jawfish

Blogging vs Journalism
john posted in politics & culture on August 31st, 2006

There have been several lengthy articles by journalists lately defending conventional journalism from blogger’s critiques.

Gladwell on journalism
Press Think: Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over
Slate on sloppy journalism
New Yorker Lehman: AMATEUR HOUR
a comment on the New Yorker: Journalism without the journalists …

I have been following this debate in the NYT and New Yorker among other sources. While journalists score a point when they complain that bloggers don’t do original news, they miss the greater issue.

News Flash:
Bloggers uncover Senator Pork at work. An example of how journalists don’t do their job.

Intelligent blogging exists because real journalists haven’t been doing their job well.

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Considering only thoughtful, analytical political/news blogs and print journalism here:

Most bloggers are unpaid amateurs like me, and their blog has to survive on sheer merit. Of course they usually can’t go out, collect, and report the news. ( caveat- I have done a few stories the traditional way ) What bloggers can do is watch multiple news sources, compare, fact check, consider and editorialize. Traditional journalists don’t seem to do this, except to borrow story ideas. For political stories the majority of print coverage is presented today as passive attendance at manufactured events. In these cases, what the blogger says is just as valid as the reporters. White house correspondents, for instance, are the Goodyear blimps of the field: huge presence, no content. When reporters simply trot back to the office with a canned statement, they really aren’t serving any purpose. The paper may as well just print the transcript.

Another limitation on much of paid journalism is the he said-she said format, particularly misused on NPR. When all you can do is quote sources, it is very difficult to provide context for a story. It is easy to fall into man-on-the-street sentimentality however.

A few reporters at a few papers have the sources and experience to understand the context, history, and hidden agendas in political reporting. There should be a lot more of them, and the tame news conferees should quit. So don’t come whining to us about how bloggers go off half-cocked, spread rumors, rant, and generally misbehave. When stories are constructed properly with sidebars on the context, and homework done, then the bloggers will praise ( and quote them).

Most newspaper analysis, with occasional exceptions, is of a very low quality. I can hardly read an article in a good newspaper or magazine on a subject in which I have expertise, without finding significant errors in the story. Stories are run without minimal fact-checking, without googling the subject, without consulting experts. This leads me to assume that the sloppiness may be endemic to all subjects. Since print journalists don’t report on each other, without the bloggers, I have no way of knowing if this is true.

Two examples of mis-reported stories, global warming and the infamous WMDs in Iraq:

Global Warming stories in 2006 are still including non-scientific viewpoints as though they were a balanced counterpoint to the science. There is no valid anti-scientific viewpoint, it is only appropriate to report on what the scientific consensus and minority scientific views are. Sure you can write a story that compares the religious and scientific views of Global Warming, but there’s no scientific or public policy point to it.

Readers of the LA Times and New Yorker were aware, before the war, that experts widely disagreed that Iraq possessed WMDs, but the New York Times left the story up to one reporter, whose status was closely tied to her contacts with the Bush Administration. As usually happens in international coverage, most US papers and electronic media let the NYT lead, with the result that the nation’s skeptical reaction to administration saber-rattling was dependent on a single unsupervised reporter. Meanwhile. the venerable Times went apoplectic over a trivial case of tokenism and plagiarism, and barely acknowledged its major screwup over the most important story since the 2000 election. Where were the paid journalists on this one? They were lined up behind the NY Times skirts, unable or unwilling to do their own research.

Bloggers can do some things traditional reporters can’t. They can write freely or remain silent, without fear of retribution from the boss. They can proclaim themselves columnists and produce lengthy and informed analysis. They can write to an audience with a higher level of education than a newspaper can. They can be read everywhere their language is spoken. They can publish on a very long tail for tiny readership.

Paid journalists can travel, interview leaders and experts, take the time to do research, and spend a career on one or two subjects. They have a semi-official status that opens doors. When they fail to get the story, or they write a story that just follows the lead of the majors, then they are betraying the trust we put in them. I understand that many, maybe most paid journalists are probably not free to do what I suggest, and spend their time bouncing from one thing to another, never gaining expertise, never following up on a story, at the mercy of benighted editors. So most bloggers and most journalists just repeat what somebody else said and jump to the next topic, like sea gulls at a dumpster. Good paid journalists and good bloggers have a symbiotic relationship, but I think the amateurs would have a lot less weight if paid journalists did their job better.