Fred Wilson’s post this morning would cause an epidemic of cardiac arrest at a newspaper or journalism school. It comes in response to an argument about whether blogs can innately be journalism while Twitter and MySpace can’t (Fred and I each disagree with that assertion; in my mind, they are just tools that can be used as journalism but often aren’t). Says Fred:
I think journalism itself is a dated concept. We are now in the world of conversation. We are talking to ourselves. John Heilemann said it best in his recent column in NY Magazine about Murdoch’s designs on the WSJ:“Did anybody at Dow Jones ever contemplate purchasing MySpace? Did Arthur Sulzberger or Don Graham? I don’t know, but I’d wager they didn’t even know what MySpace was. The obvious retort is, Why should they have? What does social networking have to do with journalism? And, no doubt, a precise answer is hard to conjure. But if you don’t believe that the intermingling of these spheres will be central to how future generations consume their news, you’ve apparently been sleeping—and clearly don’t have kids.”
The intermingling of these spheres will be HOW future generations consume their news. [And create it - ed] Period. End of story. I learn stuff on Twitter every day that is more profound than many of the blogs I read.Just because it’s said in 140 characters or less doesn’t mean it’s not journalism. To think otherwise is patronizing and wrong.
The tool doesn’t define journalism any more than the person does. The information and the need for it defines journalism.
I can’t miss a chance to weigh in when I’m in agreement with Jeff .
Saying we’re in an age of coversation seems self-evident. And yes, social networking will have a huge role to play in how journalism gets practiced.
But while journalism can (and must) incorporate conversation, conversation isn’t journalism on its own. To paraphrase Thoreau, “It is not enough to converse; the question is, what are we conversing about?”
Journalists who say they are in the journalism business are making the same mistake that railroads made by refusing to accept that they were in the transportation business when the car was invented. Journalists are in the news business. MySpace is in the news business — news of family and friends, which is the type of news most of us are most interested in. (Steve Boriss, The Future of News)
#9 from Matt McIntosh at 8:55 pm on Dec 17, 2004
Travelling like I do in libertarian circles, I am all too familiar with the Antiwar.com crowd and those of like mind. At least one of Antiwar’s editors, Matthew Barganier, is a little brownshirt in disguise. My fellow libertarian hawk Max Borders had an unfortunate run-in with him just recently and has now stopped blogging as a result.
The short version of the story: Max works for the Institute for Humane Studies, and ran his own personal blog on the side. Barganier took one contraversial sentence in Max’s personal blog from the middle of a lengthy inter-blog debate about rights and war, posted it up on the AntiWar.com blog completely out of context, then posted a link to the contacts page of his employer and encouraged all his readers to “tell them what you think”. Basically he was trying to get him fired. Needless to say this is very dirty pool and revealed more about Barganier than Max.
-What does it say about antiwar.com, which is sponsored by right-wing CATO institute? one of antiwar’s top journos is former CATO journo Doug Bandow, who took thousands of $$$ in payoffs to write articles for JACK ABRAMOFF ! and this was defended by justin raimondo- antiwar’s top dog- because “he would have written those articles anyway”. CATO is proglobalization, big tobacco-funded and wants to privatize social security… and this is the best the antiwar movement in US can do???
My observations on the death of journalisn n this Country is that it is definitely dead, my opinion of Bloggers replaceing them is still out.
If written Journalism is dead the American journalist has no ne to blame but himself. My observation is association and hob nobbing is way more important then REPORTING the news. A example is the (alledged) man in the White House makes a fool of himself and this Country and the Media BOWS it off as entertainment, I read the international editions and they call the White House a Fool and unsophisticated, so much for reporting the news but they did have special seating.
Even the (alledeged) TV news would rather make news then report it a exampe is the O’lielly fracture ( purely entertainment in his words) then you have Lou Dobbs does not report but makes the news to fit the story why DUH! he is the Editor in charge DUH!. Again fear, Smear, Hatred, Itolerance,Misuderatanding, Ignorance. Yeah the American media has gone a long way from truth and REPORTING, to Making FACTS fit the story and Popularity with the sources.
So lets see what the verdict will be. TRUTH or FANTASY
Journalists still have access to feeds like Reuters or AP. It’s the only competitive advantage compared to bloggers.
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News about family and friends is networking or gossip, not news. Valuable, interesting, but not journalism.
Ideally, journalism occupies a chair at the news-making seat of power, then provides an attempt at an objective attempt to verify facts and to cover or analyze the event and the “spin” offered by the parties involved. The result often does not contain much, if any analyis, or the analysis is often incomplete (truncated by space or failings), and may represent inadvertent or advertent bias. And it is edited and subject to verification.
The editorial function is what is usually unsupplied by most blogs/bloggers, which easily can supply opinion or analysis, if you can fight your way through the lists of “hits” and identify the blogs with most value. Bloggers are answerable to themselves or to their readers, not to the editor(s) and fact-checkers. Editors do supply value.