I just can’t let the day get away without acknowledging internet news entrepreneur Matt Drudge’s speech 15 years ago describing his story and notoriety to the National Press Club. I watched the speech again and am struck by this quote:

And time was only newsrooms had access to the full pictures of the day’s events, but now any citizen does. We get to see the kinds of cuts that are made for all kinds of reasons; endless layers of editors with endless agendas changing bits and pieces, so by the time the newspaper hits your welcome mat, it had no meaning.

This is the key to why I work on this blog. The information that we saw in the newsroom was to be selected, distilled, edited and tailored for our community. There is nothing nefarious in that goal as we sought to do the best job we could. But even well-intentioned people have an agenda and it’s not always the best choice. I know I’ve have good intentions for everything but that doesn’t mean I make no mistakes. The same goes for others in the news media.

In business, knowing and acting on information that others don’t have is an advantage. For years, your local media had all of this information and decided to let you know what they felt was important. The nomimal definition of “gatekeeper.” And part of the existence of this site is to allow others the ability to reveal what the gatekeepers leave out.

A lot of what the gatekeepers leave out is truly irrelevant for most people. Some of it cannot be corroborated and should be witheld until it is. But we’re finding that it’s not always this absolute. Some of what is disregarded, or left on the cutting-room floor, is truly of interest to most people. A most recent example is the coverage of the Kermit Gosnell case that has exposed the facade of “unbiased” newsrooms. Any reasonable person can answer the question, “would your newspaper breathlessly cover a story of a doctor killing newborn babies using scissors to sever its spine beneath its neck?” with a positive answer. But the fact that these acts occur in an abortion clinic then makes this story irrelevant, or not worthy of coverage. In this instance, we can see how the agendas, the biases, of the gatekeepers work.

Another quote from Matt in this speech:

I cover politicians the way the—I cover media people the way they cover politicians. … It’s where the media is unchecked. It’s where they’re not the only game in town, where the media now is a guy with a 486 [a computer] out in Hollywood.

Even though in terms of capital, the media isn’t as big as some industries in your area, they are outsized in how they can manipulate and change the agenda. They can change the environment in which you live. And that is not a bad thing. There should be more scrutiny on things that are big. Government is really getting very big. Some businesses are getting very big. They need scrutiny. The point I’m trying to make here is that media is very big. They need scrutiny that they’re not comfortable.

I may have mentioned this in other posts, but it bears repeating in context of Matt Drudge. The most important thing I learned from journalism school came from Conrad Fink, the instructor formerly from the Associated Press, was that everyone has news judgment. That is, the discernment of what is important to the community – what is news. Conrad’s questions were always designed to point out students’ preconceptions. Mine, and my classmates’, preconceptions that only those deemed worthy (journalists whose credentials were in established firms) are the gatekeepers. And it’s true, everyone can discern what’s important to themselves and others. We don’t agree certainly, but we likely agree more than disagree. And to enable a certain cabal – elites – to be our professional gatekeepers is something to shun, especially as we see in light of their failings as I indicate in the coverage of the Gosnell case above.

After his speech comes the questions from the audience of the National Press Club. The context is that this speech is a few months after Drudge broke the Clinton-Lewinsky story. So emotions are still raw. The majority of these questions are along the lines of gossip, morality, taste and the attitude of how dare this buffoon be given an audience. Not only did the White House seek to brush aside the stories that it finds uncomfortable by dismissing the messenger, but the national media also was seeking to denigrate this new upstart. These questions are anachronistic now. The gate has been flipped over. But the insular enclave that the media is still strong. And we’re here to keep the scrutiny on your local media.