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Journalism from the other side

9 comments on Journalism from the other side

Journalism from the other side

: We’re at the end of a long day at the public journalism session in Toronto; I just gave my summary of what I heard and now Jay Rosen is giving his amazing story of the movement and the day.

Jay says that when he got into this long ago, the key word was “disconnect.” Journalism was disconnected from its audience. Jay and the public journalism movement thought the way to solve that was from within journalism. They tried to get journalists to cover an election from the people’s perspective, not a news perspective. They tried to get journalists to hold town meetings to listen. Jay spent a decade doing that.

But then came citizens’ media and Jay says he suddenly saw it differently: Rather than changing from within, rather than trying to bring journalism closer to people, these new tools brought the people closer to journalism, their journalism as publishers. Not everyone will or should do it. But those who are so inclined now can.

It’s all about enfranchising people.

9 responses to “Journalism from the other side”

  1. Ken Layne Avatar
    Ken Layne

    Take a look at this dumb thing Welch found:
    http://www.mattwelch.com/archives/week_2004_08_01.html#2726
    It’s some j-school folks’ funny cartoon idea about the difference between Journalists & Bloggers.

  2. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    I think the really olde fashioned word you are seeking is “competition”.
    News media and bloggers sell the same thing relevant information. They are in competition for the attention of the reader.
    The reader requires trust in the source. When either the journalist or blogger betray that trust they lose the attention and respect of the reader.
    Re-arranging the chairs and faces does not replace the lost trust. The NYTimes lost me long before their recent troubles. I read them for reconizable views and attitudes. NPR is recognizable in phrases that are repeated by the morning commute listeners. Getting up early, reading the papers and blogs puts me one-half step ahead in the day.
    Who can we trust? Who are respected by others? Who are consistent voices and views? Who has not sold out to easy phrases and sloppy thinking?
    It is competition for my attention and my spending. Who deserves my money?
    It is a free and easy market with a lower barrier to entry. Forces of competition will shred NYTimes as easily as the Billy-Bob Yob Blog. The NYTimes has a heritage that they lost. They have a position where they no longer consider the individual reader but divide us by demographics and pander to the easily led.

  3. Dexter Westbrook Avatar
    Dexter Westbrook

    More blogger triumphalist crap.
    Hey, the bloggers had a chance to strut their stuff at the DNC. I love blogs, and I read as much of their DNC stuff as I could stand. With very few exceptions (Rosen, Blair, Welch) it was pathetic writing, with all of the powers of observation of your average bobby soxer.
    One guy talked about how Clinton looked so small from the top of the Fleet Center. When somebody else quoted him (I don’t remember the names here, and they’re too trivial to look up), the guy complained about being taken out of context, and that he was trying to say that it’s easier to watch the speech on TV than it is to be there in person. Well, duh. Lemme clue you in, pal. A basketball game is better on TV than it is on the top row of the Fleet Center, too.
    I thought of what N.Z. Bear said about the bloggers serving as a “watcher” over the journalists, and laughed out loud. With that kind of output from bloggers, journalists have got nothin’ to worry about.

  4. henry Avatar
    henry

    If the revolution is inherently bottom-up, is there any use preaching to the Grand Poobahs? (Not to say that the PR for blogging isn’t greatly appreciated on our side — just that you may be peddling cotton candy to diabetics.)

  5. Andrea Harris Avatar
    Andrea Harris

    Hey Dexter,
    It was probably “pathetic” blogging because from what I saw it was a pretty pathetic convention. What were bloggers supposed to do, get their own experience of being told to “shove it” by Princess Tuh-ray-zah? Interview the funny hat people — ask them where they got the inspiration to put toy donkeys on fire helmets or something?
    Please, there was no there there. The most interesting part of the whole thing was where the guy got caught on tape swearing about the balloons not falling in time, and that was at a sub-junior-high level of interesting.

  6. Diana Avatar
    Diana

    Bloggers scooped the media on at least two important stories.
    1. the “Free Speech ‘Cages’”
    2. The Obama Speech
    The reason the media failed to cover these stories is a story in itself, which the bloggers also covered.
    So that makes 3.

  7. Dexter Westbrook Avatar
    Dexter Westbrook

    Oh, yeah. The protest cage and the Obama speech didn’t get covered by the convention media. Please. Diana, please see the doctor about some new meds.
    Andrea: The fact that there is no “there there” at political conventions has been known for, uh, 30 years or so. By everybody except bloggers, I guess, who argued about who should get credentials and who was denied them, trumpeted the fact that they were going, then got there and subjected us to an endless stream of gee-whiz, bobby-soxer analysis and observations about how Bill Clinton looks small from the top row of the Fleet Center.

  8. Andrea Harris Avatar
    Andrea Harris

    Well, if it’s all “the conventions have always been boring everyone knows that except the stooopid bloggers, tcha!” then why are you so bitter?
    And actually, you also are ignorant. There have been several conventions in the past that can’t be described as dull, boring, or pathetic (well, maybe that, but not from lack of exciting events). The anti-Bush contingent has been acting so insane, and the terrorism awareness factor is of course quite a bit higher than in previous years, that it was possible that something “newsworthy” might have gone down (hence the “Free Speech Cage” and the upped security and so on).
    But all this is to argue apples and oranges. My real take on this is that bloggers weren’t there to be just another kind of conventional (and unpaid) reporter, they were there to do their own unique thing: observing and writing about something from their own personal, individual viewpoint, as opposed to so-called “objective” reporting (which is supposed to be just the dry facts without the personality of reporter impinging on the content) or the sahib-like pronouncements of some columnist or editorial board commenting days later on info they only received third-hand.

  9. Dexter Westbrook Avatar
    Dexter Westbrook

    Andrea:
    I notice you don’t cite any examples of exciting conventions, probably because you don’t know any. There have been a few in the last half-century — the Democratic conventions in 1980 and 1968, the Republican convention in 1976.
    Sure, bloggers were there to write about things from their own unique perspective, blah blah blah. My point is, when most of them did this, the result was crap. Pure, unadulterated, breathless, insipid, unreadable crap.
    Like a friend of mine once said: If you ain’t got the hose, the water don’t come out.