Saturday, December 17, 2005

Journalists do it every day I'm grading this weekend, not blogging. But I don't want to lose the link to Tom Foremski's ZDnet column, "The rise of search . . . and the decline in journalism" -- and some related trains of thought I'll pick up later. Hmm... I typed that first sentence about grading without turning on my irony radar.  One of Foremski's points (the one that gave me the bumper-sticker-slogan title for this post) is that society needs journalism professionals -- as well as bloggers and "citizen journalists" -- for the same reason that I'm cutting this item short. The grading is what I'm paid to do; this isn't. Foremski puts it this way: "The blogosphere is 99.999 per cent voluntary. Bloggers don't have to create content every day.... "Professional journalists write/ report/ study/ interview/ write/ check facts/ write/ edit/ consider/ weigh up consequences, etc, every day. Bloggers blog when they feel like it, they have a day job, and they don't have the same incentives to consistently produce high quality media." Foremski's other main point -- the one in his headline -- is that companies like Yahoo and Google don't spend money on newsrooms full of reporters doing original information-gathering. But the Search companies and other online sites compete for  advertising revenue with the organizations that do pay people to cover the news. Meanwhile, most news organizations have become cogs in media conglomerates whose main "reporting" interest is reporting a large number in the bottom line of an annual report, even if it means cutting the reporting and editing staff. Read Foremski's article to the end, then read the comments from his technology-focused readers to see some very unfriendly opinions of "professional journalists." Who do they have in mind? The shouting TV pundits, who may have been journalists once? The handsome TV anchors? Citizen Kane style egomaniacal publishers? Foot-dragging editors slow to catch the cluetrain about online media? Arrogant reporters who work for "the paper," not "the readers," and are threatened by change? If some of those are just knee-jerk "you can't trust the media" comments, I hope their authors are heading down to blog about the city council, school board and sewer commission meetings this month -- without drawing a paycheck to do it -- so that their neighbors will know what's going on. That's the routine stuff most "professional journalists" do early in their careers -- for a paycheck, granted, but not a very big one. Later, they cover bigger issues, write more satisfying stories and probably have more fun. Some carry their notebooks and cameras into war zones, disaster areas and other dangerous places, and they probably still aren't paid enough. 11:58:21 AM    comment []

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