The Blogger Challenge: Story Teller as Social Hero

I recently saw The Soloist. And though I know some people love it, I found it a little trite and formulaic, a bit movie-of-the-week. It’s certainly a decent enough movie, with noteworthy performances and a good heart, I’d recommend seeing it if you’re interested. The subject matter of how homelessness and mental illness is handled in this country certainly deserves as much attention as it can get.

The real thing that struck me though is the portrayal of journalist as social hero, as the guy that stands up in the public square and rallies everyday folk with a sense of outrage or injustice into some sort of action or social change. In the Soloist the change was both small and personal as well as large. There was some very real betterment in Ayer’s circumstances, as well as the larger benefit to Skid Row in the attention and subsequent funds channeled it’s way.

The movie celebrates this role that journalists have, of using their platform to address social issues. However, the movie makes no bones of also addressing the current state of newspapers today. There’s the talk of layoffs, people being escorted out of their offices by security with their boxes. Over the course of the movie the newsroom goes from a bustling claustrophobic cacophony, to a much more subdued floor with increasingly empty cubicles.

Who’s going to fill this gap? The internet and blogosphere are great at instant communication, at targeting niche markets, at being timely – but can it focus enough, and for long enough, and with a wide enough audience to really make a difference when it’s needed. The blogosphere is full of great sites that no one reads, crackpots, and a lot of preaching to the choir bloggers blogging for bloggers.

I’m trying to think of any current cases and Susan Boyle comes to mind. I know it’s a fluff piece, but it certainly grabbed everyone’s eyeballs for a while, and continues to. She became a new media celebrity overnight. In fact part of the mainstream news coverage, was not just about her, but about the number of YouTube hits, about the power of new media. But also in conjunction with the Susan Boyle web phenom story was a bit of a side story about how we tend to judge people by their looks, how we minimize older, less polished people, and again how we’re a society that values looks, and youth over talent. Did this sink in? Was there enough of a collective shift in the social zeitgeist to make a difference. The next time you’re at the record store, are you going to weigh talent over packaging a bit more? The next time someone asks you to sign a petition or come to a neighborhood meeting, are you going to hold off on those snap superficial judgments we always make on people long enough to give them a hearing?

Perhaps this is the shift though – from an individual such as a journalist championing the call; to this sort of collective blog consciousness? Instead of one journalist doing a series of columns over time, will we just follow link after link from one related entry to the next, each giving a bit more nuance, a bit of a different spin, an added dimension, then we blog on it and add our voice to the linkfest and we become part of the conversation, until we all reach some sort of consensus?

It’s going to be a challenge, but I think we can rise to it. It’s all part and parcel of this huge change in society where the traditional gatekeepers are falling to the wayside. The wonder and challenge of it all though is that we’re not just swapping one gatekeeper for another, but we’re sort of changing all the rules of the game. Those are always heady and frightening times. Bloggers aren’t just asking for the rules of the game to change, we’ve all just taken our collective balls home and decided we’re just not going to play anymore. We’re still just trying to figure out what this new game is though and that may take a while – let’s just hope the Nathaniel Anthony Ayer’s we’ve yet to discover aren’t forgotten in this brave new world.