Bob Stepno's Other Journalism Weblog
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Tuesday, October 28, 2003
 

News-Blog Issues

Blogging hard news: San Diego Bloggers have a fire to cover. It's hard not to follow a link that says, "Yesterday I saw the hill burning..." even if the hill is a continent away from Boston. Another S.D. blogger interrupted blog-as-usual to assure people, "My name ain't O'Leary and I don't have a cow." And another finished packing her car, then listed its contents, the things she could not live without if she had to abandon the house, while asking readers to pray for her and her neighbors. (Thanks to Xeni and Joe for the S.D. bloggers pointer.) The Union-Tribune has its own weblog on the fires, inviting contributions by e-mail. One unfortunate commercial juxtaposition: The story and picture of burning homes were under an animated banner ad for a research project that splashed the words "Do you smoke Ultra-Lights?"across the top of the page. (Later, there was a public service ad for the Red Cross took over that space, either an ad rotation or someone on staff noticed the smoke/fire effect.)
In addition to bloggers, message boards like rimoftheworld and craigslist are giving people a way to get information and offer to help.
Update: Workbench has longer excerpts from several fireblogs.

What weblogs are news? Dave Winer (who later pointed out that Workbench item) wonders what it takes to get a news-oriented website into the listings at Google News -- affiliation with a non-Web news organization, number of blogging authors, brand of software, choice of hosting service or what. He's inviting folks to let him know if their brand of news has been rejected by Google.

2:33:12 PM    

Dead trees, blogs and The Truth

"What's the most recent book you've read?" The question took me by surprise, coming at the end of my presentation about newspapers, magazines and the role of photographs as "reporting" or "illustration," from Civil War battlefield photos to Fark.com. What with all the e-mail, academic journals, online newspapers and weblogs and microfilm of 80-year-old newspapers, do I still read books?

Well, yes. But it even took me a minute (staring blankly is a such a good job-interview technique) to get out the name of Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs, which I reviewed for Newspaper Research Journal last month. (I didn't mention The Making of American Audiences, because I'm not done with it yet. Early disappointed comment: It's mostly about live theatre and TV audiences, not readers.)

Thanks to the airline flight home from that job interview I  have another recently-read book to add to the list -- and to recommend highly to prospective journalists or webloggers, Terry Pratchett's The Truth.

I like the coincidence that I've been doing research into a magazine-like, eccentric newspaper that almost used "The Truth" as its name too, although it didn't have problems with photographers turning into dust because they were light-sensitive vampires. (They may have been ghoulish, but not vampires.)

Pratchett's story takes place in a fantasy world I'd never visited, but the setting felt comfortable quickly enough, trolls, goblins, golems and all. Is that because I worked for a newspaper, or because halloween is coming?

By having dwarves and that vampire photographer start a newspaper as a whole new idea, Pratchett has a fresh setting to paint a both satirical and idealistic picture of journalism. I laughed out loud more than once, which isn't something you get to do that often at the Newark airport.

I think it would be a terrific book to start journalism students (and bloggers) talking about journalism. In an interview (linked to his name above), Pratchett summed it up: "How did some guy, because he had access to a notebook and a printing press, have all this power? It's really very strange. Who are you answerable to when you are working on a newspaper? Who can give you orders? Where is your responsibility? What is the truth and do you know it when you see it?"

Those are good questions for webloggers, journalists and readers... Back at my job interview, perhaps the question someone should have asked me was, "what magazines do you subscribe to, or read regularly?" The job in question includes teaching about magazines, which would be a first for me. However, I suspect the magazine links on my home page answered that question before I got there.

Even lawyers?

Yes, even lawyers came out higher in status than journalists in a recent poll, but reporters are still ahead of stockbrokers, bankers and actors... no matter how many of them get elected governor.

Just in time to help the profession out,  New England finally has an accredited journalism school, and it turns out to be at my alma mater in Storrs, Conn.


1:30:14 AM    


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