The New "Journalism"

Few media behaviors are more pitiful than the intense fixation over the “Veepstakes”: a word that is at once nauseatingly vapid and yet incomparably valuable as a symbol of our nation’s pointless, juvenile political media. Time‘s Mark Halperin, needless to say, has a column today all about the “Veepstakes,” which begins by his proud announcement that he’s “covered all of these since 1992.” Tapping into his deep well of Veepstakes wisdom, he shares 10 “fundamentals” about this process (keep your eye on Drudge!); here is one of them:

4. Unless you have been directly involved in one of these, you can’t believe the number of calls and emails that will go from journalists to Romney campaign officials from now until the pick is made public, with pleas such as “My career will be hurt if I don’t break this,” “My career will be made if I break this,” and “I don’t need to break it, but please be available to confirm the story right away for me if someone else breaks it,”and, “You owe me.”

[...]

I wonder what these “journalists” did to make them believe that the presidential campaign they cover “owes them”? Actual journalists think that their “careers will be made” if they expose serious wrongdoing on the part of those in power; these people think their careers will be made if they get to run in front of an MSNBC or CNN camera and announce Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential pick 11 seconds before everyone else announces it (what Jay Rosen derides as an “ego scoop”). The latter view about what is career-making is probably more accurate than the former, which explains most everything.
  Glenn Greenwald

I'm guessing the same thing that makes people buy into commercials for smart phones touting that, with their to-die-for piece of equipment, you'll get sports scores 11 seconds faster than the poor hopeless slob who owns something obviously far inferior, is the same thing that makes journalists do what they do for an ego scoop.  Just don't ask me to name that particular mental disorder.

Olympics season is a good time to consider this question. How much richer by endorsement dollars and how much more celebrated is the guy who (maybe cheating) wins an Olympic swimming race by .01 seconds? Lots. Big lots.  The number two spot - 11 seconds or .01 seconds behind - is a momentarily sympathetic position quickly tossed to the gutter, only to be thought of again in the next big event.  And sports is our one shared sacred ritual in this country. We've long since turned our political elections into sports. “Journalism” merely followed.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.