A journalistic rant on bloggers

It's a bit ironic to use a blog to rant on blogging, but here goes.

A colleague here sent me a column written by Dick Feagler of the Cleveland Plain Dealer on the critical difference between bloggers and journalists.

I don't agree with everything he says, but he's right on target about the lack of credibility regarding the blogosphere.

After all, it's pretty simple to Google various news sites and then give your opinion. But that doesn't make you a "newspaperman," as Feagler writes:

"Bloggers. Have they ridden with a candidate in the middle of the
night? Have they covered the murder of a young girl lying dead in the
grass but looking as if she's sleeping? Have they covered anything?

"Or do they merely spew opinions and Google? Once, you had to pay dues
in this business. Give me one good reason why we should let the
bloggers off the hook."

Frankly, it has always rankled me to see online "news" sites -- even in Methodism -- where someone slaps a byline on information culled from other sources. That's a quick and easy way of passing along news, but it's really just taking the credit for the work done by others.

Hardly the same as doing the work of reporting yourself, as those of us who have plodded through countless and diverse assignments on deadline at daily newspapers well know. Yet it happens all the time.

And I've often wondered, when dead-tree versions of the news are gone, where will bloggers get their information?

Read on for Dick Feagle's old-school wisdom.

Comments

[Jay Voorhees]

Um...not to be controversial, but doesn't a good bit of UMR's content (since the very beginning) draw directly upon the work of the United Methodist News Service's reporters? Isn't the use of press releases by reporters analogous to what bloggers are doing? In fact, aren't bloggers in general being more transparent in their giving of attribution to the original source?

The difficulty with all of this is the attempt to suggest that bloggers are a unified group with a particular agenda. Certainly there are some high profile blogs attempting to "report" on happenings in the world. However, the majority of bloggers are involved in offering commentary on the world around them, as reflected in the news.

Within the church world, I would argue that pastors who blog could easily throw similar questions back on religious reporters. After all, have you sat in your office with a person in tears who has been able to come out of the closet regarding their sexual identity with everyone except for their church? Have you ever been a fly on the wall in the room when a saint of the church dies, admitted into such sacred space that you almost feel blasphemous in being present? Have you ever had to put up with the petty stuff involved in preparing for a Charge Conference and recognized how little the hierarchy really has to do with life in your church? Clergy who blog all live through these experiences, and provide a valuable corrective to the politicization that occurs at the general church level of the church, and among those who report on the politics of the church.

[Robin Russell]

Hi Jay,

You are taking this way too personally. I'm not talking about most Methobloggers, including pastors. I'm referring to certain "news" sources who slap their own byline on a story, even when they are merely compiling what others have done or quoting other news sources.

In the Reporter, at least as long as I've been editor (two-plus years now), whenever you see one of our Reporter staff bylines on a story, it's because we've done the reporting ourselves. If and when we use a UMNS story, we clearly label that story as such, with the reporter's name on the byline.

So while we use some UMNS articles, we also do a lot of our own coverage, most recently, the Council of Bishops meeting in North Carolina, the Peace and Justice Conference in Fort Worth and the Renewal and Reform Coalition conference in Memphis.

Thanks for letting me clarify.

Robin

[Scott]

I don't think bloggers are getting their news from dead trees. They are getting in mostly online. But I could be wrong.

Who is putting their byline on other people's work???

I have been saying for a decade now that the internet would change the church. For one thing, information is readily available.

My own Annual Conference quit using the UM Report for its newspaper and did its own thing for awhile. This happened at the same time the Jimmy Creech fiasco was happening. Suddenly, all news was about my own Annual Conference. And filtered through the Conference Office.

Thank God for the internet. I have been reading the Report online now for as long as it has been online.

It makes me mad that some sites don't put their stuff online or they charge for it. Many sites are now making their content free, including the New York Times.

Lifechurch is making all their content free. So is John Piper. Piper has some great reasons for making content free.

The internet will change the world, and the church! Thank God!

[John Meunier]

There was a good book written by a couple of Washington Post editors a couple of years ago (The News About the News) that makes a good point that nearly all the news we get comes from a newspaper newsroom. TV, radio, Internet all pick up news collected by the newspaper reporting staff and distributed through the wire services.

Newspapers are the only news organizations with enough actual reporters to collect more than the smallest amount of orignal news. Yes, newspaper reporters have all manner of flaws, but the question you end with Robin is a great one.

No one knows who will collect news when the newspapers die.

Citizen journalism is no replacement for the work and experience it takes to deliver a steady and sophisticated report about the events in our public life.

[John]

Bloggers have made a lot of direct-research contributions to journalism. For example, they proved that CBS' Bush National Guard memos were fabrications. They proved that the AP's frequently quoted Iraqi police Captain Jamil Hussein was non-existent person. And they proved that Cpl. Scott Beauchamp's columns in The New Republic were fake. And they proved that the Al Dura news footage deliberately and falsely attributed Palestinian civilian deaths to Israeli soldiers who were not present at the time.

And that's just off the top of my head. Those are pretty important contributions, don't you think?

[John]

John, actually those all fact checking. I agree that bloggers have made contributions in the fact checking role - something traditional news media have cut back on as they have trimmed staff.

In the course of a day, a small newspaper in a a mid-sized American city reports and writes dozens of stories (news, sports, features). There are still more than 1,400 daily newspapers in America.

Bloggers enrich the conversation and they can serve as a counterpoint on the reporting - raising questions that reporters and editors missed. But there is a shoe leather aspect of reporting - getting out from behind the desk and talking to people and seeing things first hand - that bloggers have not come close to filling, yet.

Maybe they will some day. But the blogger ethic and the reporter ethic are not the same. Maybe we don't need reporters. The nation was created without reporters, after all. It wasn't until the Civil War that reporting became entrenched in American media.

It is actually kind of interesting how the timeline of the rise and collapse of reporting mirrors the timeline of the rise and decline of the United Methodist Church. Hmmm.

When the business model for traditional newspapers finally collapses, you will notice the void. Or, rather, you might not. You just won't know what is going on in the world. Things that are not reported on still happen. They just happen in the dark.

[Dale]

Robin,

You DID say, "even in Methodism" when you voiced your complaint, so you did have SOME methobloggers in mind, no?
I'd like to know what some of those are that " slaps a byline on information culled from other sources. That's a quick and easy way of passing along news, but it's really just taking the credit for the work done by others."
Who "takes the credit" here for LINKING to the work of others? I don't read anybody doing that.
Dale

[John]

John, you're making a distinction without a difference. Research is fact-checking, and the blogosphere has proven as capable as journalism by engaging in it. The Bush National Guard memos fiasco is a good example: bloggers consulted professionals in the field of word processing, engaged in experiments, and interviewed people involved in the story. If that's not journalism, what is?