Columnist Bill Thompson, for the BBC;
Unfortunately for those already working as journalists, many readers and viewers seem to feel the same way [...] The rapid growth of citizen journalism seems less a sign of the emergence of a vibrant new area of online newsgathering and reporting than a symptom of the decline of existing forms of news journalism.It points to a career-threatening loss of trust in what people see on their TV screens or read in the daily papers as they become what citizen journalist advocate Dan Gillmor calls 'the former audience'.
[...]
This new localism is a serious challenge to the current practice of journalism.
Cavalier disregard for the feelings of others and studied disavowal of the consequences of what we say or write does not work any more.
Inconsistencies, contradictions or plain errors of fact are noticed, tracked and widely publicised.
Some writers find this impossible to cope with, and seek refuge in the old world where their privilege and power remain intact, refusing to engage in conversation with their readers and resenting the intrusion of e-mails from an informed public.
But instead of resisting we should embrace this opportunity, because it may provide us with a way to regain the respect and even the interest of the former audience.
Local journalists are involved in the conversations around them. They are known and - it is to be hoped - appreciated as members of their communities.
Sometimes, of course, they uncover things that people would rather were kept hidden and sometimes they intrude into private grief. But they do so with an understanding of the real needs of the community as a whole and with an awareness that their errors and misjudgements will not be forgotten and will have a serious impact on their future standing.
A good local reporter gets the balance right and earns respect each time they make a difficult call, while the national press has grown used to practising slash and burn journalism, content to clear-cut the forest, take what it wants and then move on.
Indeed, one wonders how different our perceptions of the national mainstream media might be if the chattering quasi -experts, political mouthpieces and overpaid anchors were sent into early retirement, and replaced with editing teams that simply compiled reports submitted by local affiliates and journalists in the field.
Removing the conclusion-drawing, forecasting and speculation that currently infects hard news could go a long way towards restoring the credibility of a troubled industry and the confidence of that "former audience" - those news consumers who have turned to the internet, not for its speed, but for the sources - to fact check, cross-check and provide context.
But, that said, I suspect the ship has already sailed.
h/t Pierre Legrand.
-"experts, political mouthpieces and overpaid anchors were sent into early retirement, and replaced with editing teams that simply compiled reports submitted by local affiliates and journalists in the field."
Yes X 3! Local reporters have to live with the people and events they report on. The "Nationals" are free to spin a story which ever way they choose, with little consequence for fallacy.
Posted by: dmorris at January 20, 2007 10:00 PM"Inconsistencies, contradictions or plain errors of fact are noticed, tracked and widely publicised".
It definitely is not a liar's world.
Posted by: Topper at January 20, 2007 10:29 PMJournalism... Perhaps the SECOND oldest profession known to civilization.
:0
Posted by: ZiLLa at January 20, 2007 10:53 PMI think that it's obvious that the MSM are feeling the threat. Last week (Red) Bill Good @ CKNW Vancouver had some one (a weekly guest) from Mcleans on pushing that blogs were dying because they were being bought by the highest bidder. I think that when you start a smear campaign against your opponent your really loosing.
Posted by: Tony W at January 20, 2007 11:19 PMI read McLean's over Christmas for the first time in years. How the mighty have fallen - full of typos, non-sequiturs, missing paragraphs, vapid spin. Really bush league.
The nationals just pull things off the wires, sometimes tart them up a bit to add a byline and run them. No research, no investigation into credibility. The guy who owns the newswire owns the news.
"Journalism... Perhaps the SECOND oldest profession known to civilization."
I'd say the first. The day after Adam and Eve met, the Snake was already printing "reports" of Eve standing on street corners, wearing heavy makeup. Photoshopped pictures followed soon after.
Posted by: Alex at January 21, 2007 12:21 AMSorry Kate. Didn't mean to get you all excited. Perhaps you could query billgood@cknw.com he's the one pushing this junk. Personally I think its just another empty liberal promise being screened through the MSM.
Posted by: Tony W at January 21, 2007 12:44 AMSlowly dragged by horses with whips. Some in the MSM are finally getting it, less the rationalizations.
He has a rationale as well. Instead of being tetchy about the leftie press, the disheveled Hollywood children. We should be having our own papers. Making movies of distinction . Even our having own TV stations with investigative news.
Fact is the liberals have killed the entrepreneur class here by over taxation enveloped in regulations.
Its sure not from lack of talented endowment in most artistic fields . LA is the second most inhabited city by Canadians on the continent.
He has some motivating ideas, but still, even at a local level its usually slanted.
Just my opinion.
Posted by: Revnant Dream at January 21, 2007 1:24 AMI wondered what it was like to see the Luddites in action when I read about them in high school history.
I think Im about to find out....
Luddites 2.0 come on down !!!
"We should be having our own papers. Making movies of distinction . Even our having own TV stations with investigative news."
the internet will allow this and it will casually bypass every regulatory body in the free word like this:
an overall increase in bandwidth to the average consumer via dedicated cables for example, plus ultra efficient compression - decompression algorithms and processors equal to the task, and video software that 'touches up' the video on the fly, once all these are in place watch for a veritable flood of home grown professional quality productions available on the web.
no more uselessly pixilated herky jerky stuff. the digital televisions are already here as well as the necessary internet infrastructure.
THEN all the old school media mandarins can kiss their derrieres good bye.
Information is power but technology keeps democratizing the distribution of information and eliminates layers of agents.
Martin Luther took power away from the Catholic Church by putting Gospels in the hands of practitioners. A more recent example over the last quarter century is how online discount brokerage took power away from Bay St and Wall St. Now the middle class owns and trades stocks, not just the powerful elite with the insider information that used to be heard in the mens room of the Toronto Club.
Like the newspaper owners, these Bay St gatekeepers were agents of financial information. They were rich and powerful elitists who had access to the Captains of Industry to gather information and then they could sell that info to their clientele. Politicians decided who got to be a broker of this information and politicians got paid for regulatory approvals with campaign donations. Info is POWER!
Technology eliminated a layer of agents
The legacy MSM is also analogous to the Islamofascists. They both need to go thru a reformation based on new technology.
Martin Luther took the notion that the power of the church had gotten out of hand and converged it with the new technology of a Gutenberg press. Then the priests could no longer charge interpretation fees. Technology eliminated a layer of agents
This democratization of religion needs to happen with both utopian Islam and the utopian MSM. The power centers of both don’t want that to happen so they have partnered to try and prevent the rising tide of democratization of information in a globally connected economy. As Bill Thompson says in his article “In the connected world we are all local”, ergo we don’t need a layer of agents like Dan Rather and Peter Mansbridge to give us their “expert” opinion. These agents can be eliminated. One down.
Very nice analysis, nomdenet.
That's exactly right. The new technology of the internet means that the interpretation and communication of information moves out of the control of a Special Sector of the population - whether its priests or journalists (and the Parliamentary Press Gang)...and moves into the control of the people, the users.
The MSM are trying to maintain their authority by denigrating the Internet and blogs - but, that's just hollow talk. As Kate says - 'the ship has already sailed'.
Posted by: ET at January 21, 2007 10:44 AMTime magazine is doing its part to reduce GHG with the closing of 3 regional offices and laying off another 500 staff. That is 1100 less employees than 2 yrs ago. Falling circulation and ad revenue are the cause. I wonder why. Maybe 6 years of Bush Bashing and anti-war has something to do with it.
Posted by: mary T. at January 21, 2007 11:23 AMGood post nomdenet,
The first wave was print versus the internet. From ever declining circulation and subscription, it appears that print is losing the battle, but not without kicking and screeching on their way down.
The next wave will be traditional TV versus IPTV. We've already seen youtube, but now there's also JumpTV and Joost. 2007 is going to be very interesting in this area. Can the CBC survive a free and open market?
Heh. The Liberals and their devices like the CRTC, have no jurisdiction and can't help them. If only it could happen sooner.
I suppose watching your whole industry and career die slowly in front of your eyes would be horrible. I hope it's really horrible for the Harroon Siddiquis' and James Travers' of the the world. The rest will have to learn something they weren't taught in journalism school. Honest reporting, fact checking and intelligent, non-slanted opinion - that's if they want an audience bigger than Robert McClelland's.
Posted by: irwin daisy at January 21, 2007 11:33 AMnomdenet:
Always thought provoking posts. Thanks (O:}
Posted by: Revnant Dream at January 21, 2007 12:08 PMOn the same topic:
Did anyone catch Michael Enright's CBC radio this morning. The topic was "Spin" ...how the politicians spin,PR people spin but, oh my the media are the heroes...I was dizzy listening I tell ya! Only caught 10 minutes of it...it was more than enough. It is one of a series.
There major issues ignored in this story:
1. these non-professional citizens are often better educated than the pros.
2. these non-professional citizens are often better travelled and experienced than the pros.
3. these non-professional citizens are living on the street right now... and they care about the smell down there while the pros... don't!
Posted by: real conservative at January 21, 2007 2:52 PMBingo!
Pick up your prize at the big table by the door!
A note to "Benitez", whose comment I've deleted.
Not only was your submission off topic, but you used the valid email address of a third party. Pull that stunt again, and you'll not only be banned, I'll report your activities to SaskTel.
Posted by: Kate at January 21, 2007 5:44 PMJOURNALISM
It may vie in history as the second oldest profession but it is very closely related to the first.
Nomdenet
I agree, excellent post. Second para, second sent, dead on.
At dust my broom in the comment section there is a link to the series thanks to Gabby in QC on 'spin'...by the spin artists at CBC...
Posted by: vf at January 21, 2007 9:12 PMGood posts everyone.
The daze of reading newspapers or listening to the local T.V. stations for news ended the day that old Gomery banned John Braut's (I hope that is spelled correctly) testimony from Canadian citizens. I discovered Captain's Quarters, Angry in the Great White North and sda - I was so happy to read and be able to communicate with people who were not talking through a Liberano spun web that I kept pinching myself every time I opened the net and found the sites still running and still reporting information that was truthful and reflected real Canadian values, as I know them.
The debt this country owes to people like Kate, here at sda, WS (shotgun), angry, Captain's Quarters, Dust my broom....can never be paid for; these people have changed everything because links and fresh information provide all citizens with the truth. We knew that the msm were not telling the truth but we needed access to the truth and a way to broadcast the truth to others. It is now right here, and it gives me a much less angry life.
Thank-you to all the people who post here with interesting ideas and informing links.
To the bought and paid for journalists that allowed a tanked, thieving, lying, stealing, corrupt group of agenda driven people to tread on my country - get another passport and move out - if you are going to France take French citizen Dion with you.
Posted by: Jema54 at January 21, 2007 9:19 PMAs per Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism
Journalism is pretty much subjective as lead by your character that comes up with a story, then it is flavored by editors, proof readers, by the political flavors of the organization where it is developed into a packaged product - not unlike packaged manure - and prevailing political winds and powers.
There was an article in a Swedish blog, don’t know the name of it, that journalist and politicians are the new aristocracy, they are supremely removed from the normal everyday life of a working person, which is pretty much everyone else. Apparently they don’t really have any casual contact with the plebeians; they live in separate sort of a ghetto. Enough of this, only one thing to add is that Canadian journalism is on the same track without any doubt whatsoever, 97.99% of the time.
The thing is that there is certain terminology here that is confusing, that is journalism, news and opinion. Journalism would suggest news.
Opinion is on the same level as pushing your agenda, which is disguised as an independent thinking. Nothing wrong with pushing an agenda as long as you declare it instead try to disguise it and use linguistic gymnastics to push it, thinking those idiots are going to lap it up. Perhaps that is the goal of opinion piece and there is no doubt that some will get sucked in, as it should be, they really deserve it.
On the other hand as far as news go, the thinking is that news is news and nobody really cares about the opinion of a person bringing the news. The news person in no case should take the news chew on it and spit it out as predigested story.
97.99 % of the news organizations employees in this country are socialists. Attention, there is no sarcasm in that sentence. As everyone knows socialism is discredited totalitarian sort of a region that as Khrushchev put it every system has to go through before it hits the wall of reality. Attention what Khrushchev said was a free paraphrase, interpret it at your peril.
So with totalirians being in the driver seat the news business will be of necessity dictatorial to the obviously inept, understanding nothing plebeians.
That was some ramble.
The way to spread the truth is to visit respected liberal leaning blogsites and leave links re topics debated to SDA and sites mentioned above.
It is important to branch out and extend an inclusive welcome so more can discover a fresh insight. = TG
Posted by: TG at January 22, 2007 8:53 AMCBCpravda appears to be dull to their own line that Hamas is considered a terrorist organization- this should have been the lead line.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/01/22/hamas-canada.html
FWIW this post is mentioned at the American media site NewsBusters, as a post by a Ms Kate Werk.
http://newsbusters.org/node/10291#comment.
Posted by: Imethisguy at January 23, 2007 6:21 AMThis post was referred to at the American media site "NewsBusters" as written by "Kate Werk".
newsbusters.org/node/10291
Posted by: Imethisguy at January 23, 2007 10:48 PM