Poyntless Online-Romanesko — Hilarious spoof of famous website for journalists. Slams the blogger elite.
Your daily fix of media crack
FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2005
Bloggers to MSM: drop deadA coalition of 20 blog sites issued a joint statement declaring the main stream media “dead, extinct and encrusted in amber.” “We are the conscience of America and the only ones practicing fearless journalism unlike the corporate toadies who pass themselves off as reporters,” the emailed missive declares. Signers to the statement include such well known sites as Daily Kuss, MonkeyBladder, BuzzFlush, Wankerette, GetOffTheCrapper and NakedBadger. A new study of blog site content by the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania found they consist of 60% links to MSM stories, 20% links to other blog links to MSM stories, 15% personal rants and 5% promotional plugs for media forums the bloggers attend to speak about how they are replacing the MSM.
Huffington to bloggers: look out here I comeFormer DC issues salon hostess cum conservative cum liberal commentator Arianna Huffington says she sees a gaping hole in the blogosphere: the lack of media elites. That’s why she’s launching the “Huffington FactorBlog” which will feature such luminaries as Tina Brown, Dan Brown, Charlie Brown and Jason Blair. Asked the difference between online magazines that have been around for years such as Slate, and a blog, Huffington said “blogs use preformatted templates which therefore creates a whole new form of online journalism.”
The main problem I have with bloggers is that they don’t actually do any first hand research. A good example is the story John ran a few weeks ago about the student who was arrested for writing a story about zombies attacking a school.
John said he was going to follow the story. That was nice. But a journalist would have WROTE a story. He would have interviewed the kid. Got a copy of the zombie story he wrote. Interviewed the police. Interviewed the grandparents. Etc.
The difference between journalists and bloggers is that bloggers only repeat what others have written, then comment on it. A real journalist does the actual research.
Of course someone will point out some blogger somewhere who does his own research. That’s fine. There are exceptions to nearly everything. It’s just that I’ve yet to read a single blog where a blogger did first hand research himself.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Good bloggers are really media critics, not journalists. There is a huge difference. That’s the approach I take although I will sometimes do some reporting on the blog, I do not have the resources needed to do it right. The irony to the bloggers as journalists notion is that if it were true and all the newspapers in the world folded to make way for bloggers then there would be no source material for them and all the bloggers would fold too.
Gentlemen, I totally agree. Without the “real” journalists that actually get their hands dirty, most news would never reach us. This is not 100% though as there have been several major stories that the Main Stream Media either missed or ignored. Or maybe just didn’t care about.
An example was when Senator Trent Lott suggested that if Strom Thurmond had been elected President in 1948 things would be a lot different. It was the bloggers watching C-SPAN that caught the gaff leading to Lott’s demotion from Senate Majority Leader.
A more recent example was the White House correspondent Jeff Gannon / Jim Guckert being outed by bloggers. Now, Ron Brynaert has posted a blog about Gannon / Guckert plagiarizing his stories. I also recently saw a blog on this site referring to his being a “girly man of the evening” (my term).
The vast majority of stories that appear on blogs need to come from other sources as I cannot go to Washington to scoop W then fly off to Rome to check out the Pope and then back to Florida for Terri. Nor could I pay a staff to do it.
But the bloggers strength is not the gathering of news, but in the analysis. With all the armchair critics and pundits sending in their two bits and checking out the various sources that the analysis can only be better. It can and does come in almost any flavor the reader cares to visit.
Not all those calling themselves “real journalists” in the MSM are. A great many columnists (not all) rely on others to gather the stories that they put their name to or sit back reading other reports, to some degree, and then commenting. Without commenting on their veracity, I am referring to people like Bill O’Rielly, Robert Novak, and Rush Limburger, who each consider themselves “real” journalists.
More of my two cents worth.
Pat,
Thanks for the shout out, but I disagree with the notion of what “good blogs” are. While I may piggyback on a print journalist’s story…the majority of the articles I write are stuff that I break…same goes with the rest of the “good blogs.” We do practice journalism.
Now the famous blogs, the popular blogs, the ones that get all the attention because they’ve been around longer…those guys do the kind of blogging that you’re talking about.
But the majority of my favorite bloggers don’t sit around and wait for the msm to cover a story. We do it first…and we’re usually ignored.
I’ve broken so many stories at my blog in the last four months it makes my head spin…but it’s difficult to get it out there because most think that bloggers are only offering opinions rather than doing real journalism.
But part of this is because…the big bloggers…when they are confronted with the fact that they don’t live up to the same ethical guideliness as the mainstream press…argue that they’re not journalists. Well…I disagree. I am a journalist..just an unpaid one. And I try to stick to the same ethical guidelines that real journalists are supposed to. When I offer opinion in my articles I make sure that it comes across as opinion…but I include tons of links in all of my stories so that everything is verifiable.
Peace