Suspicious Journalist

Question #7

2005-12-02T13:59:00.000-08:00

Left and right blogs. Sure, I knew there'd be differences, but the amount is startling.

Just some general impressions, the left-leaning blog I read (Daily Kos) is full of links to outside sources, links to other sites and bits of information with about a billion "click here to read more" links. DailyKos spent a lot more time calling people to action. Several of the links called for people to go off the site to sign petitions, get voting information, etc.

Instapundit could not be more different. This blog reads more like an essay posting. There are very few outside links. The few places it did link to included Pajamas Media and Opinionated Bastard. I was startled to find that Instapundit is still talking about the beginnings of the war. It blasted Hillary Clinton for "going back" on saying the war was a bad idea at first.

These differences are astounding, but not unexpected. It totally makes sense that left-leaning blogs would cite left-leaning sources and vice versa. What doesn't make sense is why their writing styles would be so different. I mean, to each his own, but there should totally be more links. That's what blogs are about, right?

Question #6 BRANCHING OUT!

2005-11-18T13:23:00.000-08:00

How should MSM encourage or nurture citizen journalism? Should it take any role at all?

I think not. After all, if the advent of blogging software allows citizen journalism to exist and thrive outside of MSM, why would it need to be part of MSM anyway? Isn't that a tad hypocritical? You have legions of bloggers that say they are the new journalism. If that's true, what do they need the help of mainstream media for? Credibility? OH! BURN!

Vice Versa, does mainstream media need bloggers to hang on to their dwindling market shares? It seems the jury is still out on that one. That the Austin American Statesman is recruiting bloggers to bolster its content is definetly a place to look and see how this grand blog experiment pans out.

#7 states that MSM should encourage Citizen Journalism by incorporating it into itself but not editing it. Certainly, the Statesman has gone farthest in this direction, but even they have a method for weeding out the bad blogs from the good ones. Chances are, that's how it will appear across the board. After all, MSM is interested in holding the reigns on this new phenomenon. You can't expect an institution that has held the power all this time to give it up to a legion people who may or may not be journalists because they can post stories to a web site without knowing HTML.

Question #5 The trial of being timid...

2005-11-04T12:47:00.000-08:00

The problem with blogs as they are slowly incorporated into the media is a lack of time for institutionalization. Blogs are foreign, they're transient. They just as easy to drop as they are to start. Because there has not been a history of using blogs in main stream publications, most news papers don't quite seem to know what to do with them.

The blogs we looked at from the Fort Worth Star Telegram are a great example of this. The fact that a blog exists that is the playground for one of the telegram's writers is a clear indication that the management is unsure about what to use blogs for. The blog The Daily Texan posts for sports is a clear example of a lack of an institutional idea for what to use blogs for.

What solution is there for this? Simple. Blogs must be given time to adapt to the main stream media's uses. They must evolve from an anything-goes form of publishing to a more mature and focused running dialogue fir for publication to the masses. Then again, they could also simply go extinct. Only time will tell.

Just when you thought the multimedia died...

2005-10-25T14:12:00.000-07:00

Perhaps because it is my second time to blog about something will the full reign of my creativity, I have decided to continue on my path toward understanding multimedia journalism. If you need a crash course, you can find it here. Everything with the names Nicholas Kristof and Naka Nathaniel tied it is amazing.

The question I would like to pose this week is time. The timeliness factor of multimedia journalism makes it a real challenge for those souls brave enough to tread its still uncharted waters. In some cases, the amount of time required to complete a multimedia package combined with the speed of the news cycle eliminates the possibility of covering certain stories. In short, it's very hard to do timely stories with multimedia journalism at this point. Why is that? Well, I would like to pose the answer lies in understaffing multimedia sections. The evidence is on the web.

Looking at the New York Times Multimedia site should show you a few things about the kind of stories they cover. Right now, a package about Rose Parkes is up even though the story of her death is only a day or two old. However, it's noteworthy to point out that this is a slide show. There is no video here. There is little to no text. This is a two hour flash project done on the quick.

How does this fit in with my assertion that certain kinds of stories are impossible thanks to time. Well, with a few more days worth of work, this package could have included all kinds of extras like audio interviews with friends and familiy or narration provided by the NYtimes reporter who wrote her final story.

All of these things are typically done in longer NYtimes pieces like this one. This is a big story that required Nathaniel and Kristof to travel, do tons of research and spend several days putting together with Flash.

Why do this story? Well, it's timely but in a larger sense than something like Rosa Parkes' death. This story will be timely until something is done about the problem it describes. For that reason, they had enough time to do a complete package instead of just a quick slide show.

The Austin American Statesman is getting a little better about it's online coverage, but the majority of what's done is either videos only or slide shows only. They do have a few interactive features that are true multimedia, but again their content is was clearly picked out to avoid the hassle of timeliness.

This package on the Olympic Games is a great example. This is a cross comparison between the original olympic games and the modern ones. A contrasting now to history piece? Clearly there's no timeliness to factor in there, they people they're reporting about have been dead for centuries.

What should be taken from this? Will multimedia journalism be forced to cover only story that are not important enough to be timely? How can this change?

The answer is easy: we need more man power and we need it now.

Question #5: The medium is the message...

2005-10-20T23:11:00.000-07:00

The thing I find most ironic about the concept of Vlogging is that it's format and method of delivery is identical to that of MSM. From the cinematic fades in and out to the NPR style voice recording, Chuck Olsen's work on Blogumentary might as well be produced by the mainstream media. That would be fine if he weren't trying to sell his audience on the idea of vlogging as a more personal, real form of citizen journalism.

Is it personal in the senese that he's trying to make it an open source documentary. Yes, I would argue that those people who take steps toward adding their own insight to this project would feel a very personal connection to the piece and its content. But that brings up an interesting point as well.

In Wednesday's class, we said that writing for blogs is writing opinion. I'm not really sure why that's the case, but I'll run with it. If that's taken as a truth, then that would probably apply to vlogging as well. So if Olsen's documentary is an editorial piece by virtue of the fact that it is a form of blogging, how could it be open source? That is to say, what happens when someone who has a different viewpoint wants to edit or augment what Olsen has done?

In my mind, transparency is an attempt to add credibility to what you've written by making the method in which you constructed your story crystal clear to your audience. I'm not sure it means putting your work before your audience before it's published and letting them tear it in multiple directions of opinion.

Weekly Question #4

2005-10-14T10:22:00.000-07:00

So I downloaded Ipodder and checked out a program called Morning Coffee Notes. In this is a sub program called Nerd TV, where the host interviewed David Weinburger, the RSS guru. It was fairly well produced and, with the exception of the download time, fairly intuitive to use.

As reluctant as I am to accept many of the technological concepts we're discussing in class, I have to admit that Podcasts are the one thing I have the most faith in. It seemed really cool to be able to produce an amateur radio show and throw them out for the world to see. Now, having gone through the process of downloading and listening to a podcast, I'm less than enthused.

From a do it yourself aspect, there's one way in which MSM podcasts (I tunes) do a much better job than untraditional ones: delivery. I searched through a few Pod cast sites trying to find a few news casts, but felt like I was wading through a jungle. I'd list them, but you can find them yourself here.

At the very least, iTunes has the ability to deliver potential podcast in a way that looks appealing. I get to see pictures and text that help me develop a sense of what might be interesting and might not.

However, delivery aside, I do still believe that podcasts are an interesting way for small media outlets to produce products that can be perceived as professional or innovative, thus giving them a leg up on MSM. Much like any news outlet that can afford flash can toss their hat in the web package ring currently dominated by The New York Times pod casts are a step in the direction of innovation for even small media outlets.

Online Journalism faces the music...

2005-10-04T23:09:00.000-07:00

As an online journalist, I have the following question to present this week:

Should online web packages that claim to be journalistic have music? I shall now begin to make my case.

MSM would claim that journalism is to be completely objective. The argument for objectivity stretches both far and wide over the history of journalism, and ultimately there are a few schools of thought. Believing that true objectivity is possible places you in to one of these camps. I myself belong to the school of thought that accepts that TRUE objectivity is impossible to achieve, therefore journalistic stories should be presented as objectively as possible given their individual circumstances. I learned this from Tatsuya Mori, a Japanese Journalist who quit working for MSM to pursue the stories he wanted to tell. His most noteable works "A" and "A2" are documentaries about the AUM CULT in Japan.

The inclusion of music in an online journalistic work blurs the line of objectivity. Certainly the music one picks to accompany a journalistic work does have some influence on the mood of the viewer. Several of the packages created by Naka Nathaniel for The New York Times Multimedia Section feature musical intros that prepare the audience for the story.

Should they do this? Should the Daily Texan, in its experimental online coverage include music to introduce it's package on Hurricane Katrina? As we begin to see a sift from MSM's classic role to one that includes the infinite potential of technology, will things like musical intros become a joke for future journalists? Or, are we breaking the ice of something new and empathetic? An empathetic press? Never thought I'd live to see it.

Question #3 ANWERED!!!

2005-09-30T05:11:00.000-07:00

Using any of the disasters or terrorist attack events to comment on the unique role that citizen journalism can play in providing first-hand news accounts during times of emergencies and disasters.

For starters, I'd like to point out how strange it is that moments of tragedy bring out the journalist in the average joe. Perhaps this means that journalism is an innate human trait? Have I just destroyed all my anti-citizen journalism arguments?

It can not be denied that several home brew stories, interviews and photos were used in MSM coverage of the London bombings.

After looking at something like this, I think it's also clear that the few actually used by MSM were salvaged from a mountain of less-than-adequate material. Please don't get me wrong. There are a few good images here, but a great deal of them are unusable or just plain silly.

Eamon's Blog provides an interesting running commentary about the London attacks in general. Unfortunately, there's also a lof of comments like this:

To family reading this: The incident happened well after all of the children got to school, so they're safe too. I'm fine and I've talked to Kathy.

Two things: I really like that reporters in MSM don't bring their personal safety into question. It sort of gets in the way of telling the story. Secondly, there's got to be a more direct way of notifying family that the children are alright than updating your blog. Who is this Kathy person anyway.

The final word from this journalist is this: extra media sources are all fine and good as long as there is a MSM to salvage the good from the alright or just plain ugly.

Question #2 answered!!!

2005-09-23T15:17:00.000-07:00

Transparency. What does it mean? Can you see through it? Does it mean understanding the process?

Certainly the concept of open source software is transparent in the sense that anyone can open the source code and see it. How does the who-zee-whats-it tell the getcha'- goomy how to acquire system resources? Great idea...if you can hack programming your own OS.

Journalistically, transparency means letting your audience know how you got your information. You know, the same information you're presenting to them as truth. We are, after all, in the business of truth. Letting the audience know that you got those figures from an anonymous source is what makes your reporting transparent. Attributing quotes to the people who said them lets your audience know that you're not just makin' this stuff up.

From the citizen journalism perspective, the traditional ideas of journalistic transparency should still apply. This would add an air of legitimacy to citizen journalism and help blog-based media take steps toward credibility.

The concept of achieving transparency by opening your blog to be checked by other bloggers is an illusion. If the original blogger makes a mistake that gets caught by another blogger, who's to say that the new blogger is any more accurate. Where did he get his information from? If it's from a MSM source, fine, but that's not on the level of accuracy or transparency that MSM journalism requires. You don't often see the New York Times claim they received their information from the Washington Post. They have reporters who go out and get their information for them.

Transparency means different things to different groups. It's what it means to the viewing public that truly matters.

Questions answered #1

2005-09-16T12:24:00.000-07:00

Compare the perspectives of blogging as journalism presenting by Lasica in Blogging as a Form of Journalism (in We've Got Blog: How Weblogs are Changing our Culture) with the Gillmor's introduction chapter to We The Media. Do they share a similar perspective in the role that blogging can play in transforming journalism?

Yes. Both Lasica's section of We've Got Blog and the introduction to We the Media offer up the opinion that with new technology comes a resurgence in the potential of journalism to be a public discussion rather than some kind of one-way lecture. Both credit new technology with putting the power of the press back in the hands of the people.

What I'm interested to know is whether or not the same beliefs and ideas were made during the invention of paper. Is it possible that the scholars of the time, after finding out how to make light, cheap objects to write on that could be disseminated, heralded the same things? With paper, anyone who can make it or buy it can finally write down their ideas and share them with everyone, rather than confining them to one location.

In short, what Gilmor and Lasica are enthusiastically rejoicing over is not a shift in journalism, but the potential of a new medium for the written word. This goes back to the discussion that we had in class about whether or not blogs are journalism. Like every new medium, blogs are what you make of them. Journalism has some very specific rules that it abides by. Any medium that can create stories that fit within this journalistic framework can be journalism.

Creation!

2005-09-14T09:21:00.000-07:00

September 14, 2005, 9:21 a.m. and Suspicious Journalist has been created.

Here's to picking my brain. Discussion is imminent.

For now, here's some completely frivolous but interesting news.