Jan 8th, 2008 | Media 2.0, Social Media | No Comments
Via Lucas Grindley’s blog, I came across a fairly daft piece from the Miami Herald, written by journalism professor Edward Wasserman, about how compensating journalists based on the traffic they draw is A Bad Thing. As Lucas points out, the example used by the professor of what a dangerous phenomenon this is — Penelope Trunk getting fired by Yahoo Finance — doesn’t even help his argument.
Wasserman says that Trunk (not her real name, apparently) was let go because her blog didn’t get enough traffic. According to the writer, however, her column got tons of traffic — the problem was that Yahoo couldn’t earn enough from that traffic because it was designated as “career” content, and the CPM advertising rates for that kind of content aren’t high enough. That has little or nothing to do with whether paying journalists based on traffic is a good thing or a bad thing.
In any case, Trunk was a columnist/blogger, not an investigative journalist writing for the front page of a news site. And as I’ve written before, I think paying bloggers and columnists based in part on the traffic they draw isn’t such a bad idea. But Wasserman glides smoothly from mentioning Trunk’s case to talking about “handing influence… over editorial content to the outside people who write the checks” and how editors will soon be “redrawing the front page” based on such factors.
That’s an Evel Kneivel-sized leap there, professor. The fact is that career columnists — and columnists in general — are hired and fired based on far more obscure or irrelevant factors than traffic or CPMs, including the fact that a senior editor went to school with them, they once had a book published, or they look good in an evening gown. Welcome to the world of journalism. Find me a reporter whose stuff is killed or moved or who is fired because of low traffic and then we can talk.
Dec 17th, 2007 | Blogs, Media 2.0 | No Comments
Scott Karp makes a good point in a post today about Nick Denton taking the helm at Gawker again (something I also wrote about earlier today). It’s pretty much the same thing I’ve been saying over and over when I talk to companies — including media companies — about blogs and social media. Let me say it again: Blogs are just a publishing system. Just because something is called a “blog” doesn’t actually imply anything positive or negative about its content (or lack thereof).
Blogs can be used to practice journalism, they can be used to practice drive-by celebrity character assassination, they can be used as a gigantic time-sink so as to keep people from doing real work (and occasionally, as in the case of The Smoking Gun, they can accomplish all three at once). They can be about serious subjects, with well thought-out opinions, or they can be the blitherings of a know-nothing with a typewriter.
Asking whether blogs can be journalism is like asking whether pencils can be used for journalism, or whether people who type can be journalists. Sure, they can, but that doesn’t mean they always are. You could make the same statement and replace the word “blog” with the word “newspaper.” Do all newspapers practice the rigorous, fact-based, dual-sourced journalism people think of when they use the word? Hardly.
What Nick Denton is looking for seems to be the prototype of a new kind of journalist, practicing something close to what Jeff Jarvis calls “networked” journalism (which Jay Rosen is also working on). An excerpt from the job posting Nick put up for a Gawker reporter:
“At its most elevated, the new Gawker hire may experiment with a new form of reporting, unique to online, in which ideas are floated, appeals made to the readers, and the story assembled over the course of several items, from speculation, and tips from users.”
Nick’s brand of Fleet Street-style journalism may not be to everyone’s taste, but there’s no question that it’s journalism. The fact is that until recently, only a small group of people had the tools required to engage in journalism. Now, the tools are virtually free, not to mention instantaneous. The combination of those two things has up-ended the journalism business — such as it was — and continues to do so.
Dec 15th, 2007 | Citizen Media, Media 2.0 | 5 Comments
Via David “DigiDave” Cohn (who got it from Dan Gillmor), I came across a mind-boggling piece of commentary from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in which former NBC correspondent and journalism instructor David Hazinski argues that “citizen journalism” needs to somehow be regulated by traditional media. As far as Hazinski is concerned, only “real” journalists can make sure that the citizen kind don’t go around making things up and not playing by the rules. As he puts it:
“While it has its place, the reality is it really isn’t journalism at all, and it opens up information flow to the strong probability of fraud and abuse. The news industry should find some way to monitor and regulate this new trend.”
Did you get that last part? The news industry should find some way to “monitor and regulate” this new trend. With what, Dave? A central tribunal of some kind that can pass judgment on who has committed acts of journalism and who hasn’t? Seriously, you can’t make this kind of stuff up. As Dan points out, the news “industry” can barely seem to regulate or monitor itself, let alone everyone else.
Hazinski trots out the old “a guy with a scalpel isn’t a ‘citizen surgeon’” argument, which completely misses the point. Journalism is not surgery, for one thing — or presumably it would be regulated like medicine is, with licensing and testing requirements, and a professional body with the ability to remove a licence. If you go to Afghanistan and start writing about what’s happening, and your work is published somewhere, and you try your best to be fair and accurate, what are you? To Hazinski, you’re nobody.
For more detailed dismantling of Dave’s attempt at an argument, see Dan Gillmor’s post, and Mike Masnick has some thoughts at Techdirt too.
Nov 30th, 2007 | Media 2.0, Social Media | No Comments
Came across this succinct appraisal of journalism — and journalism schools — in an interview that Campus Progess did with Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi, who is clearly going for the “Hunter S. Thompson” award:
“If you have no real knowledge or skill set and you’re lazy and full of shit but you want to make a decent wage, then journalism’s not a bad career option. The great thing about it is that you don’t need to know anything. I mean this whole notion of journalism school—I can’t believe people actually go to journalism school. You can learn the entire thing in like three days.
My advice is instead of going to journalism school, go to school for something concrete like medicine or some kind of science or something and then use the knowledge you get in that field as a wedge to get yourself into journalism. What journalism really needs is more people who are reporting who actually know something.
Instead of having a bunch of liberal arts grads who’ve read Siddhartha 50 times writing about health care, it would be really nice if some of the people who are writing about health care were doctors.”
Well, at least there’s some hope left for my friend Dr. Tony Hung, who writes over at Deep Jive Interests.
Nov 13th, 2007 | Blogs, Media 2.0 | 4 Comments
Ethan Kaplan of blackrimglasses, the Warner Music Group technology shaman and all-around smart guy, has a great post up about the pile-on effect that we all see from time to time on Techmeme, as well as a related problem: the incessant desire for “scoops” and “exclusives” that companies use to play blogs off against each other — using embargos and other cheap parlour tricks to get blogs to parrot whatever marketing slogan happens to come down the pike.
I know that Mike Arrington at TechCrunch and Pete Cashmore at Mashable try hard not to get sucked into that vortex, and I’m sure that Richard MacManus and the gang at Read/Write Web do too, but it’s hard when everyone wants to be first. As Mike said at our mesh conference in May, being first is easier — if you’re not first, then you have to try harder to add value somehow. If you’re first, well… you’re first.
The problem, as Ethan describes in his own inimitable fashion, is that being first hardly matters any more. It’s not like anyone is going to be first for more than a second or two, and then the great tsunami of coverage will descend on the subject until it is obliterated beneath a pile of Techmeme.com posts. As Ethan says:
“It’s like is holding back an immense amount of water pressure then releasing it. In the end, can you tell who the first drop to hit you was? No. You only know that you are wet and uncomfortable.”
Well said. It’s unlikely we will ever get rid of the desire to be first — I think it’s one of the most primal desires of the journalist (and in using that term I include bloggers) — but I hope that more and more people will choose to focus on the issues that need to be talked about, instead of just the latest release of a Facebook/Google/MySpace widget that aggregates Web 2.0 social bookmarking spreadsheets or whatever.
