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News Without Reporters
Reporters are a dying breed - and that may be a good thing. After all, America got along fine without them once before.
One of journalists’ recurring put-downs of bloggers is that they are simply recycling someone else’s news — that there will always be a need for reporters to produce it. Yet, America had a reporterless past and will likely have a reporterless future. And, news will be better for it.
We have lost perspective on what a reporter actually is — a middleman. On one side are news events. On the other are audiences who want to know about them. A reporter’s job is to move “the truth” from Point A to Point B as accurately as possible.
This middleman function, with reporters serving as mere links in a news supply chain, was never needed until fairly recently. Before the printing press was invented, we were all receivers and transmitters of news, spreading it by word-of-mouth. Soon after its invention, multitudes of mostly one-man print-shops, as a sideline, printed newspapers to supplement this word-of-mouth process. These printers wrote their own articles blending facts with opinion, much like bloggers do today. Others also contributed, often without receiving compensation or attribution — citizens, gossips, letter-writing “correspondents” from other towns, and similarly-operating foreign and domestic newspapers whose stories were simply lifted.
Since this is what news looked like at the time of the Founding Fathers, they gave no particular mandate to reporters, a function that did not even exist at the time. The “freedom of the press” they cited in the First Amendment was not about “the press,” but about everyone’s right to freely use a printing press to express their views without government interference, supplementing the free speech clause that allowed everyone to express their views orally.
The first full-time reporter in America did not appear until the 1820’s, after steam engines were integrated into printing presses. Suddenly, newspapers had to be run like businesses to achieve consistently high circulation levels to pay for equipment and keep newsstand prices low. Reporters provided the needed constant flow of consistently well-written articles.
For the first century of their existence, the public had a realistic view of what full-time reporters actually did and awarded them the appropriate, low level of status. Legendary editor Walter Lippmann wrote in 1919 that “reporting is not a dignified profession for which men will invest the time and cost of an education, but an underpaid, insecure, anonymous form of drudgery, conducted on catch-as-catch-can principles.”
But Lippmann was also determined to turn reporting into a profession. He urged us to “make up our minds to send out into reporting a generation of men who will by sheer superiority, drive the incompetents out of business” to be replaced by “patient and fearless men of science who have labored to see what the world really is.” He called for “professional training in journalism in which the ideal of objective testimony is cardinal” with reporters conducting “as impartial an investigation of the facts as is humanly possible.”
But at the same time Lippmann created a puffed-up image of reporters that has lasted for decades, he was planting the seeds of the role’s destruction. Despite their self-image as objective professionals, reporters have yet to create methodologies to back-up their claims. This is painfully obvious in the book The Elements of Journalism, the closest thing there is to journalism scripture, which shrugs-off an admission that every reporter has his own methodology for verifying facts. Now with alternative, challenging voices from cable TV, talk radio, and the blogosphere, the public increasingly understands that reporters are often biased and inaccurate, just like the rest of us. We are also relearning what Thomas Jefferson intuitively understood — the truth is more likely to emerge from a multitude of voices competing in a freewheeling marketplace of ideas than from elites offering their views of the truth drawn from their own limited knowledge and perspectives.
Now, the Internet is eliminating the reporter as middleman by connecting audiences directly with the real sources of news — politicians’ offices, PR firms, whistleblowers, think tanks, courts, police departments, and everyone else with a news ax to grind. These entities have always been capable of writing their own stories in a usable form, but have previously needed reporters to get their stories distributed. Nor will we miss investigative reporters, who had always been dangerously untrained in the skills needed to do their job properly (e.g. forensics, law) and often unfairly destroyed the reputations of innocents. Society has many alternative, more responsible ways to right wrongs, and the blogosphere can easily fill this void.
We will continue to have news middlemen, but those that survive must create real value for their audiences. Editors can create value by aggregating, analyzing, adding opinions, and gathering like-minded audiences for advertisers. Bloggers do the same. But, reporters are repeaters. They, not bloggers, are unnecessary recyclers of news.
Steve Boriss blogs at The Future of News. He works for Washington University in St. Louis, where he is Associate Director of the Center for the Application of Information Technology (CAIT) and teaches a class called “The Future of News.”
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35 Comments
1. OmegaPaladin:What about correspondents? Ernie Pyle was a reporter, Michael Yon is a blogger. The difference is insubstantial. Reporters don’t go away if you simply call them another name. Investigative reporters can be replaced by bloggers like Confederate Yankee, but that doesn’t really change the essential nature of what they do. If I want to hear news about a military story, I check out Blackfive just like I would a military correspondent.
Mar 23, 2008 - 2:07 am 2. Harvey Levy:I think we need reporters/journalist. What has changed is the exponential increase in access to news and opinions which the internet has provided. This has had the effect of removing the phony image of impartiality which modern media outlets – such as the major print media, over the air news networks and weekly magazines such as TIME, Newsweek and US News – have used to spin news. Those who are honest observers know that ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN slant the news with a leftist perspective while FOX does with a rightist perspective (regardless of their motto ; We Report. You Decide). What I want is unapologetically biased news and that’s what I get from the internet.
Mar 23, 2008 - 6:58 am 3. Steve Boriss:OmegaPaladin, But what is very different is that the new “reporters” do not work for traditional news outlets. They’ve got to find ways to fund themselves, and their work appears everywhere, not just at a single outlet. The new news outlets will need editors/aggregators, not reporters.
Mar 23, 2008 - 8:38 am 4. Steve Boriss:Harvey Levy, I agree with virtually everything you said. So now the question is, is someone who “reports” news in the biased way that you like a “reporter”? I’d say they were really an “editor/aggregator.” And I think that’s a formula that works.
Mar 23, 2008 - 8:42 am 5. John the Libertarian:Agreed, journalism has become tremendously more diffuse. The need for aggregators is vital. It all comes down to public trust in brand. Unfortunately, many traditional journalism products have squandered their brands over the last 20 years with shoddy and biased reporting. But there are still excellent products; I pay for the WSJ and Daily Variety, for example, while I would not read the LA Times if they paid me.
One can argue that journalism is and will remain mostly entertainment, for other than local politics, stock market tickers and weather reports, isn’t most news inconsequential to our daily lives? So we purchase those writers who entertain us most.
The rise of Fox News, talk radio and Internet bloggers redefined where the journalistic political Center is in this country. Almost overnight traditional journalism outlets, who were convinced they defined the political Center, were stunned to find they were further out on the Left.
Mar 23, 2008 - 9:34 am 6. RE:We’ll always need good reporters.
Subject matter experts that have taken a writing course (or not) do a far better job than those who skillfully write about a subject they’re clueless about. It’s the ‘School of Journalism’ trained ‘journalists’ that we can do without.
Mar 23, 2008 - 12:29 pm 7. Steve Boriss:RE:, Yes, we will have “expert journalism.” Note that this is the opposite of “citizen journalism,” a fad that will soon run its course.
Mar 23, 2008 - 1:04 pm 8. Mike Perry:Those who’d like to read the premier text on why journalism ought to be a university-trained profession much like medicine and law should turn to the classic work on the topic, Joseph Pulitzer’s The School of Journalism.
And yes, I am the guilty party. I did bring it back into print in the hope of stimulating lively debate on the topic.
Personally, I suspect that journalism’s problem isn’t its attempt to spin it as a profession, but the absolutely shoddy work that journalism does pass off as professional. You see that best in their demand to be treated, they say, like lawyers and priests, able to keep mum about their sources. The argument is so absurd, it’s difficult to imagine how any profession with a scrap of intelligence or integrity would advance it. When a lawyer or a priest invoke their right to silence, it’s about something they are NOT telling us. No lie is being spoken. Only one particular category of truth, that from certain conversations, is being denied the public.
But when a journalist attempts to invoke what their profession asserts is their right, it’s often about claims that are being broadcast to millions, claims whose source we cannot find out and whose veracity we cannot check. Its intent can only be to deny us the evidence we need to determine whether the journalist was lying to us. And in that journalism isn’t asserting professionalism, it’s claiming that we must regard it as infallible. That’s not something a genuine profession does. Genuine professions always hold themselves accountable for their deeds.
The closest parallel would be for medicine to assert the right of any physician to prohibit absolutely any post-mortem examination of any patient he’s treated who has died. The chief reason for giving physicians that power would be to permit them to cover up their mistakes and blunders. The chief rationale for journalists being able to hide their sources is much the same.
Because it really is a profession, medicine has a much sterner and less subjective perspective on the truth. I worked for a time in a hospital with children being treated for cancer. I was impressed that the physicians involved were continually tested their treatments, seeing if they could develop something better.
In contrast, journalism rarely tests itself and rarely questions its assumptions. Once story has developed a certain spin, that spin will continue in defiance of the facts. Over time, it isn’t getting better are arriving at the truth; if anything it’s getting worse. To give but one example, why hasn’t the Internet led to a central clearing house for facts, where someone wrongly treated can go, present their evidence, and clear their name, a source that a journalist must consult before running a story. (Medicine has numerous, carefully checked, authoritative sources like that.) That is not the case. Journalism is mired in the state medicine was in when for centuries it practiced odd theories of disease and treatment derived from the ideas of Greeks and Romans, ideas it never tested for truth.
Or to make a different comparison, during WWI the British discovered that only 10% of the bombs they dropped at night came within two miles of their attended targets. They were essentially flying over German cities and bombing them at random, blowing up homes and killing civilians. Today, the British and the American military can drop a bomb down the chimney of a specific building with near 100% accuracy. The US military has gone to great effort to reduce the number of innocent people they hurt. Journalism has made no such effort. Their failure rate is as bad or worse than it was half a century ago. Someone slandered by the press has little effective recourse. Unless they sue and, after spending huge sums of money, win, they can be nearly certain that other journalists will continue to repeat those lies without end. As one reporter told me, all the new technology has done is make it easier for lies to stay alive.
The real issue isn’t whether journalism should be a profession or not. It’s that regarded as a profession, journalism’s standards are pitifully low and indefensible.
–Michael W. Perry, Seattle
Mar 23, 2008 - 2:16 pm 9. John More:Society would be a lot better off if we abolished all “schools” of journalism (and education). Both are bogus professions, as has been shown by their pathetic results in the United States.
Mar 23, 2008 - 3:33 pm 10. Joan of Argghh!:Reporters who report? Yes, we need that. Plenty of good people can be an eyewitness.
But, reporters who spin like politicians? A pox on ‘em.
The Media is more to blame for racism than any other political body. They stir it up because it sells.
Mar 23, 2008 - 4:03 pm 11. Pyrthroes:Like two-year “teachers’ colleges”, journalism schools impart rote mechanics, attract candidates least capable of “reporting” anything. As certified ignoramuses, their so-called “news” degenerates to crass and vulgar personality profiles. Absent “editorial” appreciation of context and perspective, drivel reigns… absolute lack of coherence or integrity plus veritable contempt for audiences or readers combines to produce vicious frauds aka Dan Rather or ongoing propagandistic disgraces such Pinch Sulzberger’s egregious voice-trumpet.
Bloggers as “co-respondents” develop reputations for expertise, intelligence, beyond the sadsack scope of newsroom payrollees. AP, Reuters et al. sleepwalk like zombies into open tombs.
Mar 23, 2008 - 7:21 pm 12. But not so fast...:I think the above sentence makes reporters even more important, because every single one of the sources above will only presented a slanted view. I don’t fault them for it. But are we really to think each one of these sources is going to provide a fair and balanced analysis of a situation? Sure, reporters may not always do it, but you’re placing your trust in these people? Reporters are paid meager salaries to be skeptical of people’s claims for a reason.
Just because all these sources now have a platform on the Internet doesn’t make them transparent.
Mar 23, 2008 - 8:23 pm 13. Steve Boriss:But not so fast,
The slanted views of these real sources of news will be balanced out by the slanted views of others with a news ax to grind in the marketplace of ideas. The new news outlets will be editors/aggregators (not reporters), who will moderate the debate.
Mar 23, 2008 - 8:57 pm 14. richard miniter:I think Boriss’ argument ultimately fails because he misunderstands what big-city daily journalists actually do.
He thinks all reporters are simply “repeaters,” telling you the game score, the number of dead in the air crash, the name of governor caught canoodling and so on.
Basically, “event news” is written by wire reporters, who are more like “repeaters”–although there is more skill in this than Boriss seems to admit.
Small town papers and most weeklys are also repeaters in Boriss’ terms. They tell you whether the zoning board decided to let the car wash expand and so on.
But most big-city dailies have reporters who work beats. Their job is not to cover events, but to develop sources and break news. Would unpaid bloggers spend thousands of dollars wining and dining staffers are city hall or the defense department–just to learn how the institution works and where to squeeze to get stories no one else has? These beat reporters are also the guys who comb through miles of documents to find surprising trends or criminal malfeasance.Remember “computer-aided reporting”? They also have the experience and a fully powered b.s. detector to challenge public officials. They turn down a lot of phony stories. And by and large, they do a pretty good job that no blogger seems prepared to do yet.
In other words, these reporters are more like “editors/aggregators” in Boriss’ world. But once you grasp that, his argument collapses. Because even he admits we need more “editors/aggregators.”
Are there some bad apples? Yep. And the web helps us spot them faster. But bad doctors and bad lawyers are not weeded out.
Mar 23, 2008 - 9:31 pm 15. Steve Boriss:Richard Miniter,
Mar 23, 2008 - 11:28 pm 16. Allison:“Would unpaid bloggers spend thousands of dollars wining and dining staffers…?” If these staffers have a story they want told (and who doesn’t?), the Internet allows them to tell it themselves. These staffers can also “comb through miles of documents” better than reporters can. Actually bloggers with specialized knowledge can, too. Think the typewriter font experts who busted Dan Rather and his forged documents.
I agree with what Richard is saying – and I’m both a journalist and a blogger. I’ve never bought into the either-or dynamic – maybe I will when, say, education blogging provides living wages with benefits.
Mar 23, 2008 - 11:37 pm 17. Parker:Journalists resent bloggers for the same reason prostitutes resent nymphomaniacs…
Mar 24, 2008 - 5:52 am 18. sbw:Steve, I know you think you are saying something significant, but this really ought to be simpler than you make it:
1) You need consider what is in one’s best interest to understand in the world.
2) Then you need to read more Adam Smith on Division of Labor.
Mar 24, 2008 - 10:29 am 19. Steve Boriss:sbw, Actually, I do think my explanation is pretty simple and is very consistent with Adam Smith. The free hand of the marketplace will squeeze out the reporting function because it lacks sufficient value for its cost.
Mar 24, 2008 - 1:06 pm 20. jaimeshawn:Excellent comments. I especially liked Mike Perry’s contrast of Journalism with ‘real’ professions like being a doctor or an attorney. Most people outside the field do not realize how many lawyers are disbarred and how that acts as a real deterrent. Perhaps not to Spitzer, Clinton, Nifong, or Kwame Kilpatrick, but for attorneys that intend to practice law for the rest of their lives, the ethical culling performed by the bar is not trivial.
Mar 24, 2008 - 3:28 pm 21. News without reporters? That was our past and it will be our future « The Future of News:[...] will be our future 3/23/08 Posted by Steve Boriss in Uncategorized. trackback This week at Pajamas Media I explore the future of reporters. One of journalists’ recurring put-downs of bloggers is [...]
Mar 25, 2008 - 5:34 am 22. New Media Stategics » Traditional Media: Still Dying:[...] Read the whole thing. [...]
Mar 25, 2008 - 8:41 am 23. BackwardsBoy:Journalists will be respected when they return to the honored tenets of accuracy; who, what, when, where and how.
Mar 25, 2008 - 11:38 am 24. sbw:Leave the “why” clearly labeled as opinion.
No, Steve, you really have overlooked and oversimplified things.
First, please don’t dismiss Adam Smith with a throwaway remark. You really do need to go back to Adam Smith’s Division of Labor and understand its premise — The purpose of division of labor is “to make a smaller quantity of labour produce a greater quantity of work.”
Second, journalism needs to be disaggregated to consider the differences between local, regional, and national/international incarnations.
Third, the “Daily Me” isn’t good enough — journalism can be functionally viewed as a square divided into four parts: Two parts contain “What I need” and “What I want”, while the other two contain the serendipidous “What the editor thinks I need” and “What the editor thinks I want”.
Mar 25, 2008 - 12:18 pm 25. News Without Reporters - Southern Maryland Community Forums:[...] to be the news, with their inclusive bias, rather than report the news. Interesting read, imho. Pajamas Media
Mar 25, 2008 - 4:50 pm 26. Cyrillic Partners » The Reporter Problem:[...] teaches a class called “The Future of News” at Washington University in St. Louis and writes on the subject at Pajamas Media: “We will continue to have news middlemen, but those that survive must create real value for [...]
Mar 29, 2008 - 12:28 pm 27. Friends of Mark Fuhrman - A lie told often enough becomes the truth. » BREAKING - AP - He Says, She Says: The Propaganda War Continues in Iraq:[...] News Without Reporters [...]
May 21, 2008 - 9:46 am 28. Arvid Saunaitis:Can the public trust reporters?
Video URL: http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=&vid=5c90e5bc-31e5-4e37-9d23-9884be1846d1 This video is about the Overlay Cosmetic Appliance that has concealed hooks for retention and metal chewing surfaces for durability. Unfortunately this appliance is no longer available because dentistry wants to preserve the big profits made on crowns and veneers. After the story was aired on NBC news stations in 2004, a few dentists determined to cash in on its instant popularity, with the help of the media started advertising a plastic appliance that has been around for thirty years. The following is one of many comments made by patients who got ripped off by such a device:
“I went to NYC and wasted $1500 for a lower piece that looks like a toy for Halloween. I had to pay up front and when I picked them up and had them placed in my mouth, the whole office staff raved how real and beautiful they looked. The more I looked at them, the more I hated them. It also hurt. When I removed them, I though my teeth were going to fall out. I called the next day and wanted my money back. I couldn’t handle how FAKE they looked and my family and friends agreed. When I went to the office, the Dr. was a jerk and everyone was so different. How dare he sell a piece of plastic toy for $1,500? To make this miserable story short, he refunded $500 and I had to sign a paper. I hope he gets caught and exposed real soon. I won’t say his name, but since there are only a couple of them using the same appliance and story, I would hope they all meet with law suits soon. I work hard for my money and I feel I have been robed and he got away with it and continues to do so.”
Numerous reporters were contacted to write an article on this subject asking the public to write in if they have had a similar problem with any dentist in New York or any place else. Unfortunately only one has responded:
“Thank you for taking the time to write to me. Correspondence from readers like you is very important to me. Sharing our points of view is precisely why my contact information is listed. I have forwarded a copy of your email to our Medical reporter. Thanks again for contacting me and thank you for reading the Chicago Tribune.”
Since nothing further was heard from him or anyone else, it appears that there is no reporter out there who is willing to stick out his or her neck to point out errors made by their colleges. Without investigating, their colleges took the word of a self promoting dentist and helped him lure unexpected patients to waist their hard earned money on a false hope. Here is the most recent comment I found on this web site:
Having a Perfect Smile May Be a Snap: “Snap-on Smiles”
Sep 3, 2008 - 5:58 pm 29. J-school girl:They are uncomfortable, and only good for looks. I sound like a horse with a bit in its mouth. When I speak, I sound like I have a speech problem and it constantly gives me a headache. Don’t waste your $2,700 like I did. I have gone back to my dentist for so called adjustments with no improvements. I contacted the company that made them and they said they would remake them but my dentist does not want to do it.
Bottom line, it is false advertising like most things you see on TV like the miracle cleaners, male enhancements and fitness products.
All these companies are in it to make money, they could care less if you come back again because of the profits they make the first time.
Tometalk http://tometalk-erudite.blogspot.com
I’m a journalism school graduate and have always had the passion to be a reporter. It is a little scary wanting to get into the field b/c I do not want to become one of those mindless, biased ‘repeaters’ that you all speak of.
At the same time, I do want to be a journalist and respected for the passion of my work and how I do it well. I can’t say that I really want to be a blogger b/c I feel a lot of times bloggers are very opinionated…which they should be…but to me, a reporter is sort of like that un-biased middleman. Isn’t there a way that we could produce a credible journalist position on the internet? I don’t always want to just give my opinion. I enjoy telling the story and hearing from my viewers.
I really do like your model of having the new age reporters…i.e ‘news leders’ one day b/c I would love to tell auntentic, honest stories on the web, get real feedback on it, be viewed as a credible journalist and not get paid pennies for it. And I also would like a life outside of news like a husband and kids one day(something the current world of local and esp. national reporting seemingly lacks to offer). I think with the right tools and the right mindset this idea of ‘news leders’could become really big on the internet. I’ve researched ‘online reporters’ a million gazillion times and haven’t been able to find much, but I hope this changes in the future. It’s definitely moreso what I would be interested in being…
Sep 5, 2008 - 8:19 am 30. Cybercorrespondent:This is in regards to the “Can the public trust reporters?” We are in a time when public’s trust in the mainstream media is at an all time low. The public is beginning to view journalism with a critical eye and are beginning to label journalists as conscious propagandists who will do anything to push their political agendas. Today’s journalists are also starting to become lazy. As soon as a story pops up by a competitor, rather than finding sources to back up the information, the media outlets form packs and report the story without backing up the information. I did some investigating about the snap on teeth appliance and came to the conclusion that the media by publicizing the appliance caused other dentists to jump aboard to cash in on its popularity.
Sep 8, 2008 - 8:49 am 31. Distinctive:Cybercorrespondent
http://cybercorrespondent.blogspot.com
This is in response to the “Can the public trust reporters?” Did dentistry stoop so low to sell a product or is it that no one knows what they are talking about? The answer lies in an E-mail I received from a friend who is a dentist:
Lies, Myths, and Fairytales told in Dentistry
Sep 9, 2008 - 3:50 pm 32. John:Myth #1. All you have to be is a good dentist and patients will flood your office.
Reality: The public doesn’t know the difference between a good and a bad dentist.
Good Dentists are usually to busy helping patients and don’t spend enough time to promote their dental practices. Bad dentists know how to attract unsuspected patients and later talk them into procedures they don’t need.
Myth #2: Advertising and Marketing is unprofessional.
Reality: Advertising and marketing is the best way to educate the public on what they need and to sell them what they don’t need.
Myth #3: We are in a Recession.
Reality: While The New York Times and CNN is brain washing everyone about the doom and gloom of our economy, those who know how to take advantage of the situation also know how to profit from it. I believe that while some dentists are using this philosophy to promote business, other dentists use it to “clean patients”. The term clean is a term thieves use on the streets in Russia to rob unsuspected tourists.
Distinctive
Distinctive, I read your comment on this web site and was very impressed. Snap on Teeth – Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community.
Sep 11, 2008 - 9:10 am 33. Cybercorrespondent:________________________________________
We are in a time when public’s trust in the mainstream media is at an all time low. The public is beginning to view journalism with a critical eye and are beginning to label journalists as conscious propagandists who will do anything to push their political agendas. Today’s journalists are also starting to become lazy. As soon as a story pops up by a competitor, rather than finding sources to back up the information, the media outlets form packs and report the story without backing up the information. I did some investigating about the snap on teeth appliance and came to the conclusion that the media by publicizing the appliance caused other dentists to jump aboard to cash in on its popularity.
Cybercorrespondent
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Sep 13, 2008 - 7:55 pm 34. Cybercorrespondent:EDitor@RipoffReport.com
http://www.ripoffreport.com
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The following video, “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHbRWQDYubQ” appeared on GeorgiaLifeStyle ‘Georgia Life & Style’ Television looks into this br… “Adding comments has been disabled for this video”- I wonder why?
Sep 17, 2008 - 10:06 am 35. Distinctive:Cybercorrespondent http://cybercorrespondent.blogspot.com
The following comment appeared on( Snap On Smile to Increase Vertical Dimension? | DDSGadget Dental )- I tried to post the following response, but they did not allow it. I hope that I can post it here.
Gum Goddess on September 17th, 2008 10:12 pm
I have been a dental hygienist for 20+ years and I will tell you that I have seen the Snap on Smile appliance transform patient’s lives. Is it the ultimate treatment? In most cases, no. The permanent work would be the optimum.
However, when a patient has financial issues and has to chose between proceeding with upwards of a $5,000 restorative case or doing nothing, this is a beautiful and more affordable option. The appliance actually helps the patient move forward with the final restorative case because when they see how great their smile can look, they want it to be permanent.
There are also people who are medically compromised who have benefitted greatly from this, as well as severely dental phobic patients who refused all previous recommended treatment because they went into a sweat at the thought of having an injection.
It is NOT recommended for severely periodontally involved patients and no ethical dentist would place this over decayed teeth. If disease is involved, that needs to be addressed first.
It’s sort of like a padded bra. It enhances your appearance, but if you’re sagging underneath, it isn’t going to correct that, yet is isn’t going to hurt it either (but you still have to shower!). It makes you feel better, more confident when you think you look good. It is a short or long-term temporary cosmetic fix. And most importantly, it makes the patient wearing it happy.
Instead of knocking something you really don’t know anything about first hand, go to the source instead of making comments based solely on your opinion or someone else’s opinion that you’ve read. There are a lot of people out there ready to drag a good idea or product down because of their ignorance. Talk to people in the profession who are using it and find out from them the facts.
I’m sure they will be at the Greater NY Dental meeting in Nov. Go to their booth and check it out for yourself. (Now why does the dental industry still support this product?)
Dearest Gum Goddess.
In response to-“I have been a dental hygienist for 20+ years and I will tell you that I have seen the Snapon Smile appliance transform patient’s lives. “Do you work for him now? Here are comments from the people whose lives he transformed. The comments are from his video clip on You Tube.
Don’t waste your money! I got mine today and i almost cried! They look so fake and they are so bulky and i paid 800.00 for a fake piece of plastic! This Is a big rip off!
coachj57 (2 weeks ago) Show Hide
Don’t waste your money, I wasted $2,700 for upper and lower. I look like Mr. Ed, can’t speak correctly (like Mr. Ed with a bit in his mouth), are uncomfortable and feel like you have a mouth full of plastic play teeth.
As usual, advertising that doesn’t come through on the promise.
rashidakelleyjohnson (1 month ago) Show Hide
I totally agree with ilianexy. I got the upper unit last year- the teeth are extremely bulky. They make you look like Fire Marshall Bill (Jim Carey’s character on in Living Color). I was hoping that this would be a good option but- they have many more kinks to work out.
coachj57 (2 weeks ago) Show Hide
I am glad I am not the only one to have issues.
blockbyblock (1 month ago) Show Hide
ok,,,,, ok…. ur ridiculous!
ilianexy (2 months ago) Show Hide
I want him to show someone talking and eating with the snap on smile, is impossible! He is a really nice dentist with a great idea, is just not ready for the market yet, because is useless, mine is in the drawer for almost a year with no use. I know he will have lots of patients complaining. I will uplaoad my video with them so u can see what I am talking about!
ilianexy (2 months ago) Show Hide
I have them. Cost me $1,500. They are molded plastic, painful because is really tight, you cannot speak at all, you cannot eat anything with them, they did 3 impressions to get it right none worked. They look very unnatural and gigantic, just ridiculous. I want my money back!
fashionplus07 (3 months ago) Show Hide
Your next statement “However, when a patient has financial issues and has to chose between proceeding with upwards of a $5,000 restorative case or doing nothing,” can be best answered by the person whose life he transformed. “ I wasted $2,700 for upper and lower. I look like Mr. Ed, can’t speak correctly (like Mr. Ed with a bit in his mouth), are uncomfortable and feel like you have a mouth full of plastic play teeth.
Distinctive
Sep 18, 2008 - 7:58 am