"What Bloggers Can Learn From Journalists "

Grok Headline matches for "What Bloggers Can Learn From Journalists "

10 Things Traditional Journalists Could
Learn From Bloggers

10 Things Traditional Journalists Could
Learn From Bloggers 12/30/2004 07:08 AM
Traditional Journalists Could Learn From Bloggers
http:/ /www.timporter.com/firstdraft/archives/000394.html

A very interesting post from Tim Porter with inspiration from Steve Outing giving his list of 10 things traditional journalists, particularly those who work for newspapers, could learn from bloggers including: 1) Get Personal, 2) Explain Why You Do Things, 3) Focus, 4) Print the Truth, Not Just the Facts, 5) Don't Just Report, Teach, 6) Get Local, Very Local, 7) Give Readers Access To Source Materails, 8) Add Multiple RSS Feeds To Your Site, 9) Add eMail Addresses To Your Stories, and 10) Finally, Adapt. A very insightful read .....

Poynter Online - What Bloggers Can Learn
From Journalists

Poynter Online - What Bloggers Can Learn
From Journalists 12/25/2004 05:00 PM
But in 2004, blogs unexpectedly vaulted into the pantheon of major media, .. What Bloggers Can Learn From Journalists

poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=75665
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Poynter Online - What Mainstream
Journalists Can Learn From Bloggers

Poynter Online - What Mainstream
Journalists Can Learn From Bloggers 12/24/2004 01:00 PM

Bloggers aren't journalists... really?

Bloggers aren't journalists... really? 07/20/2004 09:24 PM
"journalists sound like a bunch of insecure cry babies"

Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over

Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over 02/01/2005 08:39 PM
"I have been an observer and critic of the American press for 19 years. In that stretch there has never been a time so unsettled. More is up for grabs than has ever been up for grabs since I started my watch."

"Bloggers are editors, not journalists"

"Bloggers are editors, not journalists" 04/27/2004 03:32 AM

Bloggers versus journalists

Bloggers versus journalists 07/26/2004 07:47 PM

I think the DNC could turn into a key moment in the discussion about bloggers versus journalists. I've generally been rather low-key on this issue, taking a position that bloggers and mass media should work together and that bloggers and professional journalists had different strengths and weaknesses. I am getting a sense that an increasing number of professional journalists are beginning to feel threatened or at least seem to be trying to belittle bloggers as a source of news.

Jeff Jarvis addresses this question today by quoting Tom Rosenstiel on the question, what is a journalist?

Tom Rosenstiel - Boston Globe

- A journalist tries to tell the literal truth and get the facts right, does not pass along rumors, engages in verifying, and makes that verification process as transparent as possible.
- A journalist's goal is to inspire public discussion, not to help one side win or lose. One who tries to do the latter is an activist.
- Neutrality is not a core principle of journalism. But the commitment to facts, to public consideration, and to independence from faction, is.
- A journalist's loyalty to his or her audience, even above employer, is paramount.

Under this definition, a lot of what we are calling media or press is not journalism and I DARE any professional journalist to try to defend any big media company of sticking to the definition above without fail.

I've been interviewing a lot of professional journalists about "What is journalism? What makes a good journalist?" They usually talk about vetting sources, portraying things accurately, and other things that any blogger who is used to being ripped to shreds in comments by their readers on their blog do as second nature. My conclusion is that much of good journalism is just common sense, and I would even assert that compared to journalists who don't write in their name, have fact-check desks to do their fact-checking and editors to fix their grammar, bloggers are much more accountable and have to take it in the face compared to their anonymous counterparts in the mass media.

Is mass media more rigorous than blogs? Remember the "Rumsfeld bans phone cameras" story that UPI and AFP ran and all the media picked up? Xeni at Boing Boing called the defense department and debunked the story and I updated my entry as a lot of the mass media were still going to press with the story. Did they print any corrections? I didn't see any. And this isn't an isolated incident. I've seen many cases where blogs have fact-checked and vetted stories that the media have just passed over.

I'm not blaming the mass media for their lack of ability be as nibble as blogs, but characterizing bloggers as a bunch of amateurs with no news value is really silly. Particularly annoying are the articles that seem to be picking a fight with the blogs. Maybe as Mahatma Ghandi said, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Dan, maybe you and "We the Media" better get over hear before the real fighting starts.

As always, I like David Weinberger's. perspective on this.

David Weinberger

For example, after the breakfast, the bloggers were swarmed by the media. "You know one difference between you and us," said a friendly guy from NPR, "We don't applaud for the speakers." But, heck, it was Howard Dean and I'll be damned if I'm not going to stand and clap for him.

Comment - TrackBack

Are Bloggers Journalists? Let's Ask
Thomas Jefferson

Are Bloggers Journalists? Let's Ask
Thomas Jefferson 04/08/2005 04:59 AM

Anyone who engages in reporting -- whether for newspapers, magazines, radio, television, or blogs -- deserves equal protection under those laws, whether the news is delivered with a quill pen or a computer. By Christopher B. Daly, Boston University

Bloggers = Journalists? Visa
restrictions may be a downside.

Bloggers = Journalists? Visa
restrictions may be a downside. 03/22/2005 05:01 PM
Xeni Jardin: Ernest Miller says,

A couple of days ago BoingBoing posted a story about the harrassment Jeremy Wright, who is Canadian, faced when he told US Immigration officials that he was a blogger. Although it is unclear why he was treated so poorly by US government officials, one possible explanation is that, as a blogger, he is also a journalists. Journalists, even from friendly countries, are required to have special "I Visas" that normal tourists are not required to have. Journalists without these visas have beeen similarly harrassed. Maybe we ought to change that law.

Link

Bloggers learn lesson: Don't trash your
boss

Bloggers learn lesson: Don't trash your
boss 09/22/2004 06:36 AM
Sympatico Sep 22 2004 11:03AM GMT

We're All Journalists Now

We're All Journalists Now 08/11/2004 04:52 AM
Dan Gillmor argues in his new book We the Media that journalism is stronger than ever because of the Web. But Hollywood is strengthening its grasp on copyrights, threatening speech and freedom. Xeni Jardin interviews the author.

You're Athletes, Not Journalists

You're Athletes, Not Journalists 08/21/2004 05:52 AM
Olympians can do media interviews but they'd better not blog. The International Olympic Committee, interested in protecting lucrative broadcasting contracts, forbids any activity that might upset the networks.

Dispatches From the Un-Journalists

Dispatches From the Un-Journalists 07/25/2004 09:05 AM
Bloggers who be will filing reports from Boston don't know in advance that what they are doing is meaningless. This can be an advantage. Here's my "convention preview" piece that ran in Newsday today.

Journalists at large.

Journalists at large. 03/22/2005 04:37 PM
Journalists at large. With the mysterious murders/suicides of Gary Webb and Steve Kangas, have underground reporters signed a death wish with their unconventional tongue? Webb's Dark Alliance is hot material for those protest cheerleaders but who is to blame?

Wikipedia for Journalists

Wikipedia for Journalists 03/08/2004 11:23 PM
While information can be found quickly and easily using tools such as Google, the problem is often not a lack of content, but rather the volumes of stale and ...

What Journalists Don?t: Lessons from the
Times

What Journalists Don?t: Lessons from the
Times 04/10/2005 12:23 PM
Speech to the [Bay Area Law School Technology Conference](http://slata.stanford.edu/Conference05/ blogs panel, as prepared. So I was asked to speak about…

Other News: Apple vs. Journalists

Other News: Apple vs. Journalists 04/11/2005 11:07 AM
"The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 12 news organizations filed papers supporting the online publishers' request that a California judge reconsider his refusal to shield the publishers from Apple's inquiries. The organizations include the Los Angeles Times and Hearst."

UK journalists in Zimbabwe arrest

UK journalists in Zimbabwe arrest 03/31/2005 11:10 PM
Two British journalists are arrested on charges of covering Zimbabwe's election without state accreditation, police say.

Blogs Watchdogging Journalists

Blogs Watchdogging Journalists 05/26/2004 10:37 AM

Mark Glaser (Online Journalism Review): To Their Surprise, Bloggers Are Force for Change in Big Media. A parody helps change a corrections policy at The New York Times. An online critic's query ends a career at the Chicago Tribune. Bloggers' scrutiny is making its mark on traditional journalism.

Perspective: Journalists shouldn't be
cheerleaders

Perspective: Journalists shouldn't be
cheerleaders 01/04/2005 06:18 PM
Journalists shouldn't be cheerleaders .. there is a liberal media .. the St. Pete Times .. discover .. ovation

sptimes.com/2005/01/02/Perspective/Journalists_shouldn_t.sht ml
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On how journalists write about
webl0ggers...

On how journalists write about
webl0ggers... 06/05/2005 10:48 PM

There's an article in the Sunday Times today called Go lden rules for blogging clever which features a few choice morsels of salient quotage from some bloke not a million miles away from this weblog. For this reason alone I recommend you buy the paper in question. Possibly you should be so impressed that you should consider sending me some naked pictures of yourselves?

Moving on though - the article itself is very strange. It seems to wend its way between a number of different registers - starting off in a 'weblogs and online communities are important' area and then wanders directly into a 'who the hell do you think you are to think anyone cares what you think' kind of space. I find this very odd, given that the article is supposedly about giving people tips for writing a weblog. It's been a while since I read a cookery book, but I'm pretty sure they don't start by telling people that they're worthless and they'll never amount to anything. That kind of motivational speech seems more commonly left to parents. (Of course the article isn't actually aimed at people starting a weblog at all, but at people who want to observe it from the sidelines with a cup of tea and a raised eyebrow while slowly dying inside.)

From having apparently smacked down the reader for their nerve - their very presumption - that they might find value in self-expression, the article moves on to slightly self-satirise. Now the mockery is a bit ironic - it knows we don't really want to be boring and that we're all able to see the funny side of the whole thing. To support its case, it brings in a few of the classier webloggers (Heather Armstrong and myself) to comment. And what do we say? Well, basically we say that all this stuff about being boring is rather missing the point and it's not about getting a huge audience and that self-expression is really important and stuff and that if people derive value from their weblogs then that's good, right? Right?

Well, all I can say is that it's lucky that our brief comments don't distract from the main thrust of the article! No hippies are going to distract from the relentless pursuit of traffic, after all. So we get a humourous take on giving your weblog a sexy name, a patch on how to pander to other weblogs to get hits, a bref paragraph on Googlebombing and a few words on the apparent incestuousness of the culture. The article recommends writing about your sex life, getting fired for writing a weblog and peddling extreme opinions. All of these things will get you a book deal and only then will people want to get you naked because they've heard your name on television.

I think the reason I find this whole article so amusing is because it's the ultimate archetype of all news stories about weblogs. Its every word exposes the assumptions and prejudices of journalists and - I think more widely - the British. So you've got the censorious attitude to people expressing themselves in public (self-expression isn't really proper), then you've got the whole amateur-versus-professional argument that neurotically restates only proper journalists are worth reading. These journalists, who - we are reminded by the rest of the article - really assume that (i) the only reason to write is to get famous, (ii) there's no value in community or discussion or debate and (iii) normal people would sell their granny for dog meat to get famous. And to cap it all off, the examples that they use are all the ones that reveal the bankrupcy of the news media - that a culture of millions of webloggers can only really be understood by the tabloidish stories that make it across into the 'proper' media. The whole thing is gloriously cock-eyed.

I'm being a bit unfair, of course. It's not nearly that clear-cut, and there's some really interesting stuff here. I like that Simon Jenkins expressed an anxiety about the role of the newspaper columnist in the amateurised opinion space. I don't think he's got an enormous amount to worry about - in fact he should be delighted, he could be a giant in that space if he wanted - but that all depends on viewing changes as opportunities rather than threats. Here are a few more of my thoughts - good and bad - in the form of an unordered list:

• I love the fact that the word hippo-griff is used in this article. For that alone, I will give you one billion dollars. You heard me. One billion. Although I'm a bit surprised by the hyphen. Maybe I won't give you a billion dollars after all. Damn sub-editors.
• "The absolute golden rule of blogging - it is literally made of gold - is: Do not blog", says our journo. It's literally made of gold? What, really? Dear God, man - misuse of 'literally' in this way is pretty much the first thing that you get smacked in the mouth for at journalism school. What are you doing!? Unless of course there really is a golden rule cast in gold somewhere - on a mountain or something. In which case, I want to see it. While we're at it - who the hell made up this rule? I've never heard it before. It's not even a parody of 'Don't talk about Fight Club'. I don't get it.
• If you read the article in print, then you get confronted with an enormous picture of that bloody berk who got (as far as I can tell) fired from Waterstones for being a bit of an idiot and not reading his contract. I've never felt a lot of sympathy for him - even though the relationship between a weblogger's site and their working life is a complex one that I've been coming up against a bit recently - because he just seemed to have been such a twit about the whole thing. I'd recommend reading two things about this subject: Anil Dash's expansion on his assertion that no one gets fired for blogging and a Tech Station article called The Unbearable Rightness of Nick Denton.

Ah, that'll do. I'm bored now. Fun article! Took me ages to respond to. Probably better than I'm giving it credit for. Seeya!

PressThink: Dispatches From the
Un-Journalists

PressThink: Dispatches From the
Un-Journalists 07/26/2004 07:47 PM
Bloggers will file reports from Boston that could close big gaps in the media's coverage .. Dispatches From the Un-Journalists .. Rosen, who's now in Boston, said

journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2004/07/25/nwsdy_ bos.html
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Journalists ordered out of Najaf

Journalists ordered out of Najaf 08/16/2004 12:50 AM
Reporters have to leave the holy city of Najaf where Shia militants have clashed with US and Iraqi troops.

Are telephone callers journalists?

Are telephone callers journalists? 03/14/2005 05:45 PM
Despite its having been on the table for at least six years now, this question of whether bloggers are journalists won't seem to rest, and now that the courts are getting involved, we don't have much choice but to revisit it, as Slashdot, among many others, has done today. Dan Fost's San Francisco Chronicle story provides a good summary of the issue, as Apple Computer pursues its suit to get some bloggers to reveal the sources of anonymous information they published. But the article misses the most basic distinction at work here.

A blogger is someone who uses a certain kind of tool to publish a certain kind of Web site. The label tells us nothing about how the tool is used or what is published. We went through this discussion a decade ago, when people first started asking whether Web sites were journalism. To understand this, just take the question, "Are bloggers journalists?" and reframe it in terms of previous generations of tools. "Are telephone callers journalists?" "Are typewriter users journalists?" "Are mimeograph operators journalists?" Or, most simply, "Are writers journalists?" Well, duh, sometimes! But sometimes not.

That is the only answer to the "Are bloggers journalists?" question that makes any sense. Bloggers sometimes engage in journalism, just as they sometimes engage in diary-writing, art-making, essayizing and many other forms of communication.

This answer is inconvenient, as we face the question of whether bloggers should receive the same legal protection as more conventionally defined journalists; it doesn't provide a clearcut legal rule. But, let's face it, legal protections for journalists have always involved a certain fuzziness. Since, thankfully, the U.S. government doesn't legally charter journalists -- that would be difficult to square with the First Amendment -- everyone is free to apply the label to themselves. You don't need a journalism degree, either. (I've been a journalist for three decades and I don't have one.)

You can try to define journalists by applying the filter of professionalism, by seeing whether people are actually earning a living through their journalistic work -- but then you rule out the vast population of low-paid or non-paid freelance workers, and those who are not currently making money in their writing but hope to someday. Apparently most of the existing shield laws use some version of the "you are where your paycheck comes from" definition of journalist (see Declan McCullagh over at CNET for more). That's one good reason for thinking that they might need some revision.

There's a good definition of "journalist" sitting right at the top of Jim Romenesko's journalism blog today (is pioneering blogger Romenesko a journalist?), where CNN/U.S. president Jonathan Klein says: "I define a journalist as someone who asks questions, finds out answers and communicates them to an audience." By that standard, a hefty proportion of today's bloggers qualify.

Does this vast expansion of the journalism population mean that the courts and legislatures are going to have second thoughts about protecting the confidentiality of journalists' sources? Perhaps -- and maybe those shield laws need tweaking or amendment, given the transformations underway. But any attempt to draw a narrow line around the journalism profession in order to preserve those laws is doomed to fail. There is no way to draw that line -- income level? circulation? corporate size? forget it! -- that is not ridiculous on its face.

So we're left with the pathetic spectacle of beloved Apple Computer chasing down some bloggers to find out which of its employees leaked some early peeks at product information. Apple may win, and the laws may contort themselves to exclude the vast new throngs of online journalists from the protected club. But is there any doubt that, in the long run, it's Apple's dam-building effort that's doomed? Whether protected by law or not, the teeming network of the blogosphere is not going to shut down, any more than online music file sharing could be ended by the legal campaign against Napster. In this sense, the whole "journalists or not?" debate is an irrelevant, backward-looking theological dispute.

[I wrote this post this morning but the computer that I run Radio on died for some reason, so it's going up late, and with some revisions...]

Wired News: We're All Journalists Now

Wired News: We're All Journalists Now 08/13/2004 09:48 PM

Lord, Smite Thy Journalists

Lord, Smite Thy Journalists 04/02/2005 11:06 AM
One of the unsolved mysteries that will pass with Pope John Paul II: Why he didn't take New York Press columnist Matt Taibbi and his former editor with him.

Wired News: We're All Journalists
Now

Wired News: We're All Journalists
Now 08/12/2004 04:21 AM
We're All Journalists Now (Wired)

wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64534,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_4< br />track this site | 4 links

explaining trackback to journalists

explaining trackback to journalists 07/02/2004 03:08 PM
i'd love to see more newspapers enable trackback on non-blog pages

Wired News: You're Athletes, Not
Journalists

Wired News: You're Athletes, Not
Journalists 08/22/2004 01:48 PM
You're Athletes, Not Journalists .. its attitude toward bloggers .. Wired

wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64650,00.html
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Japanese Journalists Killed In Iraq

Japanese Journalists Killed In Iraq 05/28/2004 10:51 AM
Free Internet Press May 28 2004 3:08PM GMT

Watching the Journalists in Campaign
Season

Watching the Journalists in Campaign
Season 02/11/2004 08:23 PM
Mark Glaser: 'Watchblogs' Put the Political Press Under the Microscope. Bloggers mount an "adopt a journalist" campaign to track election coverage. Along with CJR's nonpartisan Campaign Desk, the effort puts some of the nation's top political reporters under intense public scrutiny.

Knowledge Management for smart
journalists

Knowledge Management for smart
journalists 05/21/2004 04:04 AM
Gates Tips Hat to RSS.

From Mary Jo Foley's M icrosoft Watch:

Gates also extolled the productivity benefits that can be derived from user-empowering technologies such as blogging, RSS, collaboration software and online communities that are integrated into Web sites.

Gates called blogging and the RSS Web content syndication service a "very interesting phenomenon." He suggested that by using RSS as notification system, customers can "get the information you want when you want it."

For more on the Big MicroGorilla stirring, tune in Doug Kaye's IT Conversations Friday as Mary Jo joins the first live edition of the Gillmor Gang.

[Steve Gillmor's Blogosphere]

I enjoyed talking to the other Gillmor last night.  I'm really optimistic that we'll be able to work together in the future.

"Citizen journalists"? Try partisan
hacks

"Citizen journalists"? Try partisan
hacks 04/08/2005 09:27 AM
Right-wing bloggers shrieked that the GOP Schiavo memo was a "liberal media" fraud. Now that they've been proven wrong, are they apologizing? Why, no!

Journalists Using Google As Their Source
On Popularity

Journalists Using Google As Their Source
On Popularity 02/18/2004 10:50 PM
People like numbers. Numbers give them something concrete when discussing ideas that may not be concrete at all. Thus, it's no surprise to see people gravitate to any sort of system that gives them a numerical value that they can use to prove a point - and the most popular method these days seems to be doing a Google search and looking at the number of results. That's the whole point behind Googlefight, after all. However, someone has noticed that lazy journalists are often using Google result counts as the final arbiter on popularity - and doing no additional research. Jeremy Wagstaff points out that, like many other things, such tools have good uses and bad uses. While many journalists are clearly using this because they're lazy, that doesn't mean all uses of the technique are bad. Full disclosure: I did use the Google results count technique in a presentation I gave at an O'Reilly conference a few years back, but at least I admitted that it was totally unscientific.

Journalists Send Drugs to Politicians
(AP)

Journalists Send Drugs to Politicians
(AP) 04/29/2004 10:37 AM
AP - Journalists from a trendy magazine on Thursday slipped envelopes containing small quantities of marijuana into Bulgarian lawmakers' mailboxes to protest a tough new drug law, drawing heated reactions from indignant legislators.

Deconstructing Bush Interview: Where are
Journalists?

Deconstructing Bush Interview: Where are
Journalists? 02/10/2004 02:41 AM
A left-wing political think tank, the "Center for American Progress," has posted a Claim/Fact analysis of today's Bush interview on NBC. Quite a few evasions and deceptions by the president, as you'd expect.

of amateur journalists, and professional
trolls

of amateur journalists, and professional
trolls 06/05/2005 11:52 PM
Ever since I interviewed Dave about blogs for my book, Free Culture, I've been thinking a lot about his idea of "amateur journalists." It is a powerful concept, which rewards careful thought. To see its value, we must remember the original meaning of "amateur," meaning one who does something for the love of it alone. And when we think of journalism that is regulated by those ideals, it is easy to see why such journalism nicely complements commerical journalism. As he sa id to me,

"An amateur journalist simply doesn't have a conflict of interest, or the conflict of interest is so easily disclosed that you know you can sort of get it out of the way."

It is because I found Dave's view so compelling that I've been worried for sometime about the emergence of advertising in blog space. I'm not against it. I just worry about how it might put pressure on the "doesn't have a conflict of interest" norm. If the virtue of the amateur is to seek the truth, that virtue could be in tension with the desire to earn more ad revenue. The simplest way to get linkbacks is to say the most absurd things imaginable. But the more I've talked about this with observers and friends, the more I think the real fear is not bloggers tempted by ad revenues. It is instead the emergence of the equivalent of tabloids in blog-space: commercial entities whose sole purpose is to generate ad revenue, who do that by being as ridiculous and extreme as possible. The danger here is that the conflict has returned. Just as the British tabloids care little about the truth in their path to selling papers, commercial blog-loids care little about the truth in trying to attract eyeballs. And it is here that the cycle turn vicious: for the amateur space feeds the professional troll by careful and repeated efforts to show that claims made are false or outrageous. If you're paid by the click, who cares why people click. This creates a dilemma for open and honest disagreement about the facts. For here there is a conflict in interest: the interest of the amateur journalist is not the interest of the professional troll. Yet the only way the amateur can do his job -- by quoting and criticizing -- is to feed the troll. We either need a way to cite that doesn't reward bad behavior. (Copyright law restricts that (Google, for example, would be really angry if you started linking to caches rather than original locations).) Or we need a way to know when to ignore. In either case, imho, it would be useful to think more about this conflict in interest, if the nature of the amateur space is not to be displaced by something different.

Mood of the Newsroom: Letters from Three
Journalists

Mood of the Newsroom: Letters from Three
Journalists 06/05/2005 11:17 PM
Daniel Conover, a newsroom veteran, and Scott Heiser, a collegiate journalist, ask Tim Porter if he knows what he's saying. Bill Grueskin of the Wall Street Journal responds to Ethan Zuckerman's "Bloggiest Newspaper."

Online Journalists Jailed in Cuba

Online Journalists Jailed in Cuba 03/20/2003 08:33 AM
The Cuban government has arrested 10 independent journalists, most of whom publish their work on the Internet. Havana says the reporters are part of a U.S. effort to foment political opposition in the country. By Julia Scheeres.
Grok Description matches for "What Bloggers Can Learn From Journalists "
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"What Bloggers Can Learn From Journalists "

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