Comments on: RTNDA: Who wants to be a journalist?

By: Peter Ralph

Peter Ralph — Sun, 27 May 2007 23:46:05 +0000

I think Michael Rosenblum is being ridiculous saying that we should burn down the TV stations. Couldn’t we just turn them into day care centers or squash courts?

By: tish grier

tish grier — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 15:01:33 +0000

There’s an odd paternalism going on here: the older men are telling the younger women that the women are journalists–even as the women keep insisting they aren’t….

Apparently, the women are not conpetent enough to make up their minds about whether or not they’re journalists…

Frankly, I think the women here have a stronger ethical code than the men. They know they are not doing the news, and as not-journalists, they are not bound to disclose where they are earning extra perks (as Amanda does from DuPont) nor any other ethical codes that journalists might adhere to. (they may, however, be held accountable under FCC guidlines governing word-of-mouth marketing and disclosure, but that’s another story…)

I love my old journo-guy friends (I have several–lucky, lowly little blogger me) and I love when they point out my random acts of journalism. But I’m certainly not writing my blog to be a journalist, any more than Zadi and Amanda are doing their videos to be journalists. Why some old guys get it, and some others don’t–and why they feel such a desperate need to label us journalists– is totally beyond me.

By: Rox

Rox — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 08:17:09 +0000

Jeff – my favorite points in this post are hidden from the title, and those are that people don’t want to be teased and my friend Zadi’s comment about what I call the “fakey fake.” They are related. I won’t watch CNN or NYTimes video because they require me to watch the ad first. (Bad news on this front from Adobe today too.) They don’t realize that if they give me what I want, I will very likely stay and watch the ad at the end. That’s when my curiosity has been sated, and when I likely won’t bother to act so fast as to turn it off – especially if the ad is engaging.

As for people rejecting the fakey fake, this is a really hard concept to grasp, that we humans actually want something authentic. After all, for thousands of your we have been trained to pretend to be “better than” than who we really are, and even more so when it comes to selling. Advertisers tease us with glorified versions of their products, as I guess they too don’t feel “good enough!”

There is room for everyone at this party, regardless of labels. Just bring what you got and share it.

By: James Poniewozik

James Poniewozik — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 21:11:41 +0000

As one of the MSM journalists who supposedly so greedily clings to the exclusive term “journalist,” I never liked it. I still slip into using it pretty often, but when I think about it, it’s a pretentious term that attempts to gussy up and professionalize work that can usually be described in simpler, more descriptive terms. When people ask what I do, I usually say I’m a “writer” or a “critic” or a “columnist” or something, and then elaborate on what I write and for whom. Sometimes it’s useful to describe a broad class of people who work in the same field but do different tasks (say, to include TV anchors and food writers under the same umbrella) but otherwise “journalist” is mainly useful for those who want to define others out of the term.

By: David M

David M — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 21:04:32 +0000

Being a journalist should be something exlusive. There are certain rights that are allocated to those in the profesion, and if “bloggers” like Congdon don’t want to be journalists and held to those standards, then the benefits should not be available as well (see the Apple vs Blogger case – which mask did were they wearing when they leaked and which mask were they wearing when they refused to divulge their sources…if they were journalists the whole time then great, but if not its a very uneasy situation)

By: Tansley - addendum

Tansley - addendum — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 19:28:21 +0000

Shhhhhh! QUIET, Jeff, they’ll HEAR you!

Journalists aside, maybe it would be better to just let nature take its course, and let the TV stations die out, in the long-awaited death they deserve…

They killed PLAYHOUSE 90 and gave us MY MOTHER, THE CAR, Jeff… Let it GO…

By: Paul Vigna

Paul Vigna — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 15:06:21 +0000

Congdon’s right, she’s not a journalist, she’s a personality. That’s why ABC hired her, and that is a perfect illustration of what’s wrong with broadcast journalism. Not the tag it chooses to apply to itself, but the production itself. Journalism is alive and well and will be as long as we have a free society, no matter if it’s produced by operations like the New York Times or Kos or even Drudge. But most broadcast programs can hardly be distinguished from the Entertainment Tonight’s of the world. Broadcast’s problems are its own, not journalism’s.