The Ostrich of Journalism...
God what a stupid article. What a profoundly stupid article. I mean let's not even start with the condemnation of Google as the closest thing to an online Superpower, because while there may be some truth to it, at the moment it's pretty much just unsubstantiated scare-mongering. But reopening the 'weblogs as journalism' debate again? Now that really is stupid. Particularly if you're not going to make any effort to look past the obvious towards a slightly more nuanced and intelligent reaction. For god's sake, internet expert, push it a little further.
"Blogging is not journalism. Often it is as far from journalism as it is possible to get, with unsubstantiated rumour, prejudice and gossip masquerading as informed opinion. Without editors to correct syntax, tidy up the story structure or check facts, it is generally impossible to rely on anything one finds in a blog without verifying it somewhere else - often the much-maligned mainstream media.
Now I have no interest in getting involved in this "are they" / "aren't they" debate - except to repeat my scandalous assertion that in fact news journalism is etymologically a subset of "journalism" - ie. journal writing - making news journalism in many ways a 'special case' / subset of weblogging. But I have to be honest, the idea that the limit of this whole debate could be 'are weblogs going to replace journalism' - well it pisses the crap out of me. Because while some journalists are sitting around complaining about about how you can't trust anything you read unless it's had an editor to correct the grammar, the actually interesting and significant debates are being totally ignored.
These are the debates about what effect an empowered and vocally reactive readership might have on journalism, or the debates about the implications of the huge traffic peaks that can happen when all of webloggia turns your way. These are the debates about how incredibly useful and important it would be to gauge statistically which news stories actually do matter to people, and what it means when hundreds of thousands of people decide to take the news they've been given and do something with it - push it further, do their own research - on occasion refusing or challenging the initial piece. How would that change the job of a journalist? What effect would that have, will that have, in two / five / twenty years?
In fact while these journalists are busy shoring up their own defences neurotically against the unlikely threat of freelance weirdos like myself putting them out of a job, they're studiously resisiting every opportunity to actually interact with this huge distributed community.
This kind of facile superficial reaction would be totally acceptable if it came from well-established print journalists unfamiliar with what's emerging online. But from technology journalists it smacks of disgruntlement, paranoia and a profound refusal to think past the most obvious conclusion they come to. These are individuals who have been told by some idiot at a dinner party once that their industry is under attack and have decided it's time to put these "upstarts" in their place.
The whole thing is based on a really simple misconception - they keep viewing each individual weblog as if it was competing with the New York Times. But instead of doing that, they should be looking at how hundreds of thousands of (proper media) readers have completely shifted from passive reception of news to repurposing it, commenting upon it and - on occasion - challenging it... If they don't do that, if they don't shift from building defences to looking for the opportunities, then they really are going to be put out of a job - not because they've been squeezed out by other webloggers, but because some other companies (maybe even that tiny Google start-up everyone's talking about) will find some way to do it first and do it better...
Comments
Please stay on-topic, informative and polite. I reserve the right to remove comments for whatever vague capricious reasons seem reasonable at the time.
C'mon, your over-defensive attitude towards "print journalists" just makes your case look weak. I'm a magazine editor and the reason my readers can trust me more than you isn't because I'm published on dead trees and you glide effortless through the ether, unbounded by conventional ties and in connection with the power of the hive brain. They trust me because I spend all my time investigating the very specific topics they're interested in and I have very few chances to say things to them (once a month), so I only say the most interesting things, not everything, whether I've thought it through or not. Which in this case, you haven't. Tsk, talk about tarring us all with the same brush...
→ Posted by: Richard at February 21, 2003 5:06 PM
Ok - you couldn't get more illustrative of my point here. Firstly, I'm not in any way 'tarring you all with the same brush'! I specifically talk about how this article is stupid and evidences a lack of thought about the relationship between weblogs and mainstream print media, that 'some journalists' don't know what they're talking about, that it's something that technology journalists should have thought about in more depth. Secondly, I've delivered papers on this very subject to several institutions, including the BBC, so caricaturing my engagement with this issue as 'gliding through the ether' or suggesting I'm not thinking it through seriously is profoundly misguided of you - and, I might add, exactly the kind of 'we don't need to bother about this stuff' attitude that infuriates me. Thirdly, to suggest that I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to journalists is just untrue - I'm an ex-journalist with training and experience in both online and print writing and editing. Finally your personal attempts at 'thinking it through' has managed to miss the entire point of my piece in the first place, which is that weblogs individually aren't journalism - that question's boring and trivial (and frankly old). But by saying 'weblogs aren't journalism' and leaving it at that, the arguments about what it is and how it could be useful or interesting to mainstream publishers are ignored. And there's a hell of a lot of scope there - scope that Google have noticed, even if you haven't...
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at February 21, 2003 5:34 PM
The irony of this simplistic BBC article is that a large part of it is lifted straight out of an article that did the rounds of the blogosphere a week or so ago, and which goes uncredited. At least most bloggers have the courtesy of acknowledging their sources.
→ Posted by: Ben at February 21, 2003 5:36 PM
In addition, I believe google-watch was set up by someone whose attempts to spam google were suppressed, leading to a subsequent court case in which Google's position was supported. The man who wrote that mantra last week clearly has an axe to grind. The fact that the BBC article reuses its arguments so naively is, I'm afraid, very definitely not the mark of someone undertaking careful, thorough research.
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at February 21, 2003 5:50 PM
and you glide effortless through the ether
That would be 'effortlessly'.
Thank god for sub-editors, eh?
→ Posted by: arseblogger at February 21, 2003 7:14 PM
Hmm, I thought the article was dead on, and your reaction to it seems to support my opinion. Thanks for the link.
→ Posted by: david at February 22, 2003 8:18 AM
Very well put, Tom. I particularly like the way you distinguish between individual weblogs and the aggregation. If there's anyone left who still doesn't understand the difference then they really aren't trying.
I too have written extensively for the national press, and I find, frankly, that the two main things editors are interested in are that (a) your piece isn't libellous, and (b) you've spelled proper names correctly. "Mistakes" (if any) simply provide fuel for the letters column!
I see commentators such as Burchill (high on opinion, low on hard content), as being probably the first to go, as this is already a very successful branch of weblogging.
I think "effortless" is OK for gliding. Poetic.
→ Posted by: Peter at February 22, 2003 10:43 AM
As Peter said, very well put. Your article itself was a perfect example of how webloggers use their medium to challenge the news out there. Sad some people can't grasp that.
→ Posted by: Justin at February 22, 2003 5:43 PM
The reaction to Thompson's article has made me think... The blogosphere is more than just a network for the passage of news and thought; it's a growing, evolving creature which is passing the test of natural selection with flying colours. We all know how quickly and strongly blogging is growing, and here we're seeing how well-adapted it is to fending off intellectual attack. The blogosphere is a well-oiled, distributed yet closely connected, self-regulating yet intellectually frontier-pushing, thought machine.
Traditional journalism is not extinct; it still serves important purposes. But blogging is far from being confined to a niche.
→ Posted by: Ben James at February 22, 2003 7:46 PM
I think you’re expressing a personal and specialised interest which doesn’t have a wider factual basis. You won’t change the power established journalism has with an etymological fine point, and I doubt if blogging will either. Your words are more rhetoric than fact. Specifically, who are the “empowered and vocally reactive readership” who do their own research? It’s a great idea and I wish it were true. There are a few about, but not many. As with the WWW, so with blogdom: the signal to noise ratio is quite high and most blogs revolve around relatively trivial content or specialised personal interests. Why would a journalist or media house be interested in interacting with that, especially when their research is generally far more rigorous? They have the time, the contacts and the resources. Most blogs are a different kind of activity. They’re like an interactive personal column, and that’s what they’re good at.
I don’t think there’s an attitude of ‘putting upstarts in their place’, because the establishment has nothing to fear. I think that’s a personal comment that’s not generally applicable. Repurposing and challenging the established news? Again, great idea and I wish it were happening. But it’s not; that’s not what most blogs do, except maybe in a very cursory way like a conversation in a pub. The aggregation thing is an interesting point but I’m not sure it fits your idea because what, exactly, is aggregated? I don’t think it’s an ideological or political force. I sense that it’s more about fashion than critical thinking.
Enthusiasm for blogging is one thing, but it has to be based on facts rather than (laudable) ideals that are not borne out. When the ‘net first appeared people had a similar kind of aspiration – it was going to transform society etc. It didn’t, and it rapidly became a commercialised medium. I liked those original ideals – I still do – but on the whole, they are not borne out and I have to acknowledge that fact.
→ Posted by: James at February 23, 2003 12:47 PM
Tom Coates has it wrong. Google Watch was started by me. The guy who got penalized by Google is from SearchKing. There is no connection between us.
A journalist would have checked out something like this, but bloggers don't bother. My phone number is on my home page, along with my email.
Bill Thompson's piece is right on. Even if he was partially inspired by my site, so what? He gave Google Watch a link in the sidebar. Even if he didn't, I'd have no problem with his piece. He speaks the truth, and that's all that matters.
→ Posted by: Daniel Brandt at February 23, 2003 5:19 PM
Apologies Daniel - it's true I have no evidence to link you to the SearchKing gentleman. I wouldn't write something like that in the body of a piece without checking it thoroughly - it was ill-judged of me to not be as thorough in the comments...
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at February 23, 2003 10:08 PM
Daniel, while Tom may have got his facts wrong, it seems that he's right to suggest that 'you have an axe to grind'. Is it true that the motives behind your Google Watch site are not to seek the truth for the benefit of all web users, but to discredit Google and its technologies as a personal revenge against Google giving you a lowly PageRank? If this is the case, then your plan is working, and just when bloggers are unsure over whether the Google/Blogger deal is a good or bad thing, it couldn't have been executed at a better time. I wonder if Bill Thompson was aware of your motives when he appropriated your accusations into his piece for the BBC, or maybe he didn't bother to check.
→ Posted by: Matt at February 23, 2003 11:10 PM
The Salon piece was an ambush. Most of my interview with the "reporter" was about my privacy concerns with Google, which turned into an article that was mostly about how "Mr. Anti-Google" doesn't like his rankings.
For a better piece about what makes me tick, try this link: www.pressaction.com/pablog/archives/000839.html
My main site, www.namebase.org, does okay in Google.
→ Posted by: Daniel Brandt at February 24, 2003 2:05 AM
Well, the article seems to be something of a bash-out if you ask me: it's really two different pieces (both of which seem half-baked) that really have little in common.
Firstly, the writer seems miffed about people saying 'blogging is the new journalism'. As both a journalist with a national UK newspaper and a regular blogger over the past two or three years, I am so tired of this argument that I've worn myself out. Blogging *relies* on journalism; blogs don't (and can't) challenge news media; they can't even give you much of a lead on breaking stories (especially since they draw their breaking news from traditional platforms).
As for Google's 'power' that's another thing entirely: something worth investigating, of course, but surely worth investigating more thoroughly and with dedication - not swiftly and simply.
→ Posted by: Bobbie at February 24, 2003 12:24 PM
It's been fascinating to see the discussion generated by my BBCi article. I'm sorry that Tom thinks I'm profoundly stupid, but (as you might expect) I disagree with him :-)
Couple of minor points: I did bother to research Google Watch, Matt, because that's what I do. But just because someone is against something doesn't mean that their claims should be discounted, and I was disturbed by the almost entirely complimentary coverage of Google online.
I've written a lot about privacy policies and the difference between the US self-regulatory approach and the EU model. I prefer the EU model, and I think that Google should be accountable for the data it holds about me and millions of others. Someone has to start challenging the sacred cow.
As for blogging, I admit that I knew that what I wrote was going to stir things up, but I was provoked to re-enter the debate by the frankly silly things that were being said about Google buying Pyra.
I teach a class in online journalism (yes - I get to infect young minds with this stuff too!) and we'd had a long discussion about the question, so I'd been mulling it over.
However I agree entirely with Tom that there is a far, far more interesting debate to be had here - as long as we can agree on the distinction between what happens on sites like this and what happens on Guardian.co.uk, BBCi and other sites. And yes, of course this includes more than just news journalism.
I'm interested in how journalism changes and in looking for opportunities rather than building defences.
I have felt for some time that 'blogging' is as contested a term as 'new media' and one that has outlived its real usefulness. The range of weblogs, the different motivations of those writing online, the capabilities of the tools used, all mean that there are as many ways to use a blog as there are to use a piece of paper. Some will use print to publish well-researched news stories that threaten the powerful, some will write pamphlets, others lies and libels. We do not have to treat it all alike, and I'll stop doing that in the hope that everyone else does too.
→ Posted by: Bill Thompson at February 25, 2003 8:21 AM
Ok Bill, but we're all dying to know your thoughts on this:
If blogging isn't journalism, why is your column at BBC News called 'Bill Blog'?
I take it you don't class yourself as a journalist then?
→ Posted by: Martin at February 25, 2003 4:03 PM