at $28.71 on the New York Stock Exchange after sinking as low as $28.40 - their lowest prices since March 13, 2000.
...The publishing unit, consisting of Tribune's newspapers, saw operating profit decline 26 percent... Advertising revenue fell 2 percent for the quarter, while circulation revenue were down 4 percent.
A subscription fee for reading the online version won't work with so many other options available for casual news consumers, nor will it drive those people back to the print edition. If such a fee was adopted the resulting decline in online readership will bring reduced ad revenues there, offsetting the subscription income.
And of course it's those ad revenues that support the newspaper business, not the profit from subscriptions or newsstand sales. No paper has ever been so highly regarded that it could survive purely on its sales - because never in history has a public been willing to actually consider a newspaper so indispensable that they would be willing to pay enough for it that it could be sustained independent of corporate sponsorship in the form of ads.
And if you're thinking ahead of me you've already realized the underlying reason for the Time's obsession with Mike Yon's readership numbers, and the jealousy underlying it. While the LA Times may boast a large ("millions") number of people willing to read their output as long as they don't have to pay for it (and a dwindling number of people willing to part with a few pennies a week for the actual paper) Mike Yon enjoys a smaller readership (thousands) willing to underwrite his efforts to the point that he needs no corporate sponsorship, or "success" on the terms defined by media dinosaurs.
By himself, Yon represents no threat to the LA Times. He doesn't have the inside scoop on the Lakers, offers no clue as to whether his readers will need an umbrella tomorrow, and offers no advice whatsoever for the lovelorn.
Update 3: Conservative estimates
If you're a reader here I don't need to tell you who Yon is, but the Times recognized they would have to define him for the majority of their readers:
Michael Yon may not be a household name, but he emerged last year as the reporter of choice for many conservatives and supporters of the war.But is "conservatives and supporters of the war" an apt description of his readership?
An interesting question.
Yon was working on another story when he learned that two friends had been killed in Iraq. As the Times reports,
The deaths galvanized Yon. He contacted an Army officer he'd known in high school, who in turn put Yon in touch with a commander in Iraq. That got him a ticket to Baqubah.The Times doesn't point this out, but the deaths of friends doesn’t motivate one to become a champion for an unjust war in which they died (this same fact applies to all milbloggers). And Yon did not become that champion - even if the Times would have us believe otherwise. In-country he simply reported what he saw, told the story of the war without the filter of a major corporation and a league of editors re-writing his accounts to fit available space in column inches and the box defined by their own distant view of events - shaped by whatever forces that may be.
Thus Yon's dispatches became a valuable source of information for those wanting a full picture of what was going on in Iraq - people whose quest for knowledge didn't stop with what the local paper had to say - or worse, the two-minute soundbite on the TV news. Those who do limit their knowledge to those sources comprise a large number of Americans. It's odd (Orwellian, if you give it any consideration at all) that the Times labels the rest of us - those who seek information from all possible sources - as "conservative". I'd speculate that those same people who read Yon, this site, or any other MilBlog are also familiar with the efforts of Michael Moore. That they are nonetheless "supporters of the war" speaks volumes to their ability to decide for themselves. Bottom line: "conservative supporters of the war"? The Times was half right.
I've noticed that same mislabeling phenomenon here. Whereas hundreds of thousands of visitors have found this site via links from center-to-right wing weblogs, the Left avoids this site - and other military blogs - like the plague. (Perhaps due in no small part to the fact that they can't dismiss us with the "chickenhawk" label - the most powerful - albeit lame - argument they can muster against those who support the war.) But this site thus gained a reputation as being politically "right wing" and "conservative", in spite of the fact that I don't wade into issues of Supreme Court appointments, border security, homosexual marriage, and a host of other topics unrelated to what we're about - authentic "boots on the ground" coverage of the war - from those wearing the boots.
And the double irony of the situation is that far from being cheerleaders or mouthpieces, we often have to fight the Army to make that happen.
So if you're still here, I've got some news you might not appreciate: you are probably a liberal. While others shy away and deny themselves a robust view of the state of the world today you are looking for the complete picture. An we'd like to think we offer that, or as close as we can - in our daily Dawn Patrol and in the weekly Meanwhile back at the Front. There we'll present as many sides of the story that we can, from the front-line GIs and citizens in Iraq to the editors in New York, LA, London, and all points between.
We're confident that you'll draw your own conclusions.
After all, isn't that what being liberal is all about?
Elsewhere:
Soldier's Dad, in comments below:
"...no Media organization, obsessed with advertising revenue, would hire Yon. The purpose of a newspaper, is to get people to read the Advertisements, not the news.Touché. Read this too.Yon writes stories people want to read. They'll miss the 3/4 page ad for BillyJoBob's Auto Emporium.
Print depressing news...a new car from BillyJoBob's Auto Emporium is just the cure."
(First posted: 2006-02-10 17:37:52)
