Thanks as always, Will. One of the things I think about a lot is how arguments in the discourse such as The Nature of Internet "Journalism" (e.g. Bissinger v. Leitch) are almost always unsolvable because they are actually differences in upstream philosophical principles that are never even broached in the discussion. Philosophically speaking, Bissinger is positivist/post-positivist in his approach to the world - facts are out there be be comprehended and we just have to neutrally find them then objectively report on them. For Bissinger there is no lens through which he sees the world - he's getting the unmediated truth just by looking at it Whereas Deadspin understood itself to have a vantage point, a perspective, a lens that was informed by things like race and class and gender and education and fandom. And this led Deadspin toward a more constructivist way of seeing the world - reality and knowledge are understood to be social constructions that we work on together and no one is accessing the world in an objective or neutral way.
These perspectives lead to DRAMATICALLY different understandings of the process, function, and products of journalism!
Thanks as always, Will. One of the things I think about a lot is how arguments in the discourse such as The Nature of Internet "Journalism" (e.g. Bissinger v. Leitch) are almost always unsolvable because they are actually differences in upstream philosophical principles that are never even broached in the discussion. Philosophically speaking, Bissinger is positivist/post-positivist in his approach to the world - facts are out there be be comprehended and we just have to neutrally find them then objectively report on them. For Bissinger there is no lens through which he sees the world - he's getting the unmediated truth just by looking at it Whereas Deadspin understood itself to have a vantage point, a perspective, a lens that was informed by things like race and class and gender and education and fandom. And this led Deadspin toward a more constructivist way of seeing the world - reality and knowledge are understood to be social constructions that we work on together and no one is accessing the world in an objective or neutral way.
These perspectives lead to DRAMATICALLY different understandings of the process, function, and products of journalism!