Today's Knight Center's Journalism in the Americas Blog entry "ISOJ: Journalists are the atomic particles of post industrial journalism" highlighted Emily Bell, who is director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and who spoke at the 14th International Symposium on Online Journalism. The blog says she spoke about the essay/manifesto "Post Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present," which she co-authored last year.
So I decided to read it. Peruse it if you will.
http://towcenter.org/research/post-industrial-journalism/introduction/
I'm posting my initial comments, which remained initial because I couldn't justify any more time spent reading an essay which seems poorly thought out for a Center dedicated to journalism. I appreciate the effort...but...
Here goes:
Introduction: The Transformation of American Journalism Is Unavoidable: Journalism Matters
- graph begins "Not all journalism...": "Hard news is what matters in the current crisis. Rather than try to list or define the elements that separate hard news from the fluff..."
- Uh, the authors sort of left out feature news, no? Why this particular separation?
- What about the idea taught in journalism schools that our forefathers granted us freedom of the press to give the public the information needed to enable them to better exercise their franchise, i.e. their vote. Maybe they could consider this as a means to distinguish valuable news (not "hard" news) from fluff.
- "…we have simply adopted Lord Northcliffe’s famous litmus test: ‘News is something someone somewhere doesn’t want printed. Everything else is advertising.’"
- Guess that leaves out most science, cultural and psychology discoveries and innovations for a start, eh?
- graph begins "Even with that…" "What is of great moment is reporting on important and true stories that can change society."
- Repeat response above: What about the idea that freedom of the press was granted us so that journalism could enable the public to better exercise their franchise, i.e. their vote.
- graph: "An increasing amount of firsthand reporting is done by citizens–much of our sense of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan and the Pearl Roundabout massacre in Bahrain came from individuals on the ground, but this does not mean that all professional journalists will, can or should be replaced."
- Sorry, but "journalists" have always used those "citizens" call them, witnesses or bystanders as "sources" for news stories to give readers a "sense" of what happened.
- Journalists have also always gone way beyond these informal sources to those with a major trait: expertise honed by experience and study exercised in a position of noted responsibility. Most bloggers will simply not have access to people either in government or private enterprise at the top of their divisions by dint of the fact that they are NOT journalists with the assorted, usually accepted 'credentials,' but writers/bloggers who may or may not have any credentials, i.e. bestowed value.
- above graph continued: "Instead it means that their [journalists'] roles will change, overlapping with the individuals (and crowds and machines) whose presence characterizes the new news environment.
- There's nothing substantiating this sentence. HOW will the roles change? How will they overlap? And the authors immediately run on to examine subsidies.
- graph begins "One of the most disruptive…" "When someone on Twitter shares a story with a couple of friends, it feels like a water cooler conversation of old. When that same person shares that same story with a couple thousand people, it feels like publishing, even though it’s the same tool and the same activity used to send the story to just a few. Furthermore, every one of those recipients can forward the story still further. The privileged position of the original publisher has shrunk dramatically."
- HUH? "feels like publishing" - that may make them 'publishers' but not "journalists!"
