This is a bit of a meta-post, because it is about how blogging changes the way journalists work, prompted by this interesting article which reports on a survey of journalists who blog, asking them whether it has changed the way they work and their relationship with audiences. It has.
The response was incredible—coming from 200 journalists from 30 countries, representing newspapers and magazines, television and radio, online-only and freelancers. As I pored over the results, I was surprised at just how much these journalists felt their work had been changed by the simple act of blogging. I had expected some effect on their relationship with the “former audience,” but what surprised me most was when more than half of the blogging journalists said this relationship had been “enormously” or “completely” transformed. At the same time, when I might have anticipated that some aspects of the journalistic process to be affected, I found, instead, consistency in responses I received. This included in areas ranging from how journalists generated story ideas and leads to newsgathering and news production and even what happens after publication or broadcast. In each instance, the majority of journalists told stories of change.”
But the thing that interests me most about this report is the idea that blogging can help cut out the middleman between audience and journalist. In other words, a relationship can exist that is not dependent on a Big Media organisation to mediate between and to distance the reporter from the reader/viewer/listener.
For talk back radio announcers perhaps this is nothing new, but it is for the rest of us.
I have been reading Jeff Jarvis’s new book What Would Google Do over the last week (I have reviewed it for a forthcoming issue of the Walkley Magazine). One of the things Jarvis says is that in the future businesses of all kinds will have to cut out middle men, because the relationship with clients and audiences can now be direct.
So perhaps in the future journalists will start by asking the audience what they want to know about.
Let’s try an experiment. This blog is aimed at journalists and media workers and those who want to know about them.
Tell me, readers. What do you want to know?
10 Comments
Hai,
What would I like to know about… hmm let me see.
I guess something that is different with the blogosphere here compared to the US is that there is no “netroots” blogs in the fashion of a DailyKos.
People in the netroots hold no illusions about presenting “news” in an objective way, and act more like campaigners.
However they do still perform many of the functions of “news”, that is, informing people, analyzing events.
I think that this is a development in the function of blogs that has not occured here yet.
What are your thoughts on the matter, and do you think Australian’s will develop netroots, one that’s more than GETup?
Sorry to go off on a tangent, and not answer your question, but your post reminded me of a comment I heard a senior Australian bureaucrat make at conference in Canada a few years back. If I recall correctly, he said he advised anyone who asked for career advice against going into any industry involving brokering, whether it was insurance or knowledge. His argument was that the power of IT would put all brokering-based industries out of business. It seems his comment may also have some relevance for our industry, in light of your comment re middlemen.
I want a voice that’s independent; opinion that’s not skewed or altered to appease advertisers or clients. Where interests are tangled, this should be acknowledged.
I want news that is not hysterical, but reasoned and aware of its ability to be fallible.
Call me a traditionalist. But I actually still want to read impartial news journalism. The who, what, where, why, when, how, etc. Call me crazy. I don’t actually see blogs delivering this. At least I haven’t found one. Plenty of blogs – such as this fine example, an absolute favourite – break news. But it’s different writing. It’s delivered with opinion, generally. Which, if you like the blogger, is terrific. But traditional news writing is still my first port of call – whether that is online or in print. Bloggers, for me, generally, are a value-add. And in my fledgling blogging experience (shameless plug: http://importanceofideas.com) I’ve actually confirmed that writing HARD NEWS copy, free of bias and opinion, is what I really want to be doing. I desperately hope people still want to read that in the future.
I wish for news that is accurate, based on reliable sources that are quoted in a way that facilitates verification. I don’t want the worthless preamble: “informed sources say”.
I want journalists who clearly separate the facts they are reporting from their opinions. I value both; I just want to know which is which. If they are quoting the opinions of others, I want to know their sources so I can check the accuracy of their quotes, and the context from which the quote is drawn. If the source is obscure, details of who the quoted person is, is essential.
I want journalists who resist allowing their personal ideologies or orientation to taint their writings, unless they clearly state this at the outset. There is nothing objectionable to a partisan approach so long as it’s exposed up-front. It’s partisan writing posing as balanced commentary that is deplorable.
I want the journalists who encourage blogging to pose questions to their audience, who genuinely seek the opinions of others, and on specific issues as well as the generalities.
I want journalists who discourage political rants in response. George Megalogenis has set laudable rules for respondents to his blog. Some blogs are overrun with partisan comments, often extreme, often repetitive as the same culprits respond to many blogs. Their comments are usually predictable, consistently biased, often derogatory, breathtakingly arrogant, and generally add nothing to the discourse; only irritation and an inclination from balanced respondents to avoid the blog.
Respondents to blogs can influence opinion, and change the views of journalists, but only if their comments are thoughtful, coherent, well-reasoned, balanced and based on established fact or opinion that is verifiable.
If blogs can be established that meet these criteria we, the respondents to the blogs, would relish the opportunity of having our say and having it read and acknowledged.
Those journalists who reply to their respondents are the most enjoyable and productive with whom to interact. George Megalogenis and Jack the Insider are two shining examples.
I believe blogging will have an increasingly important contribution to make to discourse on a myriad of topics, it will enrich knowledge and understanding, and it will foster tolerance of the views of others. Better problem-solving, better solutions, and above all better understanding and tolerance is a likely outcome.
1. Who leaked Wilkie’s Top Secret ONA report to Bolt? Is it legitimate for an opinion columnist to deploy the ‘protect your sources’ convention when a leak is used solely to push an obviously partisan ‘Op Ed’ view? Is this what the convention is for? Who ‘polices’ the convention’s use so that it does not become illegitimate in the public’s eyes? (We are after all being asked by journalists effectively to exempt the press from certain laws, in that case the Official Secrets Act, in a time of war, with Australian troops deployed on active service.)
2. Editors (like Chris Mitchell) make daily subjective judgement calls about what does and does not constitute the ‘public interest’ when handling coverage of a public figure’s personal life – Kernot/Evans, Brogden, Warne, Hogan, Pratt, etc ad nauseam. In this way such journalistic leaders have a profound and immediate – you would almost say defining – influence on ‘the public interest’ in their own right. At what point – if ever – does (or should) the personal life of those editors likewise become a matter of the ‘public interest’, too? If you are making inherently subjective decisions about when to transform a ‘personal’ matter into a ‘public’ one…should concomitant personal transparency be a price you just have to pay?
3. What are some of the trade-internal mechanisms used for dealing with journalists’ mistakes? What generally happens to the Bylines and relevant editors when, say, a paper gets successfully sued (for rank errors of fact)? Is there a ‘general’ answer? Is it common for journalists to personally ring or front-up to people affected by their fuck-ups? Do you get yelled at by editors on a day-to-day basis as a jobbing reporter? Kicked up the bum? Patted on the back? How does the MSM generally function as a working heirarchy? Where do the subs slot in on a given story? Are they ‘automatically’ senior to a reporter or just on house style matters? Who actually writes the broadcast news running scripts?
4. How deep and long does the duty of care in the major MSM outlets run? Are reporters generally covered for all health matters (including psychological)? Are there mechanisms by which families are kept up-to-date and ‘in the loop’ when big stories are breaking, or reporters are suddenly deployed out of the way? What generally happens when a tenured journo has a bit of a work-related meltdown? Who owns the information journalists gather across a career,
5. Who in journalism decides which reporters get opinion columns? Are they seen as sinecures? Promotions? Better paid, more senior, than news gathering and editorial promotions? How hard is it to lose a column? How is the on-going journalistic worth of a column(ist) assessed internally?
5. Do ABC/SBS-trained journalists have any kind of ‘return of service’ obligations to the public purse? What about copyright matters on material collected in publicly-tenured capacity? If I publish a book based on my time spent as the ABC’s correspondent in Iraq, say, by whom and how is any (if any) subsequent royalty untangling done? Are there restrictions on other employment that piggy-back off public broadcaster employment? Public appearances? MSM gigs elsewhere? A book deal (nominally unconnected to the SBS but in reality enabled largely by an existing SBS Byline brand recognition)? What happens during the luring of an ABC Name away from the public broadcaster that ‘made’ them a Name to a commercial rival? Is our public investment considered in any way?
6. How does ABC/SBS merchandising work? For example, Playschool’s Justine Clarke has a major hit on her hands with the ‘I like to sing’ kids’ DVD. Are royalties split? Is the DVD spin-off just part of her tenured gig? Was there a set fee for recording the songs and videos? Does she have marketing obligations? Are there residuals from the repeat broadcast plays?
7. More generally given that Byline exposure is itself a ‘value-adding’ element of even the lower profile journalist’s saleability, how does the more banal cross-fora, tit-for-tat, casual-content thing work in Oz journalism? If I’m a commercial tenured employee (Paul Kelly) or a freelancer (Stephen Mayne) presumably I get paid for appearing on a public broadcaster ‘Op Ed’ show like the Insiders. But are there graded contracts involved? Standard rates? And what about all the other various ‘journo-chat’ segments, phone-in ‘expert’ comment and talking head stuff across the entire MSM programming spectrum?
8. Is there an easily-accessible ABC register of payments to journalists? Not just the ’standard’ rates, the negotiated contracts, too? Presumably we could get them via FoI. (Can we?) How much are we paying Kerry O’Brien, Phillip Adams, Andrew Denton, Margaret Throsby, The Chaser dudes…do we have an automatic right to know?
Sorry, MS, far too long and unedited as usual. But this is a great experiment. Most of us bloggers just don’t know how the MSM actually functions. I’ve long thought that it’s one of the biggest disconnects b/w meeja punter and puntee.
Well, Margaret, I am in the process of reading your book ‘The Content Makers’
about journalism in the 21st century in Oz, and have just finished the section on blogs.
You asked ‘ what do we want to know’ (about) and interestingly most responses are about personal opinions about style rather than content.
So, as a mature student who teaches business computing students part time in Christchurch New Zealand, I want to know:
what kinds of social justice projects are running in communities, and what do the users think of them?
what issues concern the elderly as they become frail and cared for by low paid untrained caregivers in rest homes that are there to make a profit?
what issues are indigenous leaders concerned about related to health, education, and employment?
what feminist perspectives are still being explored in Oz and by whom and how?
who is offering to engage in debate and thinking about how economies could run in the 21st century without greed, consumerism, and over protectiveness of elites? What ways can this be done? Who is leading this debate?
Cheers Diane.
What do we want to know about? The truth, of course. The truth, as distinct from fiction. These two areas should never merge in journalism, or anywhere else for that matter. Merging truth and fiction only creates a morass of dysfunctional rhetoric, particularly where the sources are unknown and inexperienced content creators use questionable information to make a mash of other peoples’ lives – believing themselves to be at some avant garde ‘cutting edge’. The truth is growing steadily rarer as mechanisms for creating content grow ‘more beautiful’, ‘brighter’ and ‘better than ever before’, leaving the crumbly ruinous matter of fact truth for dead.
Content-wise, I would like to see unbiased and factual reporting on the Arab/Israeli conflict.
Media-wise, I would like to see blogs have a positive influence on traditional media, encouraging traditional outlets to adhere to often-forgotten journalistic values, such as balance, credibility, accuracy…
I see Ad astra mentioned sources, and suggested that these must be reliable and ‘quoted in a way that facilitates verification’.
Yes, most journalists prefer a trustworthy source. And it certainly helps a reader where these can be verified. Except that this does little to protect the witness or source who hasn’t the wealth to protect him or herself from a slanderous backlash or incessant harassment.
The truth is that stories issue from all sectors of society, and sometimes sources with strange or unusual experiences are unwilling to tell these to a journalist. Sometimes, some people have stories so unusual as to be regarded incredible beyond belief. These people are frequently considered mad, or a threat to other interests.
Unusual stories are among some of the most important on the planet, and they are frequently held by people who prefer anonymity or are in danger. Unfortunately this also opens up opportunities for unconscienceable parties who exploit anonymity.
So, what I want is accurate journalism, researched compiled and presented by people with the wisdom to listen to and protect vulnerable sources – as well as the resources to find credible information, or other leads, to expose protagonists. I want journalism with irreproachable ethics.
I do not want paparazzi style bullying and sensationalist smut. Nor do I want utter trash or a collage of nonsense, or interference from well-heeled third parties trying to manipulate content through consistent sabotage just to prove that ‘it can be done’. I want quality journalism, not a make believe script masquerading as truth.
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