This may be a dead horse, but I’m going to keep reading about it. Dispatches co-founder Mort Rosenblum penned a great rebuttal to those crying for the death of old media. It starts:

Here’s a hair-raising snippet from the towering babble of media debate, signed by a Richard Sine, that argues journalism schools should be abolished:

“You can pick up most media skills on the job, or with a few hours of instruction. If you screw up, nobody dies, and nothing collapses.”

Someone fired back a single-word rebuttal: Iraq. Dead right. And that barely touches the surface.”

-Mort Rosenblum / Dispatches

Well worth a read.

Techcrunch writer Paul Carr comes up with a striking example of the danger of an unmediated, everyone’s a publisher style of news and information. A baseless ZDNet article accused Yahoo of giving thousands of Iranian’s confidential information to government authorities after recent protests in the country. Techcrunch itself has shown severe lapses in journalistic diligence this year.

And I guess I don’t want to suggest that just because something’s written in a newspaper it must be true. James Fallows points out that the celebrated newsrooms of yesteryear, if they ever existed, are but shadows of their former selves. In this case, the Washington Post failed to exercise basic fact checking in its lead editorial on the Obama Nobel announcement.

Remember, though, the media isn’t the message. There’s still a lot of good journalism being done both by online-only organizations and by print publications. What’s really to be criticized here is lazy journalism lacking in rigor.

From Amongst the Poor by Gary Knight

Dispatches (which I’ve never held in my hands, but which I know in print has to be even better than the incomparable essays and photojournalism on the magazine’s site) never ceases to amaze. Amber, one of the dynamos behind the scenes of the operation, just emailed to let us know about a couple of events coinciding with the release of the 4th issue, “Out of Poverty.” I’m jealous I can’t be there for the talk and also to see the VII offices and gallery, which is a big step up from the tiny 2.5-desk office on the campus of the Fashion Institute of Technology when I was there…

First, Thursday, May 21, at 7p.m. at the VII Gallery in DUMBO, Brooklyn (28 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201), Gary Knight will present a slideshow and discuss the images published in “Out of Poverty.” The work presented will come from his recent work on poverty in India, which does not disappoint. Members of the public are invited to bring images of poverty on USB devices to print and hang on one wall of the gallery.

The next night, Friday, May 22, at 6:30pm at the VII Gallery, Gary Knight, World Press winner Tim Hetherington, and VII agency director Stephen Mayes, will “discuss war photography and representations of conflict.”

Dispatches - Carry on up the Gulag: Interview with Seamus Murphy

Continuing our posts on Seamus Murphy, here’s “Carry on up the Gulag: Interview with Seamus Murphy” at Dispatches’ site. Murphy talks a bit about the process of photographing Russia for Dispatches’ issue “On Russia” and shares some stories behind individual pictures. And if you’re in London on Wed., April 29, 2009, at 6:30 p.m., head on over to the Honduras Street Gallery for a conversation between Seamus Murphy and Gary Knight. (both via the Dispatches group on Facebook)

Seamus Murphy - East of the Sun / from the Dispatches issue On Russia.

Just got a facebook message from Dispatches about the newest photos and slideshow on the magazine’s site. “East of the Sun,” part of the issue On Russia, is beautiful and strange. I’m not convinced of some of the close-up crops in the video, but the music and editing made me chuckle (in a good way) more than a few times. Beautiful and strange work from Russia by Seamus Murphy.

Unfortunately, it’s a little difficult to find Seamus Murphy’s other work online. There was a little blurb about him over at Rob Haggart’s A Photo Editor blog that started out:

One of my all time favorite photographers has no agent, no website, doesn’t send out promo mailers, no logo, isn’t in any of the sourcebooks, not listed in the free workbook phonebook, has never called to see if I’ve got anything for him and if I hadn’t scoured the web and made a few phone calls years ago I would have no clue how to contact him….”

There’s a little feature at Outside magazine about being in the field with Seamus Murphy in Syria. Granta has some of his work online focusing on soldiers getting ready for deployment. There’s also a small interview at Culture 24. And definitely don’t miss his POYi 62 World Understanding Award portfolio of work from Afghanistan, which is also the subject of what looks to be a great book, “Afghanistan: A Darkness Visible.”