Why we still need editors
Haydn Shaughnessy has a post on his blog that talks about some of the debate around whether journalists should all become bloggers, or whether bloggers will replace journalists — and he says that there are some obvious reasons why traditional news outlets such as the New York Times are necessary, in particular because of editors.
Editors are important figures - they get in the way, they make mistakes but they generally teach you to write better, uphold a set of values and keep reminding you of what those values are, have a good feel for what a reader base wants to learn about, have news sense, story selection savvy, good packaging skills.
Meanwhile, Ethan Zuckerman says that more and more he is looking to hear from bloggers that have some special connection to an event or a place where traditional journalism isn’t reaching:
- folks who are in the right (wrong) place at the right (wrong) time: the commuter in the London underground when the bombs go off; Gnarlkitty, as she visits demonstrations surrounding the coup in Thailand.
- folks who have an insight or perspective I can’t easily find in mainstream media: TheMalau writing about Congolese politics; Russell Southwood writing about African telecoms; Roland Soong writing about, well, almost anything.
- folks who make themselves part of a distributed effort to create new knowledge: the researchers who pick apart records of Congressional pay for the Sunlight Foundation, the bloggers who cover the Kenyan parliament for Mzalendo.
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