Posted by Randy Barnett:
The Joy of Blogging & More on Startrek Enterprise:
I have made this point before, and so have many others, but one of the
joys of blogging is benefiting from the knowledge of readers who are
willing to share it. While bloggers are starting to get credit for
what they do (e.g. in disciplining the mainstream media), outside the
blogging culture it is not fully appreciated that it is the
relationship between bloggers and the distributed knowledge of their
readers that is doing much of the work. Powerline got MSM credit for
"breaking" the CBS/Dan Rather story, but in the blogosphere is it well
known that the original claim of forgery was posted by a reader on
Free Republic, which was then picked up by the Poweline blog.
If I make the slightest factual error in a blog post, I can count on
the readers to point it out PRONTO. This is why blogging can be more
accurate than traditional journalism which relies on "editors" to
catch the mistakes of reporters. And unlike traditional journalism, I
have a ready means to correct errors almost instantaneously. How can
an ordinary beat reporter correct even errors of which she or he later
becomes aware? This is a real advantage of this media over that of
traditional journalism that has nothing to do with the skill, good
faith or biases of journalists. They do not have ready access to the
knowledge of their readers and they cannot readily correct any errors
they make.
The last time I posted a paean to blogging, I was chastened by readers
who pointed out that blogging is largely parasitic on the factual
investigation of traditional journalists. Although this is becoming a
bit less accurate as time goes by--the original information about
Eason Jordan came from the personal reporting of a blogger--it remains
overwhelmingly the case for now. And the Jordan story had legs in the
blogosphere because of the confirmation of the facts by, among others,
Barney Frank, David Gergen and Chris Dodd. In addition, bloggers tend
to get action only when the MSM picks up the story (though once again
this does not entirely fit the CNN/Jordan story which had been largely
uncovered by the MSM). But I think this is not bad. Bloggers & their
readers are a check on the MSM but this does not make them a
replacement for it--and vice versa. Checks and balances are good
things.
The main point of this analysis is that whatever blogging's advantages
over the MSM may be, they come from the structural nature of the media
rather then any inherent moral superiority of bloggers over
traditional reporters. If traditional reporters blogged rather then
wrote stories that are published in the traditional manner, their work
would benefit from these advantages.
Anyhow, sorry for the digression. These ideas are not original to me,
but I think worth remembering nevertheless. And I suspect you need to
be older to be in true awe of these developments in communication.
Here is the email from Teri Bolke (co-owner of [1]savefarscape.com
about Star Trek Enterprise that moved me to remark on the joys of
blogging. (I also found the blog by Ron Moore about Enterprise to
which he links to be of interest.):
Hi,
In reply to the reader that emailed you....everything was spot on
but for the remarks re syndication in regards to Farscape and SG-1.
>>The difference is that both of those shows were independent and
in syndication from the >>start, while Enterprise is a network
show.
Farscape only reached syndication this month. It was held by
agreements with the SciFi Channel that made the reruns exclusive to
SciFi until Fall 2005. During this year's NAFTE, Debmar/Mercury
Entertainment was able to put Farscape in 85-90& of the country so
far in a deal with Fox. They continue working to reach full market
penetration.
Also, Farscape never left its home channel for the original 88
episodes. (Buffy:TVS is the only example I know of where a show was
canceled by one network and picked up by another.) Henson and SciFi
shared the approximately 1.5 mil per episode cost of Farscape while
it was in its first run. Due to a very complicated series of
financial crunches, SciFi, EM.TV (then owner of TJHC) and Henson
were unable to reach an agreement to fund a 5th season of Farscape
and the fourth season was its last.
The recently aired mini-series was funded as a direct result of the
fan campaign that began in 2002, with investors approaching Henson
and allowing Brian, now co-CEO along with his sister Lisa, to fund
the mini-series upfront. The SciFi Channel, while the logical
choice to air the mini-series, had no hand in financing it. They
simply purchased the airing rights. Lionsgate has recently released
the mini-series on DVD.
AS for SG-1, it began on HBO and MGM later moved the show to SciFi,
but not because the show was canceled. Unlike Farscape, SG-1 has
been in syndication for several years, on two different channels,
while the show is still in first run. There was no shopping the
show around to other networks to continue a first run. It begins
filming for its 9th season in March, I believe.
From seeing Rick Berman's statement to SciFi Wire when the
announcement was made, it looks like Paramount is pulling the plug
because the entire franchise, not just this one series from the
franchise, has been doing unexpectedly worse, so the situations are
very different. They're calling it franchise fatigue; witness how
lackluster ST:Nemesis did at the box office. Bringing in Manny Coto
to revitalize the show was an excellent idea, executed entirely too
late.
Enterprise is up for syndication this year, so there's always a
chance that it can grow a larger viewer base. Keeping the show
alive in the fan domain, and giving it solid ratings when it
syndicates, is what will reassure Paramount that the Star Trek
franchise isn't dead.
For an incredible tribute to the fans and their role in Star Trek,
take a look at Battlestar Galactica Executive Producer [2]Ron
Moore's blog entry at the official Battlestar Galactica site.
I hope that this isn't the last of Trek and from everything I've
read, I don't believe it will be. Keep the faith. Everyone told us
we were nuts during the campaign for Farscape. We just smiled and
ignored them.
Regards,
Teri Bolke
References
1.
file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/volokh/posts/savefarscape.com/watchfarscape.com
2. http://blog.scifi.com/battlestar/
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