Keith Good solves the “not enough hours in the day to blog” problem by getting up at 4:00 a.m. I talked to him this morning (10 min) about his blog, FarmPolicy.com, which deals with U. S. agriculture policy. A really good example of the kind of citizen journalism (or publishing, if you prefer) that’s transforming and challenging mainstream media.
Category Archives: Journalism
New news network?
“As the network anchors drummed their manicured fingers, waiting for correspondents to parachute into position, the sketchy wire reports were supplanted by real-life, as-it-was-happening stories by bloggers who penned moving first-person accounts. This is as real-time as news can get. Weblogs, which started out as online diaries, have morphed into reporters’ notebooks. The information is raw — and perhaps unpolished when compared with news from more established outlets — but it is nonetheless news.”
— Article at Business 2.0
“Now the news waits for us to go get it”
“The idea that we should just sit there and watch as someone reads the news to us is — now that we see the alternatives — quaint at best, condescending at worst. Why the hell should we ever have let Dan Rather decide what’s important to us and how we should should look at it? How did we ever tolerate listening to the news from him without taking the opportunity to talk back?”
“It’s the top-down, one-way, one-size-fits-all news-extruding machine that’s ready for the mothballs. It’s the old view of delivering the news that’s antiquated. We no longer wait for the news to come to us; now the news waits for us to go get it. We are in control.”
Jeff Jarvis on the death of the Dan Rathers of news… what should rise in their place.
2004 Murrow Awards
One of the websites I help feed and care for won a nice award back in June. On Monday, Clyde and Stan were kind enough to go to NY and pick it up. Many of the Big Names in journalism were there: Brokow, Jennings, Rather… and our own Bob Priddy who –as RTNDA chairman– MC’d the event.
Journalism, Big Media, Objectivity, etc.
There was an interesting email exchange between between a couple of our reporters this week. David Brazeal’s comments seemed…sponge-worthy.
I think more likely we’re seeing is a gradual destruction of the great farce of 20th Century elite journalism–that we can do our jobs objectively. Dan Rather thinks he’s objective and Fox News is not. Fox News thinks it’s objective, and Dan Rather is not. The fact is, neither of them is objective. We might very well try to be objective, but it’s impossible for anyone with an opinion.
The problem for big-time journalism outlets is that people have figured this out. Most people don’t fault Dan Rather for being a liberal; they fault him for acting like he’s not. And the more these big institutions cling to this faade of true objectivity, the more obvious it will become to more people. As consumers get more sophisticated, they’re going to demand more source material, more first-person accounts, more access to opposing viewpoints. And they’re going to want it without the filter we’re used to providing. The question is whether we figure out a way to give it to them, or we go down with the ship.
Bloggers and journalists
I’m a couple of hundred pages into to Dan Gillmor’s We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. Gillmor is technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, and his column runs in many other U.S. newspapers. He has been consistently listed by industry publications as among the most influential journalists in his field.
Our company owns and operates several state and regional radio news networks and I thought they might find the book interesting so I forwarded the Amazon review, which made reference to blogging. One of our news directors quickly responded:
“I don’t quite buy the idea that bloggers are journalists. They might be journal-writers or journal-keepers, but a blogger is a talk show host who usually thinks somebody should be interested in what he or she has to say, whether it’s correct, accurate, based on facts… or not. Blogging has some major integrity issues that make it more entertainment than trustworthy information. I still need sources I can trust, and blogs don’t reach that level yet.”
First of all, nobody has suggested –certainly not Dan Gillmor– that all bloggers are journalists. As it happens, Mr. Gillmor writes a blog and is a highly respected journalist. Does he have “integrity issues?” Speaking of which…
A few year back we had a reporter working in one of our newsrooms that was doing a lot of anti-gun stories. When I asked him about it, he said he felt he had to do these to “balance out” the (paid) NRA ads that were currently airing on our network. Then there was the report (same newsroom) that left us become the PR flack for the state Republican party. In his first public statement he said he could no long remain silent in the face of the threat posed by the liberal Democrats in our state. Talk about integrity issues.
My colleague’s reaction reminds me of the Pharisees’ outrage that this Jesus guy would muscle in on their turf (I’m not a religious guy but I saw Jesus Christ Superstar a couple of times). I should probably disclose that I am not a journalist. At least I don’t think I am. I didn’t go to J-School (I smoked some J’s while in school but…) but I did work at a small town radio station covered the news. I went to city council meetings and hospital board meetings and wrote stories and cut up some tape and did my best to tell people what happened. If we had had the Internet and blogs back then, I might have used that tool as well.
This whole blogger vs. journalist thing has been going on for a while and smarter folks than I have written about it. I have to say the Real Journalists come across a little shrill on the subject. There are thousands (millions?) of blogs out there and very few rise to the level of anything that might be called “journalism.” But the same might be said about what passes for news on a lot of radio stations. So let’s not be too quick to slam the temple doors. We might miss something good.
Political conventions
David Weinberger sums it up nicely: “The Convention folks think their job is to script an event for the news media, and the news media don’t want to cover an event that’s been scripted.”
Convention blogging
Three of our reporters are heading for Boston to cover the Democratic Convention. As reporters for state news networks, they focus on the state delegations and do a lot of their work at the hotel where the delegates are staying. Along with our “regular” news coverage, each of the reporters will take a stab at blogging the four-day event as well. Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson posted some wonderful reports (via email) from the 2000 convention, but we just didn’t have tools (or the word “blog”). The other two guys are experienced reporters but are new to this kind of writing (as far as I know). Should be interesting.
Edward R. Murrow Awards
Warning: Self-serving shop talk follows. The Radio-Television News Directors Association announced the winners in their annual Edward R. Murrow Awards competition today. This is kind of a big deal in the radio and TV news business. This year they started out with 3,182 entries and gave 74 awards to 53 news organization. The regional winners were announced a few weeks ago and today they announced the national winners. And one of our network websites won.
Entries fall into one of three categories (Network/Syndication Service, Large Market and Small Market) for radio and the same three for TV. And this year they added a category called Websiste Non-Broadcast.
Our entry (Missourinet.com) won in the Radio Network/Syndication Service category. Pretty cool given that the competition was ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, CNN and god only knows who else. You gotta figure there’s some “online journalists” in NY and Atlanta scratching their heads and asking each other, “What the hell is a Missourinet? Somebody get a map!”
For some reason the RTNDA website provide the urls of the Website winners but didn’t create links. That seems a little clueless to me.
*Radio Network/Syndication Service: Missourinet, Jefferson City, MO
*Television Network/Syndication Service: MSNBC
*Television Large-Market: News 14 Carolina, Charlotte, NC
*Television Small-Market: Capital News 9, Albany, NY
*Radio Large-Market: KSL-AM, Salt Lake City
*Radio Small-Market: WBLL-AM, Bellefontaine, OH
*Website Non-Broadcast: Washington Post, Washington; Belo Interactive, Dallas
I’ll probably never know what they judges liked about our site. And let’s face it, those big national network websites have some cool features our site does not. But I can name a few things we’ve got that are unique or cool or both:
Crash Reports: Missouri State Highway Patrol accident reports, updated 24/7.
Legislature.com: Live debate audio from the state legislature. Then we archive. We’ve got it back to 2002.
Supreme Court Arguments: Oral agurments (live & archived). I think we have nearly 500 arguments online.
Missouri Death Row: Ours has become the “official” site for Missouri.
Last time I checked, there were no other websites featuring this content. On the planet. At least not the way we do. Of course, there’s a lot we can do to improve our site but, for now, it’s nice to know someone appreciates the effort. The big award show is October 4th in NY. Gomer Goes to Manhatten in a Rented Tux.
Time.com on blogs
“…blogs have gone from an obscure and, frankly, somewhat nerdy fad to a genuine alternative to mainstream news outlets, a shadow media empire that is rivaling networks and newspapers in power and influence.”