Here’s a couple of long(ish) articles for a leisurely Sunday read that are loosely based on a larger topic. This topic is The Media (my fav):
The Oxymoronic Citizen Journalism — This is an insightful case for the continued professionalism of the news by a guy who is a tech fan (and a former editor of French Liberation). It is utterly without the rueful naval gazing of days gone by — it is a straightforward argument for professional news people and professional news venues going quite against the grain of the triumphalism of citizen journalism. This part spoke to me:
In this context, Blogs range from the best to the worst. Professional blogs – either independent or hosted by traditional medias – can be the most advanced form of written journalism. Quite often, blogs produced by good journalists are as insightful as standard stories, but way more fun to read. (In France, I do know editors who wish their writers were as witty in the paper as they are on their blogs). Good bloggers sometimes border on columnists. Their work is solid, precise and, sometimes, edited; they take time to write their pieces and it shows.
At the other end of the spectrum, blogs can be utterly superficial, lacking precise facts, or agenda-driven and written with a shovel. Unfortunately, both kinds of blogs are sometimes found under the same roof. In many news organizations, big and small, instead of being considered as a more modern form of journalism, the “blog” name tag is a synonym for lower expectations.The same kind of carelessness goes for comments. I do believe that opening news content to public feedback is a good thing. At its very core, journalism begs for argument; pundits need detractors. But most online editors satisfy themselves by opening the floodgate of comments, without a strategy, or even the slightest attention to content. As a result, everybody loses: the writer who sees painstaking work defaced by shouts; and the publication for allowing substandard, unmoderated feedback. Participation without relevancy is pointless. [emphasis mine] Unfortunately, in most news sites – including big ones, very little thought seems to have been given to raising the level of public contributions.
Look At Me — This is the lead piece in this month’s Columbia Journalism Review and is a maddening, sometimes fascinating, and occasionally insightful piece on being a journalist in the alternative media. I wondered if Woodward and Bernstein would recognize this young woman’s career or even if they would see the mythologizing of their signature piece f reporting ad perhaps where the importance of journalistic “brand” began. Here is an interesting bit (although I think she’s not exactly above this vapid culture she disses here):
So I wrote what I know, or rather what I’ve learned, which could be summed up this way: when the Internet forced journalism to compete economically after years of monopoly, journalism panicked and adopted some of the worst examples of the nothing-based economy, in which success depends on the continued infantilization of both supply and demand. At the same time, journalism clung to its myths of objectivity and detachment, using them to dismiss the emerging blogger threat as something unserious and fundamentally parasitic, even as it produced a steady stream of obsessive but sneering trend stories on the blogosphere.
It’s Not the Economist, Stupid — Marion Maneker takes a look at the death of Newsweek. The Economist as a model doesn’t seem that far-fetched, especially in dealing with large issues or news of the week. From where I sit, Newsweek stopped taking itself seriously as a news organization and turned itself into Personalities Writing Sometimes Twee Stuff while quite missing the events or the issues of a week. If they couldn’t keep up, why read them? And all too often these personalities were just caught up in the CW, which everyone else is writing too. As much news as I consume, it has been a very long time since any of the US weeklies have crossed my threshold.
And here is an amazing bit of crazy — a repub Senate legislator in Michigan wants to officially register Michigan journalists. And it gets stranger — to be a journalist, you need to register and document certain credentials and experience and have the state OK that. Call yourself a reporter and you are not subject to any of that. Another repub looking for a few good brain cells, I think.
Anything here strike a chord for you?