Damn Straight, Bill, Part II

In his most recent column in the Times' Sunday Magazine, Bill Keller wonders why so many other publications view him as the one of the world's most powerful people. He objects, writing that assuming he's powerful assumes he "personally directs a vast, global conspiracy" that determines world events, when he actually supervises about 1,100 editors, reporters, photographers and others who report on world events. But because Keller's job is the latter, not the former, at the Times, he's one of the world's most important people, and he uses the position wisely.

Keller believes more strongly than probably anyone else today in the news business' upper echelon that news companies are driven by news. They excel when they break news, analyze news and follow news carefully, seriously and doggedly, not when they ride other companies' production and promote their daily opinion through the 24-hour cycles. He agrees to send people to all corners of the earth, the very dangerous and the very comfortable, with little regard to the expense. He knows what drives the Times: everyone in the newsroom.

This is what makes this prickly column all the better. On the media's obsession with itself: "We in Media have transcended earthbound activities like reporting, writing or picture-taking and created an abstraction — a derivative — called Media in which we invest our attention and esteem." On news aggregation's sampling of other sources' reportage, thus directing Internet traffic and revenue to the sampler and not the producer: "In Somalia this would be called piracy. In the mediasphere, it is a respected business model." On AOL's recent merger with the Huffington Post: "It was portrayed as a sign that AOL is moving into the business of creating stuff — what we used to call writing or reporting or journalism but we now call 'content.' Buying an aggregator and calling it a content play is a little like a company’s announcing plans to improve its cash position by hiring a counterfeiter."

In a postscript -- ironically only published online -- Keller bursts the tension by writing that much of the column was meant to be humorous and that he likes aggregation and Arianna Huffington. Huffington's response is equally forceful but more bitter than trenchant, though it nonetheless makes some good points, mainly about the company's increasingly serious reportage. But as the cliche says, All humor (or satire) has some truth to it, and Keller's is right on the mark. He deserves credit for having the courage to write the column.