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%).

"if your mama calls you sonny, check it out.."

Gordon Young tackles the difference between reporting and blogging on his, well, blog, Flint Expatriates today. His post covers the difficulty when reporters are told by the bosses that they have to blog as well. That's what's happening at the Flint Journal.

It's more than an issue of a reporter wearing two hats. When reporters also blog, there's often a line being crossed, one that's sure to confuse the reader -- and possibly erode the credibility of the news itself. And the blogs themselves? Not very fun. From Young's post:

Reporters are trained to be objective and scrupulously keep their personal bias out of a story. There's an old journalism adage that if your mama tells you she loves you, back it up with another source. The best bloggers blend facts with opinion. They are passionate about a subject and that comes through in their posts. They frequently use the hard work of real reporters as fodder for their riffs and digressions on a subject. At times, they can act as unofficial ombudsmen for newspapers, calling them to task for mistakes. At other times, bloggers can come off as wacky cranks — fun to read but not exactly reliable.

As you can imagine, it's hard for a reporter to play both roles at the same time. In many ways, the role of blogger and reporter are mutually contradictory, although good bloggers do some reporting of their own.

Young also lists some suggestions for newspaper bosses: ways to provide varied forms of content, while still keeping the lines clear.

All in all a good post. But here comes the riff, which is what bloggers -- as opposed to reporters -- do. I disagree to a certain extent with the implied definitions of "objectivity" and keeping personal bias out of news story. Yes, when we're reporting we need to keep personal opinions out, especially the ones we started with. But once the reporting has been done, reporters can't help vetting all the information they've gathered and ultimately having an opinion of their own.

I think that when it comes to reporting, the METHODS should be objective, in that you report the story with eyes open, from every possibly side. But, once you've done that, if you're a good reporter, the story itself most likely will -- and should -- have a point of view. I see that as objective journalism. But by the old (and let's hope, outdated) definition, it's not.

My definition of journalistic objectivity: no horse in the race.

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

charting the chatter

The New York Times reports a study out of Cornell University that used sophisticated algorithms and heavy-duty computers to measure the news cycle. Using iconic quotes and buzz-phrases from the 2008 presidential campaign -- "lipstick on a pig", "I am not President Bush" -- the study found that traditional news sources lead -- and the blogosphere follows. By about two and a half hours.

No surprise here. Despite a few exceptions, such as Talking Points Memo, that tend to prove the rule, most blog posts (ahem) are riffs that rest on the backs of the work of professional journalists. Bloggers, unless they also happen to have day jobs as reporters, rarely have the time, the expertise or the access to break any news of their own.

Which is not to say there isn't a place for blogging in the newscape, but at least for now, this study suggests that bloggers will not be able to fill the void left by the ever-shrinking newsrooms.

The story includes a link to an interactive "memetracker", the tool the scientists created to find their results. Fun, actually. bk

jlinx goes trade school

Well, kind of.

Prompted by a searing essay by salon.com's Scott Rosenberg on how blogs have changed everything, I thought I'd also link to a few helpful sites on the how-to side of blogging and Web 2.0.

But first, a few words from Rosenberg, who compares web communication to the telephone -- rather than the television:

... Like the telephone before it, the Web will be defined by the choices people make as they use it, constrained by -- but not determined by -- the nature of the technology. The most significant choice we have been making, collectively, ever since the popularization of Internet access in the mid-1990s, has been to favor two-way interpersonal communication over the passive reception of broadcast-style messages. Big-media efforts to use the Net for the delivery of old-fashioned one-way products have regularly failed or underperformed. Social uses of our time online -- email, instant messaging and chat, blogging, Facebook-style networking -- far outstrip time spent in passive consumption of commercial media. In other words, businesspeople have consistently overestimated the Web's similarities to television and underestimated its kinship to the telephone.

and:

People who have no experience blogging often fail to understand the essentially social nature of the activity. Blogging is convivial. Bloggers commonly blog in groups, whether formally (as with our Salon bloggers) or simply through the haphazard accretion of casual connections. In these groups, what you contribute is obviously important; but so is where you choose to place your attention. Reading is as much a part of blogging as writing; listening is as important as speaking. This is what so many bloggers mean when they claim that "blogging is a conversation": not that each post sparks a vigorous exchange of comments, but that every post exists in a context of post-and-response that stretches across some patch of the Web, link by link, blog to blog.

and finally:

Whatever the outcome of each of our individual bets, we can now see that collectively they constitute something unprecedented in human history: a new kind of public sphere, at once ephemeral and timeless, sharing the characteristics of conversation and deliberation. Blogging allows us to think out loud together. Now that we have begun, it's impossible to imagine stopping.

Now then. A few links on the how-to's (or not-to's). Blogher.com offers these lists of the top mistakes made by beginner bloggers. Go here and here.

Go here for Slate.com's look at the newest blogging craze -- which has led to a book deal or two -- Tumblr, which is essentially a tool for posting snarky pictures under a single theme. Good example: Look at This Fucking Hipster

And finally, go here for a "blook" (you'll see why the crazy name) on incorporating all the toys that are out there into the the future of journalism as well as this collection of essays, from the same source, on the impact of social media. (You may have to scroll down the page. Look for the "social media" heading.) Thanks, Jorem Thorn. bk

Rosen on blogging

Go here for a transcript of a live chat with NYU prof Jay Rosen on blogging pointers, via Poynter. As you'll see, while anyone can create a blog, there's a lot more involved in making a success of it.

Among his tips:

"It is best to learn to be a great linker, and from that become a thinker. One of the simplest forms I would teach students is 'the round-up post,' pulling together the best of what's online on a recent controversy (Gingrich calling the judge a racist, for example). And from those posts students can learn to think about.... what's missing in this conversation? That is the next post!"

when numbers go bad

Old story, old post. But a good example of how numbers can lie.

First there were the numbers: A while ago, in a story about the growth of blogging, Mark Penn of The Wall Street Journal reported that "there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers or firefighters."

Then there were more numbers. From the story:

Demographically, bloggers are extremely well educated: three out of every four are college graduates. Most are white males reporting above-average incomes. One out of three young people reports blogging, but bloggers who do it for a living successfully are 2% of bloggers overall. It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year. Bloggers can get $75 to $200 for a good post, and some even serve as "spokesbloggers" -- paid by advertisers to blog about products. As a job with zero commuting, blogging could be one of the most environmentally friendly jobs around -- but it can also be quite profitable. For sites at the top, the returns can be substantial. At some point the value of the Huffington Post will no doubt pass the value of the Washington Post.

All of which should make a smart person scratch her head.

Then there was this post on Ecoconsultancy by Patricio Robles who not only called out the WSJ on faulty data, but provided a good lesson on how numbers go bad. He writes:

The first glaring problem: he uses a hodgepodge of sources to come up with his argument. He assumes there are 20m bloggers (based on data from eMarketer), assumes 1.7m of them profit from their blogging (based on information promoted by BlogWorldExpo) and assumes that 2% of the bloggers out there can earn a 'living' from their blogs (based on Technorati's State of the Blogosphere Report).

But the biggest problem here is not just the hodgepodge of data. It's that the basis for many of his claims is Technorati's State of the Blogosphere Report, which was sent to a random sample of Technorati users and which was based on less than 1,300 self-completed responses.

Assuming that 2% of the approximately 20m people who are estimated to have 'blogged' at some point in the US equates to 452,000 professional bloggers simply because 2% of the 1,300 bloggers who responded to Technorati's survey can reportedly earn a living blogging is the definition of fuzzy math.

He also points out how using means rather than medians can skew the facts as well:

The difference between mean (average) and median revenues is huge; the median figures are far more likely to be realistic. If the median revenue reported by the 550 US bloggers who were actually active enough to respond to Technorati's survey was $200, what does that tell us about the 20m Americans who have supposedly blogged at some point?

Finally, he writes that a small data box accompanying the WSJ story was misleading:

More troubling: that the 452,000 blogger figure is included in a table that cites the Bureau of Labor Statistics as its source, giving the impression that the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms that there are more professional bloggers in the US than firefighters, CEOs, computer programmers or bartenders. It doesn't say any such thing; the figures for all the other professions were provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the blogger figure was inserted by Penn.

Apparently, Robles wasn't the only one to complain. At about 4:30 that afternoon, Penn updated his story, suggesting that his critics should do the math. I did. His methods still don't pan out. bk

near and far

Just when you get to thinking that blogs are senseless, the following comment blows in, illustrating, if nothing else, the far reach of information. I do not know who "F" is -- but thank you. You can find the article "F" references here.

F said...

Hi,I am an english senior from China. I have just read your article - College:Time for passionate pursuits - on an old magazine.I guess the article was written five years ago.However, the scene exactly depicts what we experience at class now.As senior students, many of my classmates are busy seeking for jobs or just sleeping in their dorms. Once there are only three students attending the class. Our teacher said he liked small class but I can feel his disappointment. I hope I can meet people who are passionate with their own ideas instead of majority followers but I feel it is not very likely especially when the reality push us to be realists.

I like the ending of this articles very much.

Thanks for your articles.

bloggers anonymous

Editorial Comment: Filling those empty retirement hours, when you don't have a 'real' community anymore...

courtesy Ted Pease, journalism prof, Utah State University.

riddle me this, blogman

When is a blogger not a journalist? Go here to read all about McCain blogger Michael Goldfarb, who refers to himself as a journalist.

But clearly, is not. Or he plays by different rules. bk

connect-the-dots on digital journalism

Right, I'm starting the new year by cleaning the proverbial closet.... and breaking a lot of blogging rules.

Nonetheless.

I have been intending to post these linx to several articles that, when taken together, might give us a little more insight as to where journalism is headed. Or maybe not. Good reads, anyhow.

Erin Rosa, who's been a reporter for five years, writes in Columbia Journalism Review, that she finds new media to be alive with new opportunities. She writes: "For young reporters like me, the Internet is the primary medium for news content, and it is already leading to a new and inclusive form of journalism rooted in public participation. Although cynics like to say that the craft is a dead end for both young reporters and veteran writers alike, I think it’s an exciting time to be a journalist."

Also from CJR comes this excellent enterprise piece by Bree Nordenson on the information overload that is the product of today's mediascape. Information is everywhere, ours for the asking. Corralling it, however, is one of the problems. As Nordenson tells us, rather than yielding an American public that is more informed, research has shown that in the face of too much information, the reverse is true.

From the piece: “The tragedy of the news media in the information age is that in their struggle to find a financial foothold, they have neglected to look hard enough at the larger implications of the new information landscape—and more generally, of modern life. How do people process information? How has media saturation affected news consumption? What must the news media do in order to fulfill their critical role of informing the public, as well as survive? If they were to address these questions head on, many news outlets would discover that their actions thus far—to increase the volume and frequency of production, sometimes frantically and mindlessly—have only made things more difficult for the consumer."

This one is for Lotta: A year-old media bistro interview with NYU journalism prof Adam Penenberg, who talks about achieving the balance between digital skills and journalism fundamentals, when it comes to j-school. In response to a question about how citizen journalism and blogging are changing journalism, he replies:

"Citizen journalism certainly has its place. After the bombings in Spain, witnesses posted pictures and blog entries within minutes. NY 1, our local news station, solicited pictures of a tornado that ran through Brooklyn, and posted some of them from their viewers. This is all a tremendous addition to journalism. But it won't replace journalists or journalism. Most blogging is analytical by nature. It is symbiotic to the news media it loves to hate. Without the news -- which someone has to go out and get -- there wouldn't be much material for bloggers to mull. So little blogging actually breaks news, it merely amplifies what already exists. I don't say this as a criticism. I think it's wonderful that news consumers can share their insights and criticisms of media with their own readerships. But bloggers won't replace journalists, just like TV news reporters didn't replace print journalists.

"It takes an enviable amount of skill and experience to write a truly good magazine feature or tight news article. They offer an experience you simply can't replicate on a blog. You can ask a bevy of people to act as citizen journalists to research a story, but that doesn't mean that the information will be good. And let's face it: few of us have the luxury of working for free. I can assure you that I do far better work when I am being paid than if I'm doing it pro bono. How about you?"

And finally, an oldie but goodie from Eric Alterman, writing in the Nation on the future of journalism in the digital age. The article predates jlinx -- he wrote the piece six months ago. It was pretty depressing at the time. Since then, things have only gotten worse.

Love his lead: "Spend some time on the "future of news" conference circuit, as I have recently, and believe me, you'll need a drink and perhaps a Prozac. The flight of readers and advertisers to the web has led to an unprecedented assault on stockholder value, making newspapers the investment equivalent of slow-motion seppuku."

Seppuku? Look it up. bk

happy new year....

I originally thought I'd commemorate the new year by reflecting on all I've learned about blogging since i started, well, blogging.

One thing I've learned is that what a blog turns out to be has very little resemblance to what it started to be, at least in the case of jlinx.

But I digress. The second thing I learned about blogging is that when you're linking your way around cyberspace, you run into a lot of random stuff, purely by accident. Such as this post, entitled "1000 things I've learned about blogging."

Apparently, my work is done.

The entire blog, written primarily by a journalism prof from the UK, is pretty cool. Be sure to check out the posts on the future of journalism, as well as the continuing list of "things I've learned..." by clicking on the twitter link.

cheers. bk

objectivity, redefined. again

Editor and Publisher columnist Joe Stupp poses an interesting question today about how, when new media is folded into old, we are forced to reevaluate what we mean by objectivity. He thinks that may be a good thing.

What we now consider journalism has morphed into a digital hybrid of straight reporting, blogging, commentary, and personality journalism -- complete with the dreaded first person -- often on the same webpage. And with one reporter often wearing several of those hats, lines blur.

It's not that the core values of journalism -- honesty, accuracy, fairness -- don't still hold, even when it comes to blogging and commentary, Stupp's piece suggests. But maybe now that one form is bleeding into the other, it's time to throw the old definition of objectivity as a 50/50 balance straight out the window.

And acknowledge that it never really existed anyway.

From the column:
Andrew Malcolm, who has covered politics since 1968 and blogs at the Los Angeles Times' "Top of the Ticket," says he still treats each item like a fact-based story, but with some buzz and style. "Most non-newspaper blogs are committed, one way or another — there is a slant," he says. "They are selling a particular view. Our niche is to be sort of unexpected. But it is possible to be a real professional. Cover something straight and develop a perspective to inform your discussion."

L.A. Times Washington bureau chief Doyle McManus points out the different views of what is objective. "I think it means presenting every side of an argument fairly in ways that the proponents would accept as valid," he says.

But more and more, both new media and old-fashioned news types are disagreeing with that approach. The growing trend is that the truth must surpass the 50/50 doctrine. "We have gotten it so wrong with the idea of giving equal play to both sides," says Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief of Huffingtonpost.com and a longtime proponent of trading arbitrary "balance" for truth. "We are not always going to be balanced. Very often, it is one side or the other." She cited the ongoing arguments against global warming, which she contends mainstream journalists allowed for too long to go unchallenged: "We wasted a lot of journalistic capital on global warming trying to be balanced." She says the recent government rescue of financial institutions is another, noting too many mainstream outlets did not question if the bailout was needed: "Those of us who live online already dismissed certain elements of the bailout, such as the lack of oversight."

Adds [Keith] Woods, [dean of faculty at the Poynter Institute]: "Whether you quote both sides does not change what is the truth. We allow the 50/50 idea to substitute for truth. Where we often fail is when we may get somebody on one side with deep knowledge, understanding, perspective, and credibility to speak and on the other side someone with just an opinion, but they have no credibility."

[Boston Globe Editor Martin] Baron agrees: "We are involved in journalism, not stenography exercises. It is finding out what is actually happening. Balance means every story gets 50/50? I don't believe that."