Bloggers Are Journalists
06/14 01:57 PM - Media CultureHoward Kurtz's column in the Washington Post today quotes Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine, who writes:What is the line between blogger and media? [Adam] Nagourney and Maureen Dowd (expensive link) wonder whether the bloggers are trying to be media as they go off to write books or columns in big publications. Also, judging by rather slapdash way Dowd wrote her column, one might wonder whether media are trying to be bloggers.
A journalist is defined as one who "[writes material] for publication in a newspaper or magazine or for broadcast." Assuming blogs are created for broadcast—which, I think, most are—that would make any blogger a journalist. "Circulation" (read, traffic) will depend on how well a blogger upholds journalistic standards. If a blogger claims a bomb has gone off, when one really hasn't, then that blogger's support and readership will likely drop off—at least when it comes to breaking news. Look at Truthout.org and their Rove-indictment story. This is, of course, true only if producing fake news stories is not your primary goal (h/t The Onion).
This brings me to Spruiell's post yesterday, "Blogging as Journalism," where he says:
[Armando, a former blogger at Daily Kos,] claims he is exempt from [journalistic] principles (“I am not a journalist”) even though we are both political bloggers. This claim says everything about the fundamental disagreement at the heart of this debate. I see blogging as journalism. Armando, apparently, does not.
Hmmmm. I am a blogger. Perhaps not a very widely read blogger, but a blogger nonetheless. I do NOT consider myself a journalist. I blog on subjects that excite interest in me or that get my dander up. I post my personal opinions. I need journalists to write the stories that I want to comment about. I call myself a news and political junky, but perhaps a better description would be a "news and political gossip." I don't do original reporting, nor would I really want to. And lately, I would describe myself as a compiler. I like to bring together in one spot all the different takes on a single story. I like to be a word spreader. When I have some expertise about a subject, I'll write about that, but always from my personal observations or experience. I don't try to be an expert, but maturity and longevity (I'm a Grandma) gives me some insights sometimes that seem lacking by others. I like to do research, so it is fun for me to go out and around the Internet and try to gather up information and compile those references and sources. I would love to have a job as a fact checker. I don't want to be on the front page, I would be perfectly happy doing research for someone who likes the limelight.
For half my adult life, I worked for a major daily newspaper and then for a few years for a smaller bi-weekly, but not in the news division. I was in advertising and if ever there was a twain not meeting, it is between the advertising and news departments of a newspaper. When I left the newspaper business, I ended up quite by accident working for a Member of Congress. I was as green as they come, but I loved every single minute of that job. I was working in the Baltimore and Washington, DC area. It was a heady time, an exciting time, where I was constantly rubbing elbows with those in the highest seats of power. I understood power to some degree as my parents had both been professional people, my Dad a company president, my Mother the head of a major non-profit. I was used to being around over-educated and powerful people who had lots of brains and lots of moxie. And yet my years in the DC political world seemed to be mostly running interference for a younger, over-educated group of fast trackers with absolutely zero life experience and even less common sense. Sometimes as a blogger I feel the same as I did then ... the difference, playing counter balance to a group of over-educated and naive reporters writing stories that are so dumb sometimes, I wonder if there are any editors still working who are over the age of 25 ... case in point ... how the mainstream journalists cover military matters, which is my personal pet peeve. How many times have you seen news stories about the Vietnam era that have been written by someone who wasn't even born until 10 years after the fact, but writing with the authority of someone who knows? Knows how? Usually when questioned, you will be told, I read a book on the subject. They will argue facts with you who were there and saw it first hand and call you stupid or uninformed. This is where bloggers fit in. Can you say the Rathergate memos as an example?
There are obviously some bloggers who want to be journalists or who already are journalists and write blogs on the side. There is a place for them too and they can still be called bloggers. Michelle Malkin and Hot Air come to mind. The group at Pajamas Media has a combination of both straight bloggers and blogger/journalists. There are lots of lawyers writing about legal opinions and doing original work who shouldn't be called journalists, but rather teachers. Where the line gets blurred is when you get media types, someone like Hugh Hewitt or those at NRO's "The Corner," that things get confusing. These are journalists first, journalists who also blog. They have the resources, the Rolodexes that count, and a venue that attracts the newsmakers. Would I love to have those Rolodexes, you bet I would. Would I like to be able to pick up the phone and get through to the decision and newsmakers by just my name recognition alone, sure. Would I like to have a venue that would allow me to ask the tough questions, a big for sure. Would I last a heartbeat, not a chance. Remember, I'm from advertising. Advertisers pay the bills for journalists, that's why they get paid more money. Journalists will argue almost to throwing punches if you tell them the advertisers control their media, but they live in those alternate universes. When newspapers or TV/radio outlets start to go too far in a direction an advertiser doesn't like, the ads get pulled and suddenly, memos go out to tone it down, or ramp it up. In the end, journalism is really all about the money.
Bloggers may not be accountable to anyone but themselves as is the complaint from the journalism side, and this is true as far as it goes (the comments sections of blogs often become the "editor's voice"). But bloggers, as long as they stay straight bloggers, could care less if an advertiser likes what they have to say. The only thing that is going to count with bloggers is their visitor counter and the number of commenters they can attract, and the better ones don't even care about that. Of course, nobody knows who they are.
Unfortunately, those bloggers who make a big name for themselves tend to get offered jobs with organizations who can use their skills and expertise and then they are working for someone else and at the mercy of company policy and advertiser revenue or a political party. They think of this as a "promotion" and a step up in their careers. If that is why they blog, to attract the attention of the big media outlets, then they are probably more journalist than blogger and that's the direction they should go. For the rest of us, we mostly have unrelated jobs to pay the bills and blog for the love of writing, or because we believe we have something worth saying, or in some cases as a cathartic. Money is not a factor for these types of bloggers, although the lack of it can end their blogging. If you want to help a struggling, out of work Granny blogger, there is always the TIP JAR.
I would like to see a truce between bloggers and journalists and journalism outlets. For that to happen, journalists would need to get down off their high horses. There are millions of willing fact checkers out here who would be more than happy to let the journalist have the byline if they could spend 100% of their time being bloggers. Again it is all about the money. For the journalist it is the bottom line of their news organization, for the blogger it is their mortgage company.
Related:
The following post is a perfect example of the benefit of having bloggers. In this case, we get details that the journalists failed to provide, even military journalists. The writer is a "former member of the U.S. intelligence community" who has served 20 years in the military as an analyst, operations planner, flight commander, briefer, nuclear targeteer and air crew member. Can the journalist even come close to this kind of expertise?:
For the Record
For the record, the F-16 that took out the terrorist lead is a Block 30 jet, assigned to the Alabama Air National Guard's 187th Fighter Wing, normally based at the Montgomery Regional Airport. The Block 30 is one of the tried-and-true variants of the Viper, best known as the first F-16 with a General Electric engine. Block 30 jets have one of the best thrust-to-weight ratios of any of the F-16 variants, since the GE powerplant produces 5,000 pounds more thrust that comparable Pratt and Whitney models. Most of the Block 30s rolled off the General Dynamics assembly line in the late 80s, but will remain in service with the ANG for years to come.
While the jet that dropped those 500-lb bombs came from the Alabama Guard, the pilot in the cockpit on the Zarqawi mission was a member of the Wisconsin ANG's 115th Fighter Wing, located in that liberal mecca, Madison, Wisconsin. A rather delicious irony, wouldn't you say? I wonder if the Madison City Council or University of Wisconsin faculty senate will pass a resolution condemning the "use" of state ANG personnel in "George Bush's illegal war."
Personally, I'm hoping the jet's crew chief paints a little picture of Zarqawi beneath the canopy, in commeration of the F-16's "victory" over the terrorist mastermind.
I couldn't decide whether to use this post here or in my own post above as an example of one of those Chairborne Rangers.
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