Wednesday, April 4, 2012

The Newsonomics of Mr. Daisey’s media blur

Nieman Journalism Lab reporting:
Was it journalism, performance art, political provocation, or just a hell of a good story? Was it a great truth, a great lie, or somewhere in between?
This American Life’s retraction (good NPR explainer here) of Mike Daisey’s January piece on Apple’s factories in China has unleashed a cascade of reaction and rethinking. It’s been a chain reaction, with the episode connecting up all our next-era hopes and fears.
The much-decorated (Peabody, Polk, DuPont-Columbia, Murrow awards) This American Life is 16 years old now, and fundamentally a radio program. But the “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory” show showed real new-media power, becoming TAL’s most downloaded podcast ever at 880,000 downloads — a sure measure of its virality. (In that follow-on impact, it reminds us of the power of Katie Couric’s 2008 interview with Sarah Palin — an interview whose web afterlife made many more waves than the initial broadcast.)
Why are we seeing such a fuss? The two big reasons, I believe: the impact the story had, and our increasingly uneasy footing in the blurring media landscape.
The 39-minute Daisey piece did what dozens of previous stories on Foxconn’s massive manufacturing of our Apple (and other) wonders hadn’t accomplished: It captured listeners’ imaginations.
Why? Daisey turned our portable pleasures to guilty ones. Talking with Chinese workers, he connected our pleasures to their pain — 18-hour days, chemical poisonings, suicides, and more. He tempered the guilt with a decent pro and con discussion of how even odious sweatshop jobs have long lifted generations into the bottom rungs of middle class existences in many nations.
TAL pricked the consciences of 1.8 million
http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/03/the-newsonomics-of-mr-daiseys-media-blur/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5c1b7d03e3-DAILY_EMAIL
 

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