The Inquisitr » journalism

The blurring line between blogger and journalists

Steven Hodson — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:11:38 +0000

The other day Duncan wrote about how a group of ex-Seattle Post-Intelligencer journalists have banded together and created a new Seattle oriented news site called Seattle Post Globe. While the story in of itself was interesting it got me thinking about something.

For as long as there have been blogs there has been this contention; especially among old media journalists, that blogging was in no way comparable to the work they did. Blogging was just a bunch of wise-asses who couldn’t string a coherent sentence together if their lives depended on it. It was the overriding opinion that nothing could supplant good well sourced journalism – which blogging definitely wasn’t.

But oh how times have changed in the last five years or so. Newspaper after newspaper is either seeking the protection of Chapter 11 or just shutting the doors. Journalists are seeing the once proud profession being thrown into disarray as the advertising foundation that supported their work is in itself in a state of confusion. This is leaving many journalists wondering what the hell they are suppose to be doing next.

Out of these ashes though many journalists are banding together and relaunching themselves on the web. Just as the new Seattle Post Globe gets its feet wet in this new world we have seen the same thing happen with journalists from the former East Valley Tribune and the Rocky Mountain News. The interesting thing is as you look at these new journalist offerings is that they are built around the same format as blogs.

This of course raises an interesting question. Have these journalists become what many of their profession despise and blame for the fall of newspapers?

Have they in effect become bloggers?

If this is indeed the case then what makes them any different from those of us that have been blogging all this time?

As we see more and more of this type of thing happening; and trust me we will, has the line separating journalists and bloggers finally been blurred beyond recognition?

Have bloggers and journalists / columnists finally become one and the same?

Huffington Post announces investigative journalism venture

Steven Hodson — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:25:02 +0000

One of the things we are constantly hearing as we move from an old media world to a new media world is the danger of losing investigative journalism as newspapers head further in their downward spiral. so it is interesting to read of the announcement on Huffington Post that they will be funding; in collaboration with Atlantic Philanthropies and other donors, the Huffington Post Investigation Fund. The fund will have an annual budget of $1.75 million which will be enough for ten staff journalist.

This venture came about because Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief, is concerned that the massive layoffs being experienced in the newspaper industry is hurting investigative journalism at a time when it is needed most. Huffington also hopes that this move will encourage others to fund similar ventures.

The Huffington Post skews liberal, but its founder promised that the work done by the investigative fund would be nonpartisan. The group would be discredited quickly if it puts out faulty information, said Nick Penniman, the fund’s executive director.

"We care about democracy, not Democrats," he said.

Rosenstiel said the HuffPost is following another recent trend encouraging content to be reproduced virally for maximum exposure, instead of trying to direct people exclusively to the site.

The HuffPost also promises to give a higher profile to work produced by other reporting groups, such as The Center for Public Integrity and The Institute for Justice and Journalism.

Source: Huffington Post

I realize that there is probably going to be a lot of controversy over this just because it is the Huffington Post but it is an encouraging sign that we are at least trying to find new ways to keep journalism alive.

Journalist Calls For Government Assistance…For Journalists

Duncan Riley — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 04:07:52 +0000

One of the predictions I forgot to make for 2009 is one of a media bailout: some sort of Government intervention in the media industry as it plummets into the abyss. I’m probably glad I didn’t make it; while there will be a chorus for Government assistance in media this year, no one really knows whether the Obama Administration will be favorable to the calls or not.

The first call came back in November, when Connecticut State Representatives are petitioning the State to subsidize The Bristol Press and The Herald of New Britain. They didn’t get exactly what they want, but they did received everything but money upfront: tax relief and training subsidies to be specific.

The newest call for Government Assistance comes from Sara Catania, ironically in the Huffington Post.

Catania doesn’t call for a media bailout, but instead argues for Government subsidized journalism. Her idea: grants for journalists to undertake journalism, because they can’t make any money in this environment. Her theory is that by subsidizing journalists, through a non-profit or charity organization, Government funded but at arms length to Government, journalists can have their slice of Government cake, without the conflict of interest issues arising from reporting on a Government that pays your bills.

Like some journalist though, where her argument fails is in the intellectual snobbery of the new media denialist movement. According to Catania and people like her, what happens online from people who aren’t trained journalists, isn’t journalism; likewise journalism dies if people like her don’t undertake it.

Our aspirational society, in order to create a more perfect union, needs journalism. Not gossip, not snark, not uninformed blather that passes for opinion, but good, solid reporting. Investigations, deep features, reporting-driven storytelling. These are the stories that show us who we are, that shape the narrative of our lives and the life of our nation. But it’s getting harder to sustain the journalism needed to tell those stories.

I’m trying hard not to dwell on the irony of her writing this for the Huffington Post, an online publication that took a round of $35 million in December for among other things: investigative journalism, but it’s hard to ignore.

The argument that journalism is dying has already been disproved many times before. It is the last argument of those unable to adapt to the new reality of publishing news. Quite the opposite, journalism, in its many forms is the strongest it has ever been in the history of man kind. No longer is the written word the exclusive domain of an elite few, and guided by media proprietors with set agendas.

That some journalists are finding it tough does not equal there is no money to be had either. Smart journalists, and media companies have embraced new media, and while they may not have replaced their offline revenue streams in full yet, even during the recession online streams at some outlets have actually increased at a time print advertising in particular is dying. The true difference today is that the closed markets of old have been replaced by open markets with vibrant competition, and it is in these spaces that some journalists believe that the market is unfair. The time of Journalism as a closed shop with life long opportunities has passed.

I could go on forever on many of her points, but I’d close on this one: if Sara Catania cannot find adequate compensation for her work, then as it would be in any other person, she needs to adjust what she is doing, or simply find another line of work. Journalism will continue with or with her, but her underemployment or payment should not be subject to Government assistance beyond what any person in any field might receive in unemployment benefits. That she is employed today makes this more so the case: at a time millions are facing unemployment, it is obscene that a journalist making some money should be asking Government to cough up for more money, because their current compensation doesn’t equip them in the lifestyle they once enjoyed.

One last note: Catania thinks she better than others because she teaches journalism and has numerous awards. The most prestigious award in journalism is named after someone who had no degree in journalism. The first journalist schools and courses emerged in the early part of the 20th century. By Catania’s thinking, journalism must not have existed before then, like she believes that someone at may not again exist in the near future. There’s another thing Joseph Pulitzer was famous for as well: yellow journalism.

Twitter News Network? You’ve got to be kidding

Steven Hodson — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 15:31:58 +0000

It seems lately that when somewhere in the world goes to hell in a hand basket everyone starts lining up on either side of the fence as to whether or not Twitter is a valid news source. Hell some are even calling it Twitter journalism, but if that is the case then journalism is really in a sorry state.

As convincing an argument as Mathew Ingram wrote late yesterday about how it is a source of journalism, I think there is an important ingredient missing from his point. Which is that unsubstantiated or wrong news fill travel faster and wider than any news which corrects those first reports. By the very nature of Twitter and how one’s friend network is setup it almost guarantees that while you may first hear the wrong news you won’t necessarily hear the corrected version because it might be coming from someone who isn’t a part of your network.

Both Svetlana Gladkova from Prof.com and Mathew do rightly point out that being a mainstream news service doesn’t guarantee that they won’t make errors as well. I would suggest thought that their ability to get the corrected information out to the same people who who heard the incorrect version is much more likely. Just because they are your friends or a part of your social network doesn’t imply that they won’t pass along misleading or incorrect information and the idea that that what they are sending your way is journalism is drop dead wrong.

At best Twitter is an excellent way to get leads for news or information that you then follow up via other means; at worst the network is nothing more than a global hen party. The idea that a 140 characters; which has passed through so many hands by the time it actually reaches you, is even remotely similar to a live feed from any journalist on the ground; even with the mistakes they might make, is head shaking.

The other argument that the Twitter proponents like to use; and we see it all the time, is that the news will hit Twitter before the mainstream journalists write; or speak, a single word. So what? In this day and age and the speed by which information traverses the world does five minutes, ten minutes or even twenty minutes for that matter really make that much of a difference? Do we really need to be plugged in that badly?

Twitter might be a fun way to waste some time but it is not the next frontier of journalism; or at least I sure as hell hope it isn’t.

“Journalist Bailout” Offers Help to Laid Off Writers

JR — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:31:55 +0000

With so many journalists finding themselves out of jobs these days, the folks behind Movable Type/TypePad are offering a little something to try to help ease the blow.

Six Apart, the Movable Type/Typepad parent company, has announced a “Journalist Bailout Program” for recovering journalists or bloggers looking for a fresh start. Its slogan: “Because your Tumblr and Tweets, while clever, will not pay the bills.”

The program offers laid off writers a free TypePad Pro blog account (the pay service typically used by professional blogs), along with a free enrollment in the Six Apart Media advertising program (in which the user keeps revenue from the display ads) and free promotions on Blogs.com. Six Apart will also provide advice on driving traffic and other online publishing-related concerns.

“While we can’t promise it’s going to replace having a full-time writing gig, it gets you up and running with your own site that you can start to benefit from,” the company says. “We’re offering a platform to publish your work and profit from it. A platform that gives you complete control, with no dependence on the whims of a publisher, and no interference from an outside editor.”

Six Apart is offering the package — which it says is a $150 annual value — free to any journalist. It does require you to submit a link to a recent publication with a valid newspaper, magazine, or broadcast journalism organization to qualify. The company says it’s already gotten a “flood of submissions” and is planning to leave the offer open only for a limited amount of time. No specific end date, though, is provided.

You can learn more about the program and how to sign up here.

Six Apart

Conflicts of Interest and Blogging

Duncan Riley — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:23:49 +0000

Is blogging facing a serious conflict of interest problem? Drama 2.0 last week wrote that “the blogosphere has to a certain extent created a new breed of conflict of interest, one that in many ways taints everything certain bloggers write and do” and that “in the blogosphere, disclosure is effectively meaningless.” They go on to say “bloggers need to decide who they are: journalists or [insert other profession here]. There’s no middle ground when it comes to credibility.” I’d argue that it’s not that clear cut, and that while the space isn’t perfect, and there are issues and challenges, for the whole it’s not quite so bad.

For a few

Michael Arrington’s conflicts of interest have been long discussed, and the latest round of navel gazing comes from news that Om Malik (of GigaOm) has taken a senior position at a VC firm while still running one of the biggest sites covering the space. In both cases, Drama 2.0 is right, disclosure doesn’t cut it, because even if they excuse themselves from certain posts, both have a writing team that may still cover the sites/ companies/ startups where a conflict exists. I’d be lying if I denied that others don’t have similar conflicts in blogging, and yet we still need some context: the vast majority of the blogosphere are not investing in startups nor do they hold positions in VC firms. Simply while there may be a problem, a few don’t represent the whole.

The professional class

The root of the problem can be found in the pathways to blogging vs journalism. Journalists are mostly professional journalists, coming to their positions after studying journalism and climbing the greasy pole. Bloggers however don’t come to blogging after studying blogging, they come to blogging instead from different backgrounds, as diverse as the millions of niches that exist in the blogosphere today. That doesn’t necessarily make them lesser writers: you don’t need a degree in journalism to be a writer, but it does mean that the professional class rules and standards that have evolved around journalism over hundreds of years are often foreign to bloggers.

The lack of a professional class of bloggers, at least formally defined (there are professional bloggers) creates a church and state problem. Journalists are journalists first and foremost, but bloggers are often bloggers after entering blogging from another space, and is often the case, while never leaving their original jobs. Very few bloggers are just bloggers, and even those who are successful bloggers can be tempted to invest money or time in the fields they write on. There isn’t popular acceptance of blogging as a career in itself, nor do many bloggers who achieve that status see blogging is their only call in life.

Logic vs Greed

One very strong trait in blogging is one of specialization. Few journalists are taught to specialize in a particular area, and although they may end up covering particular niche areas, if they’ve always been a journalist it has been learned along the way. Bloggers often specialize is a space having come from it, and their specialization has been deepened through blogging. Often, bloggers know little else than the area they specialize in, at least when it comes to making investments.

In Arrington’s case, the conflict of interest issues aside, I’ve previously defended his right to invest in startups because he knows little else, well aside from domaining and being a lawyer, so where else is he going to park his money (and I’d note, even then, that his track record at startup investments is poor). That someone like Arrington, with a day to day understanding of startups would seek to park his money in startups makes financial sense. The same holds some what true for Om Malik as well: when you live and breathe startups, your side investments or activities will logically fall, from a financial perspective, in that space.

And yet, how much money is enough? Arrington has a multi-million dollar business, so its not as if he needs to invest in startups to make money. I don’t know Om’s situation as well, but I’d presume given the success of his blog network that the situation would be the same. Are both a case of simple greed, a desire for more and more money even when both already have it? Why isn’t blogging, and their related businesses enough? Is it in part the lack of respect given to the idea of blogging as a profession?

Perspective

Some in the mainstream media will use what I’ve written so far in this post as yet another reason to bash the blogosphere, but lets put this is perspective. The blogosphere isn’t perfect, but neither is journalism. My favorite line at new media events is that the difference between a blogger and a journalist is that a blogger knows they’re biased, a journalist pretends that they aren’t, and it’s very true. That some journalists have the temerity to stand before an audience and say that blogging is the great unwashed and that professional journalism is the last port of call for the truth makes me laugh even writing the line. Bias and potential conflicts of interest are thick on the ground in journalism. It could be Rupert Murdoch deciding who he’s going to back for President or Prime Minister this round, and his papers towing the line. It could be the magazine writer fired for writing a negative review of a sponsors product. It could be the political commentator who is paid to talk at political events because they are a favorite on one side or the other due to the bias in their political coverage, or the journalist who attends an event for free, and gets plowed with food and drink for positive coverage. Conflict of interest issues, and bias as both a directly related cause, or a sub-set leading back is just as prevalent in journalism than it is in blogging, and maybe even more so. That a few bloggers at the top are so blatant in crossing the lines may be a little unique, but that doesn’t mean that the blogosphere is somehow collectively a million times worse than traditional journalism because of it.

The challenges in this post face journalists in the same way they face bloggers, and as heritage media declines, and bloggers offer a level of competition never seen before in the space, those conflicts and issues in journalism are only going to get worse.

Solutions

The first blog appeared in 1996, and blogging really only came of age in the United States in 2004. When I launched The Blog Herald in 2003, I never once thought I’d make any money from it. There was little to no money in blogging, Adsense didn’t exist, and no sane person would have predicted what blogging has become today. The reality is, to some extent, that blogging is the wild west of journalism. Professional journalism has taken hundreds of years to get to where it is today, hundreds of years to construct rules and accepted norms. And yet along the way, and even today, it still faces challenges. Yellow journalism wasn’t an issue created by blogs, and conflicts of interest and bias in reporting are still alive and well despite the rules and expectations within the profession. Blogging doesn’t have those rules, but it has come a remarkably long way in a short time. That we are simply having this conversation is proof positive that blogging is evolving and that we can discuss these issues, and consider the challenges presented, and possibly consider some of the solutions.

The top of the blogosphere today looks more and more like professional journalism. The lines are blurring as top blogs become media companies, and newspapers embrace blogging. The us and them mentality for many is breaking down, and as it does, both cross pollinate. We’re seeing the solution here already. Blogging is young enough and smart enough to be open to taking on external ideas to improve its lot, and that may well include the conflict of interest standards that act in theory within professional journalism. Not perfectly applied by any stretch, but more and more so as the top blogs get bigger. The thing that some new media haters in heritage media won’t like is that before our eyes, the notion of bloggers is slowly being lost, as new media is embraced by all, and for those blogging for a living, or for top blogs, we all become journalists.

Conclusion

There’s some truth in what Drama 2.0 says, that ultimately professional bloggers will need to decide between being journalists or something else. We are seeing a sea change, one where we have created jobs that didn’t exist only 5 years ago, and one where in the coming years the idea of being a full time blogger will be something to aspire to, and a far more common job than it is today. The time will come where blogging is the be all for those working full time in the space, but we still aren’t quite there. We may also never get there, as the lines between traditional journalism and blogging merge.

Conflict of interest is not a crisis in blogging, even if we recognize that it is an issue. Collectively we should discuss the issue, and maybe our discussions can help define standards and best case rules that others can follow, but ultimately the final decision will come down to the market. Those that put themselves into such positions take a risk, and where they are not able to properly balance their conflicts and their blogging suffers, so to will readers leave, because you can only get away with these sorts of activities for so long in the blogosphere. Like it or not, accountability for your actions is far stronger in blogging than it has ever been in heritage media.

(image credit: Wired, Amazon)

Did Google Cross a Moral Line?

JR — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:09:48 +0000

There’s been a lot of talk in the blogosphere today about the role of PR in the modern tech world. Well, here’s a case where a company may need it — albeit, in a very different sense.

A Google Street View driver snapped a shot of a drunken man passed out in the street in Australia. The photo made its way onto the service, and now the story is making its way around the Internet.

In a nutshell, the driver didn’t stop.

He passed a man lying in the street, not moving — snapped a photo, and kept going.

Ouch.

Thankfully, the guy’s okay. But it sure didn’t look like he was when that photo was snapped.

For what it’s worth, the man tells the UK’s Daily Mail his friend had just died, and he had had too much to drink as a result. He’s not planning to file an official complaint.

The scenario raises an interesting question that comes up often in the world of journalism: Did the driver have a responsibility to get involved? If we consider the driver a “photojournalist” of sorts, should he have stopped his job and stepped in? It’s something I’ve heard discussed in plenty of newsrooms over the years.

Sure, the general mantra is that a journalist never gets involved — he’s an invisible party, just observing and reporting the facts. Getting involved could change the story.

With that being said, any reasonable journalist will tell you that if a person’s life is in danger, and they’re in a unique position to help, they would drop their camera and do it in a heartbeat. Now, I’m not talking about being at a fire where rescuers are doing the job. I’m talking about being — well, on an empty street where a guy is lying in the road helpless and potentially in grave danger. That man could have died from alcohol poisoning or been hit by a car.

I, for one, am shocked to see that Google’s Street View driver didn’t stop to help — or, at the very least, make a quick call to 911 to get someone there who could. It’s immoral, and just plain embarrassing. Forget whether the driver was a photojournalist, a technician, or a graphic artist. He was also a human being — and sometimes, that has to come first.

(Image: Daily Mail Online)