My take on blogger vs. journalist
Mar 1st, 2009 by JoeC
I had a brief interchange with Jeff Cutler on Twitter just now about the old bloggers-aren’t-journalists debate. This on the heels of listening to Daniel Schorr on NPR yesterday talk about how it’s disturbing to him that anyone can “publish” things on the internet and no editor or staff fact-checks it or holds it to any journalistic standard.
For what it’s worth, I think journalists are unnerved and defensive because one of the mediums that they’re published on now is open to anyone to publish. They seem to feel that this is unfair. Because their access to the web is controlled, they seem to feel everyone’s should be.
Mr. Schorr, on that same NPR show, said that the internet was like a market or bazaar where anyone can come and shout anything they want and be heard by anyone who cares to listen. This is a particularly apt analogy. If we apply it to journalists on the internet, we see that it’s like making them stand on a milk crate and announce the news on the street corner just like everyone else, whereas before they had special arrangements. They spoke from a balcony with a loudspeaker.
And that’s the inversion that I think not everyone appreciates. It’s not so much that we, the bloggers have invaded the journalists’ turf, it’s rather that they’re now forced to operate on ours. A medium used to come with a certain implied or built-in credibility and certainly privilege. If you got to speak, it was sort of assumed that at least you had your facts more or less straight.
But access to a medium does not necessarily equate to credibility and really, it never has. Anyone with sufficient money can print their own newspaper. But just because something is printed on sheets of paper that look like a newspaper doesn’t mean it’s true. Trustworthy journalists and news institutions earned their stripes over the years by doing their jobs well and being proven out by facts and people’s real-world experiences.
I think journalists should believe in their own credibility a little more and realize that most of us out here reading things on the internet value reputation and track record just like we did before. Sure, there are still plenty of people who’ll choose the equivalent of the supermarket tabloid or Fox News, but you never had them anyway. It not that you’re standing on a street corner with everyone else that matters, it’s what you say when you get there.
A friend referred this site to me as I am doing a little research project on fact checking and how it has evolved on the Internet. Great points here and I might use them (with credit of course) in my research. If you would be interested in helping me by answering some prepared questions I have please email me
I see it a little differently: Bloggers ARE journalists, but with a different audience and goal. The blogger says “Here’s what I think”, and relies on the intelligence of the viewer to bring him/her to an article out of intellectual curiosity. The journalist on the other hand screams as loudly as possible “My views are the way it is”. Journalists would rather paste their article onto the eyeballs of any passerby, those that don’t run away in pain can be counted as the journalist viewers (aka demographic, audience, market, target, etc).
The journalist first sees the market (viewers for whom they have sufficient paste), and then craft their views for publication. The blogger first sees their views, the fact that viewers read and/or agree with them is just a happy coincidence.
Journalists will never quite understand why a certain percentage of people don’t listen to them, and bloggers will probably forever wonder why journalists think it’s an issue.