p2pnet - rss feed: Getting a journalist blogging
p2p news / p2pnet: The students in my online journalism class at City University are all building weblogs this week.
Some have them already, of course, since they’ve realised that engaging with the new media is a sensible option for any journalist, but the others are taking their first tentative steps into posting entries, commenting on what other people say and trying to attract an audience, however modest.
They don’t have to write personal journals or reveal anything about their private lives: they’ve been asked to blog interesting stories in the area of online journalism and new media, which may be a bit self-referential but is at least relevant to the course.
So it’s more like John Naughton’s Memex 1.1 than Belle de Jour’s confessions.
The idea is to give them a better understanding of how the technology works, and show them just how easy it is to publish online even if you have no idea how the web works or what HTML is.
There are many good reasons for any journalist to have a weblog – or two – although I don’t believe that they’ll need blogs when all the mainstream media sites go out of business. I think that professional journalism will endure, even if it has to change.
It’s useful for my students to understand how things get online, since most online publications these days insulate the content creators – whether journalists or not – from the detail of website creation by offering content management systems of more or less sophistication.
The BBC News website isn’t build by hordes of dedicated coders who carefully hand-craft each page but uses such a system to let editors copy and paste text into standardised page layouts.
It’s also important for any journalist or would-be journalist to have an online presence to supplement their cv and portfolio, since more and more people looking for jobs are going to find their online activities scrutinised as part of the application process.
And of course having to write a blog entry as part of their coursework forces students to read the papers, look around websites and generally take an interest in what is happening with new media, something I want to encourage.
But the real point of getting a journalist blogging at this early stage in his or her career is that the bloggers, in all their variety, with all their different skills and abilities and interests and biases, are reshaping the world in which professional journalists operate just as much as the telephone shook up the profession in the first half of the twentieth century.
On some stories, like the provenance of the letters claiming to be from George W Bush’s commander in the National Guard, or the use of white phosphorus as a chemical weapon by US troops in Iraq, careful digging by bloggers has done a job that the mainstream press failed to tackle.
Elsewhere every journalist now knows to expect comment and criticism from the blogosphere, and those who might once have cut corners by not checking facts or cutting and pasting phrases from other people’s work should now find their lives less comfortable.
A few years ago readers of the Cluetrain Manifesto were exhorted to see the market as a conversation where customers engaged with sellers. This was presented as a break with the one-way advertising and marketing model that used to hold sway, made possible by the internet.
The blogosphere is doing the same sort of thing for journalism, whether in print or broadcast. It’s no longer enough to write or say something and consign any responses to the letters page or occasional ‘have your say’ programme.
My students have to get used to this. They have to engage with their readers in a way that respects the shared values of the online world.
They have to get used to being harshly criticised and dissected by those who disagree with them, and they have to accept that sometimes the people reading their work will know more about the subject than they do and may have a valuable contribution to make to their thinking.
At a later stage they’ll need to come to terms with Flickr and the other photosharing sites, and the way that any event attended by large numbers of people effortlessly generates it’s own online community, with hundreds of photos linked by common tags.
I noticed it vividly last month at WSIS, the World Summit on the Information Society, but its just as true for a White Stripes gig or a major sporting event. And of course, it’s true for newsworthy events, no matter how tragic.
Figuring out the relationship between the press and those who see the news happening and post their photographs of it is the next major challenge
But we can’t expect to adapt to this changed world unless we engage with it now, and understand it from the inside as well as observing it from our editorial offices.
The growth of internet use and the emergence of easy-to-use publishing tools could well be the best thing that has happened to journalism since radio and then television offered new ways to reach people, but that requires a certain degree of modesty and a great willingness to learn on the part of a profession that is not noted for either attribute.
Bill Thompson - andfinally.com
[Thompson is a UK-based writer and broadcaster.]
December 4th, 2005 at 4:37 pm
I much agree that the future of journalism isn’t in hard copy nor in the recognised feild of the printed word for newspapers. Just as much of the world is having to move over for the internet, so are journalists.
It isn’t that journalism doesn’t have a future, like some of the major invested corporate concerns, it is that future and how it looks is changing rapidly. There will be room for far more. Of course that means that everyone and their brother can now pester the world at large with their pet peeve or favorite soapbox; just as we do here. It also means that you the reader will have to do the sifting to find the kernal among the chaff. The lame ho-hum will and does exist side by side with the very best of professional standards and it will be up to the reader to determine just what is in his interests. The professional will always have that certain “something” that makes the reader perk up and take notice. Call it training or style, still that will show through. So the profession has a bright future but is still seeking it’s level within the scope of the internet.
What is most disturbing in this is that journalism, as far as professional goes, is also sinking to new lows. Sounds odd doesn’t it? What I am going on about here is this. Many of the professional sites are now taking short cuts. They are ripping off blogs and sites, with cut and paste articles seeing print, that they themselves are not writing but rather using plagurism as the method to submit stuff to print without crediting the author of the site for the work. Treating these cut and pastes as if it were their own work that they did. In support of showing this happening was an article yesterday at Slashdot. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/03/1438224&tid=149&tid=99&tid=95
Still I congradulate Bill Thompson for attempting to accomplish what many of his profession in teaching may not be doing. That of preparing the student for the real world and not for some idealistic world that exists only in academic circles.
December 5th, 2005 at 8:31 am
Very interesting.
I’ve been doing a similar thing with my Journalism Students (http://www.ukjournalism.co.uk/maonline
). Initially this with a blog of their day to day activities but now they have found their feet they are blogging on many journalism related issues.
I agree it’s an environment that we need to get used to but the growing pains are obvious. The students themselves seem to have no problem with the concept or the idea of the information culture bloggers and their ilk are creating. However our industry doesn’t seem to be able to handle it.
The next few years may well bring a huge shift in the way we consume information and our role as journalists in that process. But we seem to be battling over who has the right to be a journalist and assume that very important role in society.
Mainstream media, particularly print have stuck blog in front of everything in an effort to catch the wave. There is barley disguised exploitation of the ‘citizen journalist’ concept as the press, especially at a regional level, try to harness the power of user generated content for profit.
The traditional media don’t look that happy at relinquishing their position. But you’re right. They will have to change other wise they may be killing off any opportunity they have of effectively participating in the future.
December 5th, 2005 at 2:08 pm
“The next few years may well bring a huge shift in the way we consume information and our role as journalists in that process. >>But we seem to be battling over who has the right to be a journalist<< and assume that very important role in society.”
It is my firmly held conviction that the cream will rise to the top. There is no “battle” over who has the right to be a journalist. The true journalist, like a true artist, will, by the value of his output and by his devotion to his art or craft (or both), come to be recognized for his dedication and by the quality of his work.
I personally held a great deal of respect for Peter Jennings and I firmly believe he would have risen to the top of worldwide journalism even if confronted by innumerable obstacles. The same will evince itself in cyber-space within a remarkably short time.
December 5th, 2005 at 6:08 pm
I agree with this absolutely.
I do agree that people like Jennings would rise to the top. I suppose my point would be that if he had appeared on the web first, the debate would be can he call himself a journalist.
I’m not doing the trad media down here from a journalistic point of view. Considered crafted pieces are, at the moment, only found in any great amount and range in the trad media. But we all know that much of the debate is around the economics of the industry and the defence of shaky market position.
Any industry under threat from competition has a choice - It either changes to meet that competition or it tries to market itself as something different. The traditional media has realised it’s much too slow to do the former and the quality of the online content (and I have to say some increasingly shoddy journalism) proves it doesn’t have anything to sell as the latter other than its established market position and distribution.
As a result, in the new media debate anyway, it results to bashing the competition – a kind of we were there first type of argument.
I do appreciate that there is a livelihood issue here. The recent moves by the NUJ/freelancers to re-engineer citizen journalists in to citizen witnesses is an example of that. But we can’t continue as an industry that supposedly defines itself by what it produces by defending itself from those who produce comparable content by what it is.
It’s as if the equation reads:
Journalist = trad media and good quality=journalist so good quality=trad media.
That has to change.
So yes, the cream will rise to the top, but the problem at the moment is that the traditional media think they have and should always have the monopoly on the dairy.
December 7th, 2005 at 10:25 pm
Interesting perspective, Bill. I’m a Goa, India-based journalist who is increasingly attracted to cyberspace. It’s time the rules got rewritten. Free Software is playing a huge role in democratising access to the media. — Frederick Noronha fred at bytesforall.org