HOW TO BE A JOURNALIST

I was catching up on my daily Poynter emails when I came across the report on Ken Auletta's speech to Poynter's 2004 Leadership Academy. The lede was enough to get me hooked...

Media writer Ken Auletta told participants ... that humility is essential to journalism, that truth is too often a casualty of competition, and that shame is an underutilized weapon.

...and from there it just got better. Auletta, a New Yorker writer, sees some signs of encouragement in what is happening in mainstream media. But there are other aspects of it he clearly doesn't like.

"What I find most discouraging is this tendency ... to think that we are fair and balanced when we present both sides, without adjudicating in any way whether one side is telling the truth and the other isn't." Auletta cites the Swift Boat allegations against Senator John Kerry as a missed opportunity for deeper reporting.

There's a lot more. This is one of those articles that you read and then print out and reread every once in a while to remind yourself about what journalism can be.

UPDATE: Another discovery and somewhat related. Kelly McBride wrote about Journalism in the Age of Blogs in mid-September and considers the close tracking of mainstream media's failures and foibles a good thing. Her bottom line:

It's a sure bet that bloggers will continue to challenge and undermine the work of journalists. In response, journalists will get better and tougher. Anticipating the constant scrutiny, reporters will tell readers and editors where they got their information, why they think it's sound, what they did to check out their source.

SHOOTING POLITICS

Christian Science Monitor photographer John Nordell has a nicely illustrated post at his blog, In Focus, about what it's like to shoot a presidential election campaign.
9:38:37 PM  LINK TO THIS POST  

MAKING IT

According to a Boston Herald business writer, the big winner of the Bush-Kerry showdown has been the internet. Greg Gatlin writes:

The Bush-Kerry horse race is too close to call, but for better or worse, the Internet is already the winner in the 2004 presidential election.

If television changed the face of politics starting with the Nixon-Kennedy debate in 1960, it was bloggers, grassroots viral campaigners and Internet fund-raisers who did it in 2004.

Among the changes that has brought about, Gatlin says:

Timothy Karr, executive director of watchdog Mediachannel.org, says mainstream journalists are now trying to keep ahead of the bloggers, which has sped up the news cycle to a point where journalists don't have time for circumspection, or even fact checking.

That's a biggie. It may be that it's only because the U.S. election has been a particularly brutal, divisive campaign. Or, this may be the starting point of a new relationship between mainstream media and a public that does more than just receive the news: it engages with it.
8:40:31 PM  LINK TO THIS POST  

PHOTO TREASURE TROVE

Here's a great resource for fans of good photojournalism and news junkies: Reuters has launched a new section at its site featuring the newsgathering agency's photographs.

The site includes the "Editor's Choice" of the best photos from the last 24 hours, links to the latest photos in news, sports and entertainment, and links to a number of photo stories. You can also buy copies of some photos from the site.

SOURCE: OnlineJournalism.com.
8:31:24 PM  LINK TO THIS POST  

CITIZEN POWER

MSNB has decided to harness citizen journalists for its coverage of next Tuesday's U.S. presidential election. Joe Trippi, who managed Howard Dean's run for the Democratic nomination, is heading the effort. He writes:

MSNBC TV and MSNBC.com are relying on you to help report this election. With such a tight race and so much controversy, accuracy and speed are critical to good coverage. That's where you come in. We want you to file stories for use on MSNBC blogs and broadcasts.

Trippi lays out the rules of engagement and details the type of stories MSNBC is looking for. Those rules are what you'd expect from journalists: leave the bias out, don't jump to conclusions, source your stuff and so on.

The citizen journalism will be a small part of what MSNBC does election night, but it'll be worth watching to see what value it adds.

SOURCE: unmediated.org.
7:48:53 PM  LINK TO THIS POST