Part III and the end….
David Carr of The Times talks about his experience being a general assignment reporter in culture and a media columnist in business and before the Oscars a blogger who also made video. He expresses concern that each becomes weaker. He also cautions that in a video or in the blog, he linked to things he would not have in the newspaper.
Heyward asks about whether these various forms confuse the readers and Jon Landman of The Times says no. He says readers are sophisticated; they can deal with another new form. Heyward asks about bringing voice into news and Landman says that’s bullshit: Good writers have voice. He says that there is point of view in a newspaper (see Carr) and it’s not a wholly new thing. Heyward asks whether, if point of view brings circulation and is also cheaper than reporting, we’ll have more of that.
I’m now losing a lot of threads that are all about what we should be doing next. Merrill Brown says it starts with putting up email addresses of reporters. Peter Hart of FAIR complains that the interactivity gimmicks (e.g., Fox letting you bet what’s on next) produces bad journalism. And more. Again, sorry I’m losing the good points (because I had to defend mine).
Tom Easton of the Economist talks about this magazine as alternative media. He says the key to the Economist is that it thinks (it knows) that its audience is smart. He says the staffing plan is that they can’t hire more people than can fit in the managing editor’s office so they can all yell at each other. He’s not sure whether it could be recreated today. He says that the majority of the staff is liberal, in the classical British sense, but the magazine ends up to the right of American media and that is a good thing. He says that others are scared of being out of the mainstream; if that spread to the Economist, he says, that would kill it. He also says that he thinks America is in great shape, better shape than when he graduated college — but, he adds, you don’t see that in The New York Times. Nice line: “If we put Britney on the cover, it would be ironic.”
Jim Brady says that reporters didn’t like putting up their email addresses but they now say they get story ideas there. They didn’t like putting up Technorati links but now they brag when they get a lot of links. He says that writing a story and answering email are both journalism.
Carr says that when he did the Oscar blog, the audience was incredible at knowing a lot and he revels in sharing that. But he says the one thing the audience is bad at doing is assigning stories.
Jay Rosen says that no one is saying that news will be decided by poll. Nobody is saying that we don’t need reporters. Nobody is saying that you should stop reporting and just listen. But these things are being said: The audience knows a lot of stuff and if you don’t tap that knowledge you’re not keeping up with your craft. And journalism has become interactive and if you’re not interacting, you’re not keeping up with your craft. And, he says, trust isn’t made the way it was; the trust transaction is different. If you take those three things, he says, that doesn’t give you the answer to how to afford to get the boots on the ground. We need to experiment, he says.
