journalism, redefined?

TechCrunch reports on a PR Newswire study that suggests that the majority of bloggers consider themselves journalists though only a fifth of them found their blogging to be their major source of income. What's interesting to me is whether these bloggers are reporters who are blogging as part of the job; journalists who have been laid off and are now blogging to make ends meet (and apparently not getting it done); or random bloggers who CALL themselves journalists -- because they can.

I also wonder about the use of social media reported below. Do traditional-media journalists use it less because they are not as tech-savvy or progressive? Or because they question the credibility of the sources?

In any event, is all this changing the definition of what we call journalism?

From the study:

Blogger/Social Media Perception & Influence
The majority of bloggers now view themselves as journalists – 52%. This is a marked increase from 2009 when just one in three had the same opinion. Yet, despite viewing themselves as professional, only 20% derive the majority of their income from their blog work; a 4% increase from 2009.

Among the total respondents, the use of blogs and social networks for research increased significantly in 2010 as compared to 2009; however this spike appears to be skewed by online magazine/news reporters and bloggers. While 91% of bloggers and 68% of online reporters "always" or "sometimes" use blogs for research, only 35% of newspaper and 38% of print magazine journalists suggested the same.

This divergence was also seen when using social networks for research. Overall, 33% of respondents indicated using such assets, but blogger usage (48%) was greater than newspaper (31%) and print magazine (27%).

This contrast is even sharper when considering Twitter. 64% of bloggers and 36% of online reporters confirmed employing Twitter as a research tool. On the other hand, newspaper reporters (19%) and print magazine reporters (17%) appear to find less value in using Twitter for research. Newspaper and print magazine reporters also source Twitter less frequently than their media counterparts, with 19% and 22% saying they have used a Twitter post in a story. This is sharply different from bloggers (55%), online magazine/news (42%) and even TV news (48%).

sometimes it's funny ...

... when people who clearly have never worked in a newsroom pontificate about journalism. In this case, specifically, a TechCrunch piece by MG Siegler, on new WaPo rules relegating tweets to the social media no-no list.

Seigler finds this laughable:

Obviously, WaPo is doing this to try and maintain what it perceives to be its journalistic integrity. That’s great. But as we’ve discussed recently, the idea that any kind of reporting lacks any kind of bias on some level is laughable. It’s fine if you want your organization to only present the facts with no opinions, but the notion that those reporters do not have their own opinions is absurd. WaPo can try to hide those opinions all they want, but they exist, regardless.

I find Siegler, well, naive. (Maybe he is confusing columnists with reporters and editors?) Sure journalists have opinions, but good ones who want to keep their jobs, not to mention their reputations, don't interject same into their reporting methods -- or final stories, unless they are validated by things called facts. That's objective journalism. Let's review: objectivity does not mean some silly kind of artificial balance. Nor does it mean neutral. And yes, point-of view journalism can be, and often is, objective journalism, so long as the news-gathering has been fair, thorough and multi-sided. In other words, the reporter (even one with opinions) went into the story willing to be proven wrong. (I could go on. Better, just plug objectivity into the search box, above.)

The twittersphere problem is that tweets can lead to the perception of bias on the part of the reader. At a time when the whole industry is on shaky ground -- and the public itself is starting to question what we do -- do we really need another reason for news-consumers to distrust the news? Ugh. bk

Let the specialists do it.

More on the future of journalism from TechCrunch, in response to Michael Arrington's "what if", which involved the top tier reporters and editors from the NYT walking ... and starting their own news org.

In his rejoinder, Paul Carr riffs on a junket to the beach, a god-knows-why juice cleanse, and most specifically, the future of journalism. While he concedes that " life-casting and unpaid blogging most certainly isn’t it," he writes that "the days of the profitable generalist news-gatherer are dying, but the days of solid reporting and a strong, trusted editorial voice must never be allowed to perish."

Carr thinks Arrington's "what if" can't work:

It’s a nice idea, but one that overlooks the fact that a superstar hack takes days - or weeks - of legwork to get to the bottom of a single story. Without content from workaday photographers or wire-feed-re-writers, the New New York Times would be three pages long and published weekly. Good journalism is a slow, labour-intensive business. And what about unglamourous local stories?

He sees the future of journalism in aggregation, in something more like, well, TechCrunch:

Because while TechCrunch might be ‘just’ a blog it’s also, as I’ve discovered in the past few weeks, a hell of a professional journalistic machine. Whatever the cynics might think, it’s a place where sources are built up, facts are checked, lawyers are employed and writers are encouraged to go out and get the real story behind the story. It’s also on something of a hiring spree at the moment - looking out at traditional media and cherry picking those (ahem) who it thinks can bring more value to the brand...

Right across the Internet there are countless other sites that employ the same standards for other niches - from music (Pitchfork) to politics (FiveThirtyEight) to farming (I have no idea) - each of which can afford to dedicate more time to their very specific field of expertise than the New York Times could, even if it doubled its staff.

And so if I were the New York Times, I’d realise that in the face of such solid niche competition, my days as a news-gatherer were over. I’d lay off all of my journalists, shut down the presses ... close the doors and thank God for giving me such a good innings. Then the next day I’d round up maybe 20 or 30 of my best editors and I’d launch a brand new site. A site... which would use those skilled human editors to aggregate the best specialist reporting from around the web into one all-encompassing news source.

His take on blogging, tho somewhat beside the point, is also intriguing:

There’s a horribly pompous misconception amongst bloggers that they are somehow ‘taking on the mainstream media’. “Those old losers just don’t get it!” they cry. “We bloggers are on the scene first, asking tough questions before the mainstream media have even put their shoes on”...

When it comes to a certain type of highly visible breaking news, no-one can argue that social media kicks the mainstream media’s ass. At any given disaster, there’s possibly a 0.01% chance that a professional journalist or photographer will already be on the scene, compared to 100% odds that there’ll be some dude with a camera-phone there. And as for asking tough questions: yep, bloggers are pretty good at that too...

And yet... after camera phone dude helps us establish that the plane has crashed, who can we trust to tell us why it happened? While bloggers can own the first five minutes of any breaking story - a plane crash, a fire, a burglary - it’s always going to be the professional reporters who own the next five days, or five weeks...

Meanwhile, looks like he hated the cleanse. bk

The New New York Times according to TechCrunch

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has a vision of the financial future of journalism that involves the top writers and editors of the current NYT... walking. Read his 'what if" here.

He also includes some intriguing info re Politico, which is making money by offering a print edition of its online site, and AOL, which is silently building a newsroom on the cheap:

A couple of weeks ago I met the Politico guys just before they taped their Charlie Rose segment. I watched them live from the green room at the show, and read Michael Wolff’s excellent Vanity Fair article on the young company. Their news room is 100 strong and they have more people in the White House Bureau than any other brand. They have roughly the same traffic as we do - 7 million monthly visitors - but they’ve been around just half the time. How did they do it? The site was founded by well known political journalists who bailed to start their own company. They took their personal brands and credentials with them, and the readers followed. Today they are profitable - largely because they launched a three-day-a-week print version of the site. Amazing. Print isn’t dead (yet). Just the overhead is.

And earlier today I got a glimpse at what AOL is up to - they are hiring all the journalists being fired and laid off by the newspapers and magazines. And they now have a news room 1,500 journalists and editors strong. Amazingly, failing old media is throwing away their most valuable assets. And AOL is eagerly picking those assets up for a song. Before anyone knows it, AOL may be the most powerful news outlet in the world.

Journalists still matter. A lot. Especially the good ones.