BuzzMachine

The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

It is personal

6 comments on It is personal

It is personal
: Journalism is getting personal.

I don’t mean personal as in long zoom shots of naked celebrities.

I don’t mean personal as in columnists using the first person a lot and telling us all about their lives (please, no, not that again!).

I don’t mean personal as in throwing barbs and insults at individuals.

I mean personal as in knowing the person who writes and knowing the person who reads. Personal as in having a conversation. Personal because — repeat after me — news is a conversation.

: Note the reaction to a post I wrote about potty parity for women in New York. I’ll admit I posted it mainly for the punchline. But the comments went wild. Why? Because this little bit of information touched people’s everyday lives. It’s personal. That makes it news. Compare that with other front-page news that day that did not get such reaction.

Now see blogger Lisa Williams’ reaction to what might seem like an odd post in my weblog, which is usually devoted to media, news, and politics [my emphasis]:

But if you really look at a site like Buzzmachine or Instapundit you will find that they include lots of topics that stray far afield from political punditry or media criticism. In fact, the closer you look the stranger it is to say that “this is a politics blog” or “this is a media criticism blog.” Why would a media criticism blog like Buzzmachine contain a post on potty-parity, or a technology blog like Doc Searls’ also contain so much about politics? Yet as we look at them these “unrelated” topics don’t seem to take away from the strength of the blog — they add to it.

Being human is not off-topic.

Blogs give you an opportunity to challenge this limited idea of what is important and to say, The rest of my life is important too. I am not a brain in a jar that emits 700 word screeds….

I also suspect that the general tendency of bloggers towards including personal commentary and “off topic” adventures makes the blogosphere a more polite place than either the mass media or Usenet.

: Right! Now look again at Dan Okrent’s surprisingly personal self-categorizing introduction to his constituency in the audience of The New York Times. See also the reaction to it in my comments. Dan says he doesn’t go to the movies much and this leads to a discussion about it: Poor Dan… odd Dan… maybe Dan watches videos. This isn’t celebrity; Dan’s no star. This is about a constituency (nee audience) craving a conversation with someone who represents them (which is, after all, what every reporter is supposed to do, right?). Dan’s essay got instant good reviews in blogs: See Roger Simon and Josh Chavetz and Tim Porter.

: This personal thing can go too far (see Bob Greene, Maureen Dowd, many a small-town columnist, and any local TV news person dieting for sweeps). What we’re interested in, media people, is not your lives; like Dan, you’re not celebrities. What we are interested in is your perspective, your bias, your baggage, your candor, your humanity. If you’re going to represent us in finding, reporting, and selecting the news — if you’re going to ask questions on our behalf — then we want to know who you are and what you’re about so we can better judge what you say. That’s part of the age of transparency. That’s part of the conversation that is news.

: And it so happens that a weblog is an incredibly effective vehicle for getting to know someone — not the only one, but a good one. Hell, I’ve gotten to know myself better here. Before your eyes, I turned from a pacifist into a supporter of military action to defend against and defeat terrorism and — as Okrent said well today — I, too believe that it is “inconsistent for those who advocate human rights to oppose all American military action.” You shouldn’t give a damn what I think except insofar as it colors my view of news on war; you have a right to know what’s behind the links and blathering I give you.

So Jay Rosen et al — and I — are still right to push Okrent to blog, for a blog will beat even his great introductory paragraph. A blog establishes a relationship with his constituency. And that, too, would set an example for other Timesmen and other journalists to realize their role in this new world of news.

News is personal. News is a relationship. News is a conversation.

6 responses to “It is personal”

  1. Leonard Witt Avatar
    Leonard Witt

    I am not so interested in getting to know Dan Okrent. I want to get to know about the New York Times. A blog is the way. The whole concept of the Public Editor, as it is set up, is obsolete.
    For more see:
    NY Times Needs an Okrent and a Romenesko
    http://www.pjnet.org
    Leonard Witt
    President, Public Journalism Network

  2. Lisa Williams Avatar
    Lisa Williams

    Jeff! What about the linky love, my man?! Don’t be a tease! (Whacks permalinks a few times with meat tenderizer to make sure they work). Here’s a link to the post: Be True To Your Blog.
    BTW, I think journalism instructor Kaye Trammell came up with the best argument *against* the single-blog thesis I was pushing over here:so this is mass communication?. She points out (quite wisely too I think) that in some cases it’s a good idea to have a “job blog” and a personal blog.
    Work and blogging is such a fraught intersection. I follow a lot of medlogs, and many of the medical professionals who have blogs do so anonymously. Yet there are also prominent bloggers who talk quite explicitly about their workplace, like Scoble at Microsoft. And there are still many other sad stories of people who get fired because of what appears in their blog. Whether or not it is seen as a Good Thing that people mix work and blogging seems to me to be a little bit related to the blogger’s standing in the hierarchy of the workplace…a lot of the people I see blogging openly about work are what Halley would term alpha males.

  3. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    Lisa: So sorry! Link now there.

  4. KMK Avatar
    KMK

    A news journalist in Washington or anywhere else for that matter, has freedom of the press, it’s a basic constitutional guarantee. Without violating confidences, or being otherwise unethical, a journalist has the right, the privilege, and the duty, to report and write as he/she sees it. This is an idealistic view of what I thought journalism was. The crux between bloggers and journalists. This is why I read the Buzzmachine.

  5. MommaBear Avatar
    MommaBear

    What ever happened to the good old-fashioned reporter; that is what we need to return to: the who, what, where, when, and how of reporting. This high-faltuin’ “journalist” jazz is what got us into this bias-mess in the first place!

  6. button Avatar
    button

    First of all, the most successful business model for today’s American newspaper supposedly is the ‘shopper/service’ model. That must be why my local newspaper is an overblown, glorified shopper type publication.
    Wanting to know more about the NY Times probably violates their privacy. What’s to know anyway? In recent years we have been led to believe that have become primarily a real estate company.
    But let me tell you how obnoxious they can be. At one point they decided that they wanted to have a New Jersey section, so they lined up a whole bunch of advertisers and then stuck abhorrent filler material between the ads and tried to pass that off as news coverage of NJ.