Post a comment with your thoughts on the following:
"You're going to be up against people who have an opinion, a modem, and a bathrobe. All of my life, developing credentials to cover my field of work, and now I'm up against a guy named Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn't left the efficiency apartment in two years"
-- Brian Williams, anchor of the NBC Nightly News speaking before New York University journalism students on the challenges traditional journalism faces from online media
Questions to consider:
--Are bloggers journalists?
--Do they deserve recognition regardless of ethics, transparency and bipartisanship on both sides?
--If a blogger has more readers than a newspaper has circulation, does that make the blog media and the writer a journalist?
11 comments:
Let's get this started.
Today in "class" I mentioned Glenn Greenwald's blog. In a post earlier today he takes the mainstream media (MSM) to task for their servile and inaccurate reporting concerning the Jessica Lynch story. As you may have heard, Lynch testified to Congress earlier this week and expressed puzzlement and dismay over how the media sensationalized and distorted the events surrounding her capture and rescue.
This is another example of how bloggers police the MSM. The MSM, sadly, is not as credible, honest, or objective as they like to claim. Read his article for the full story.
Tim
Just a thought...
Blogs came to make a breakage of the oligopoly of information and the creation of a bidirectional channel. This idea has not been born with blogs, but nowadays they are the best tool to carry out this information's revolution. It's possible that tomorrow it changes their order or colors, but beyond the concept of blog is the one of distributed information, an intelligent network with nodes that communicate and associate. Because of the fact that blogs never go through a publishing filter process and they offer its own point of view, usually they are classified as unreliable, but I think blogs are not good or bad in them, one of its main attributes is that they have democratized the access to the information and they have given to us the power o a personal opinion. I'm not talking about public opinion because in the mainstream media exists the tendency to treat the individuals as a mass, in a univocal relation where the “truth” (almost always official) arises from the media and it's scattered through the society that receives it in a passive way. Alternative media like blogs, are different. In them the truth tends to be relative and the communicative process operates in different routes. They urges a conversation in several levels and “layers” between the blog's writer and his readers through their commentaries, and between blogs when there is a subject in common, and where not necessarily they agree, but a permanent exercise of content's enrichment takes place.
Gerardo O.
Journalistic blogging, I think, is partly the expression of the curiosity out there that's been left unsatisfied by the MSM, which often treats their viewers/readers as if they wouldn't want to know more about am issue or hear more details -- or understand the full context.
I think it also stems from the Ritalin generation -- the members of which have been raised on a diet of web pages and text messages (and Ritalin, obviously)and have an insatiable need for immediate information/gratification. "Look guys! Here's what i found out about (issue) and here's what i think about it. What do you think? What do you think? What do you think?!?!?"
They're "getting to the bottom of things" and are not about to wait for the regular news cylcle to provide them with the answers the next day -- if at all.
Blogs are facilitating a sort of insidious development, I fear. That development is selecting to consume news and opinion that only confirms your own views. I don't think reading blogs is what the founding fathers had in mind when they entrusted an informed citizenry with the power it presumably has in a democracy.
From my perspective, blogs are fulfilling the role alternative newspapers have held for decades. It’s a check/balance on mainstream media and resource for readers with alternative viewpoints. MSM hates it, of course – just like the government hates MSM being their check/balance.
The question we get from MSM is, “Who is the check/balance on bloggers?”
The answer – readers and other bloggers. And that blows their minds.
JN
As a non-practicing PR person, I find blogs fascinating while overwhelming considering the possibility of hitting mass readers (intended or not). I was already a little overwhelmed with all the available informaiton mediums out there through TV, radio, pubs, websites - now blogs. The exhausting part as a critic is keeping the "filter" activated regardless the medium. You know, that constant question of "should I let this stuff soak in, do I believe in it, is there/what's the angle, do I trust the source"? With blogs it adds more questions like "should I participate in it"? It scares me a little.
I have a hard enough time just keeping up with reading the headlines, right?
Not sure, but I think I might have a perspective like many (okay maybe just 30+ ers)...it's just another thing drawing time away from things I'd rather focus on - like calling my mom to check in on her. Does that ring a bell for anyone else?
anon 4:57 said:
I don't think reading blogs is what the founding fathers had in mind when they entrusted an informed citizenry with the power it presumably has in a democracy.
I think blogs are exactly what the founding fathers had in mind, because blogs are basically the modern-day equivalent of pamphlets, which were printed about every conceivable topic and from every conceivable viewpoint.
In fact many of the newspapers of the revolutionary time period were NOT objective and didn't pretend to be. The issues of the day were so contentious ("are you a revolutionary or a royalist?") that you had to take sides. People who didn't were viewed suspiciously (and indeed, many of these people were probably opportunists). It was a dangerous and confusing time.
I think the idea of "objective journalism" is far more poisonous because it's based on a lie: That journalists can be objective if they try. They cannot!! Human beings are nothing if not biased. No amount of corporate structure or government regulation can change that. It is not possible for a subjective human being to take on the mantle of an objective, godlike being. But journalists certainly did enjoy the status that came with the lie. Their time is ending. We're going back to the way things were in Ben Franklin's time, and I think that it will infuse new lifeblood into our republic.
Btw, nothing prevents you from reading other POVs except you. This is not something that should be blamed on blogs. Also, most blogs allow comments, which means your most hardened ideological foes can tear your argument to shreds. As a blog owner, if you want to delete their comments, that's your choice. But then you have to relinquish any notions of fair-mindedness or intellectual honesty.
As a blog reader I think it would be difficult to avoid contrary opinions since everybody has differing opinions to some degree. Also, what guarantee is there that the professional journalists are fairly considering all sides? Many of them dismissed blogs without ever having read one. Is that objectivity?
Tim
I think bloggers are bloggers--not journalists. It's a new category with its own set of rules/guidelines. Bloggers have one set of "rules" and journalists have another set of "rules." We're just more familiar with, and perhaps accepting of, the journalism rules.
I can relate to another comment posted here about it all being "too much." At what point does blogging become irrelevant? In this marketplace of ideas, the best will inevitably float to the top, and then what is the point of a billion bloggers?
In terms of deserving recognition, I think we should be aware of blogs and understand the pros and cons because bloggers are clearly influencers, even if not journalists. (Which was the reason for our class, right?)
--Christy S.
We can argue the jounalistic integrity of bloggers when it comes to "hard news" til the cows come home. But what about the bazillion bloggers who write about other topics - like music, film, television, food, fashion, etc? Topics that are wholly subjective?
Blogs, and the power to self-publish, have opened doors to those who have something to say but never had a place to say it before. They are an island for the misfit toys of the world (and I mean that in a good way) who have interesting, valid opinions that may have never reached us otherwise. If you don't like 'em, don't read 'em, I say.
The line between bloggers and journalist in many cases has become so thin as to be virtually invisible. As was mentioned in class, it's impossible to watch a sporting event now on TV without hearing about the blogs that the announcers/analysists will be updating after the game. It's an opportunity for those who are suppose to remain neutral throughout the events/stories they're covering to offer up their opinions about what just transpired. If nothing else, I like seeing a reporter has a blog, because it can provide a sense of his or her general "lean" by allowing them to freely express their opinions. Almost like a check-balance against their own writing, where their personal opinions (blog) can be compared to their reporting (MSM stories).
From Forbes: Old media will thrive in today's new-media environment if they adapt, writes News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch in Forbes. "We must learn how younger generations prefer to receive their news and entertainment." But, "far be it from me to suggest that I have all the answers. No one does."
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