Anyway, I’ve taken him to task over some of these issues (& the dumb, misleading comment about TimesSelect’s subscriber base) in the post linked to this comment in my own blog.

In business reporting, how many journalists have a serious comprehension of the structure and technology of an industry? (I recently saw an article in a biz magazine that talked about “kilowatts per hour” and seemed to think that 100kW was huge amount of electricty)

To the extent that journalists have special knowlege, it often tends to be *process* knowledge rather than any form of substantive knowledge.

Those areas? Sports and “society”.

Let’s test this “the better are by domain experts but the best are by journalists in a new medium” hypothesis.

If I’m looking for keep up with the law, what “journalist turned blogger” beats the law blogs?

Then there aren’t many journalists who do their jobs. (BTW – “balanced” isn’t the goal either.) Ideals and plans don’t trump work product.

When I talk to folks who were personally involved in some story, I always hear the same thing about the reporting. That same thing is that the report was significantly wrong on at least one point.

Journalists can’t have specialized knowledge in multiple fields. Heck, there are individual fields that they can’t know in useful depth because of the time demands of being a journalist. No amount of writing ability/skill can change that.

I “get it” quite well. A by-line is promotion. Such promotion is something that journalists value highly. If bloggers are damned for valuing it as well….

BTW – Well-written isn’t the goal. Truthful and informative is. Well-written helps, but if it’s wrong, well-written doesn’t make it good. (In other words, truth is not beauty.) This emphasis on “well-written” explains many of MSM’s failures.

> most bloggers are either aggregating, re-hashing, commenting or voicing some opinion, often without any sort of idea of how to construct a reasoned arugment, as well as having horrific grammar.

Yawn. Tish doesn’t get it. MSM isn’t competing with the worst bloggers. It isn’t even competing with the average bloggers. It is competing with the better bloggers.

Let’s talk about a specific event. Do you really want to argue that the MSM’s coverage of Harriet Miers approaches what I can get on-line?

And your point is what? Regardless of income strata most people’s children are very net savvy. And what has Craigslist got to do with employment in the ghetto? The billions of retail dollars transacted over the internet tells a different story. Your smug half-baked assumptions of how the lower to middle classes don’t use the net in a purposeful manner smacks of the same condescending arrogance that we are discussing about journalists.

That could not be more wrong. I wish I had the resource to translate daily what is coming out of the Arab press, but 98% of it is not reported here in the US.

What we get is what the mainstream media deems is important. Rebuilding the financial markets in Iraq? Nothing to see here. A suicide bomb at a hospital maiming and killing scores of civilians? Front page news.

It has gotten so bad in Iraq, that there are increasing rumors about many of the freelance journalists and videographers who capture the “if it bleeds it leads” Iraq footage. Just lately a blogger went over frame by frame Reuters and wire photographs of staged insurgent photos and video. The fact that the BBC aired it to illustrate their point that parts of the city were slipping out of the coalition and Iraqis control? Nothing to see here.

Another blogger witnessed militant Islamists being trucked in and interviewed by an Arab network after a bombing on his street. Guess what, the “interviewees” didnt live there, but they spouted virulently anti-American statements in front of the cameras. Another soldier blogged about Arab stringers paying civilians to throw rocks and chant anti-American slogans in the background.

There was even a report from an excaped Egyptian hostage, that said another stringer was preparing to film his hostage video. Where are these mainstream media networks getting their footage from exactly?

This does not represent all of the journalists, the photographer who captured the Fallujah hanging images risked his life to get the shots. Others have been kidnapped, held for ransom, or assasinated. By Baathists, terrorists and Shiites in the south.

Just being in Iraq means jack squat. I want to know the reporter/photographer/bloggers past history. I want to be able to read his work and see his images, and read what him/her has covered in the past. On blogs sometimes it is easy, sometimes it is not. With Arab stringers, it is near impossible.

wow. you don’t get it. a byline is something you earn by writing a well-written piece. most bloggers are either aggregating, re-hashing, commenting or voicing some opinion, often without any sort of idea of how to construct a reasoned arugment, as well as having horrific grammar.

if you’re getting all your news from bloggers…well….

I will say, though, that I’ve seen what penny means when she says:
The local paper’s staff doesn’t have the knowledge to analyze international or economic events any better than a blogger with a background or interest in a subject.

Often the better blogs are indeed by those who have backgrounds in a particular subject…and it seems that the best citizen journalists aren’t necessarily the “citizens” inasmuch as they are the journalists who decided to try blogging and liked the feedback.

Although I tend to disagree that Craigslist will replace print want-ads. Craigslist is for the computer savvy. And, believe me, there are many, many people who don’t even own computers.

People who use the ‘net for everything have the worst social myopia I’ve ever seen. Y’all need to live in a ghetto or working-poor neighborhood and see how many of those folks have no clue what Craigslist is, but still need jobs. For that matter, ask some of your middle-class buddies who only use the computer for business tasks and for their kids’ music downloads…

Television news tends to take its lead from what is featured in the Times and Washington Post. Any original reporting they do is usually in their news magazines and is mostly of a human interest nature.

The right has been bashing these few remaining news sources because they know if they get discredited then the field is wide open for unchallenged propaganda. Perhaps Keller is a bit smug, but his paper still leads the pack in investigative journalism.
And yes, papers also rewrite press releases and contain opinion pieces.

When Karl Rove calls a blogger with a leak instead of Judith Miller then the blogosphere can start to consider itself a primary news source.

John, I’ve lived over the span of the last 15 years with truly horrible local papers in three cities…..local papers that fill their content with unoriginal wire service articles, run vacuous local fluff pieces and craft stories that are not much better than the local high school newspaper.

The local paper’s staff doesn’t have the knowledge to analyze international or economic events any better than a blogger with a background or interest in a subject.

“Truly horrible newspapers” may be a clue into why across the board dead tree circulations are falling. Craigslist will continue to kill newspaper’s classified revenues too. Oh, and the local tv news isn’t much better if you omit the weather and sports segments.

The bottomline is that when your product is shoddy, your honesty is suspect, and there are alternatives presented that weren’t there before the consumer will make choices not in your favor

As for PJ’s point, I would agree, for the most part, though again, bloggers don’t go through editors, so while their opinion and analysis might be as good, it’s not always as clear. As with all of these points, there are bountiful exceptions on both sides, of course.

Bloggers are just as good as mainstream reporters at the last 2, and Bill Keller points out exactly why the mainstream reporters usually, but not always, best at the first. I think blogging has added a fourth item to that list, acting as a filter.

Compiling links and information, providing context, and in many cases, providing the opportunity to build a debate or a discussion around the facts has been one of the strengths of blogging since its inception.

Where do you find hostility to the WSJ?

That’s why reporters never ask for by-lines and the phrase “New York Times” never appears in the NYT.

> At its best, blogging strives to create conversation.

0-2.

> Bloggers, including myself, can give a different persepctive from MSM, but many who blog do not understand simple concepts such as “integrity” and “reason,”

In what universe does MSM do any better?

The most obvious consequence of MSM’s resources is the staged event.

To echo the point made earlier, bloggers aren’t better than journalists or vice versa, though each is much better at providing certain things. Yes, bloggers fill in the gaps or offer insightful commentary and perspectives unavailable elsewhere; at the same time, much of their content (if not their value) is in reaction to what the mainstream media offers. I write for a paper and I blog, and each allows me to do different things. There is plenty of crossover at times, but much that is mutually exclusive as well. I’m a fan of many mainstream media outlets and many blogs, and find it sad that so many feel the need to offer a blanket indictment of either.

Finally, if there is so much hostility toward mainstream journalists (which really means the Times, WSJ, Post and TV, it seems), perhaps the democratization project that is the web will yield the positive result of shaking out those journalists and outlets who aren’t cutting it.

Bloggers, including myself, can give a different persepctive from MSM, but many who blog do not understand simple concepts such as “integrity” and “reason,” let alone how to punctuate, use good grammar, and properly credit our sources. Blogging, more often than not, strives for a degree of self-promotion. At its best, blogging strives to create conversation. If we bloggers go out and find a “truth” and create conversation around it, then that’s a good thing. But we are not journalists…even if we call ourselves “citizen journalists” our empahsis is on the idea of “citizen,” whereas someone like Johnathan Micha Marshall is a journalist who decided to become a citizen, still, in his writing, has the emphasis on journalist.

Tish G
http://spap-oop.blogspot.com/2005/10/we-media-talk-amongst-yourselves.html

The fact that you need a huge decentralized web of reporters should say something about the need for a high rent, centralized bureau in the heart of NY. The Graying Lady has an interesting article today about the biz.
here.

http://www.zombietime.com/sf_rally_september_24_2005/anatomy_of_a_photograph/