The following post by the Con Man came in response to a blog by Corby Kummer from the Aspen Ideas Festival for The Atlantic:
I was one of those who came to the microphone to speak at this session but I did in fact want an answer to my question about the very concept of “Citizen Journalism.” I did in fact address my question to the panel.
(Sorry, Corby. Don’t mean to let the facts get in the way of a good story, and by the way, does every story turn out to be about food for you?)
What I said was at Aspen Post and our other blogs (Snowmass Post, Skiing Post, Fractional Post–all .net) we have 50 bloggers, tens of thousands of monthly visitors–and “no citizen journalists.”
I recounted further that in training an intern this summer–Jessica Andrews from Indiana University–that the distinction between blogging and journalism was enormous, that “journalists can morph into bloggers,” but that very few bloggers can morph into journalism, because it’s difficult, time-consumer, and costly on many levels.
Training someone to be a journalist requires instruction in facts, quotes, sources, and always getting it right. Training someone to be a blogger means getting out of their way as they wrestle with personal notions of truth and beauty, personally and politically. Jessica, for example, is already a terrific blogger and a fine writer, but she is still very much learning the basics of journalism.
At my company, Post Time Media Inc., we have actually created a news service called “Post Time News” to specifically make the distinction between news and blogging. It’s the third news service I’ve started in my career, and I hope it’s the best. But it has nothing to do with blogging.
(Disclosure: I used to be the new media columnist at Editor & Publisher, I was the first person ever hired by NBC full-time in new media in 1981, and I had my own consulting firm in this area for ten years. So I’m not coming from nowhere on this.)
One last notion: at the Aspen Ideas Festival–and anywhere you go–it is painfully clear the balance of power has shifted from the old media to the “new” like YouTube, Facebook, and on a local level, blogs like Aspen Post. Even the title “citizen journalists” bespeaks a certain arrogance and outright misunderstanding of the way things have changed, and embraces the woeful idea that plain old people, once given a soapbox to call their own, will want anything to do with dinosaurs.
So, Corby and fellow citizens, I’m still waiting for the answer that never came. There was simply no time.
Michael,
Great post!
“no citizen journalists.”…
Bloggers are not journalists. They are participants in the latest form of public debate.
In blogging’s basest form, which is probably the best way to look at it, the phenomenon of blogging—and of commenting on blogs—is a lot like standing on a soap box at Hyde Park Corner and declaring what you think. In this sense, I suppose blogging is a bit like stepping out into the street with no clothes on…
A key difference—and this is what fascinates me—is that blogging is not the spoken word. It is the written word.
In graduate school, I studied Rhetorical Theory (a.k.a. speech). In my thesis, I posed the idea that the principles of rhetoric—the spoken word—applied equally to the written word. I finished my thesis in 1986. While my thesis was accepted, the faculty snickered audibly as I left the room…
A reason I comment on AspenPost is my interest in what I see as a marriage of the written and spoken word. The dynamics of rhetoric have never been more integrated with the written word since the advent of blogging—and the concomitant practice of commenting. Actually, it is the latter that intrigues me more than the former, for the exchanges that occur in the comments is often far more interesting than the original premise… a dynamic that often occurs in debate…
In any case, I am grateful for AspenPost, and for the obvious discomfort blogging gives journalists…
Cheers,
Michael,
Great post!
“no citizen journalists.”…
Bloggers are not journalists. They are participants in the latest form of public debate.
In blogging’s basest form, which is probably the best way to look at it, the phenomenon of blogging—and of commenting on blogs—is a lot like standing on a soap box at Hyde Park Corner and declaring what you think. In this sense, I suppose blogging is a bit like stepping out into the street with no clothes on…
A key difference—and this is what fascinates me—is that blogging is not the spoken word. It is the written word.
In graduate school, I studied Rhetorical Theory (a.k.a. speech). In my thesis, I posed the idea that the principles of rhetoric—the spoken word—applied equally to the written word. I finished my thesis in 1986. While my thesis was accepted, the faculty snickered audibly as I left the room…
A reason I comment on AspenPost is my interest in what I see as a marriage of the written and spoken word. The dynamics of rhetoric have never been more integrated with the written word since the advent of blogging—and the concomitant practice of commenting. Actually, it is the latter that intrigues me more than the former, for the exchanges that occur in the comments is often far more interesting than the original premise… a dynamic that often occurs in debate…
In any case, I am grateful for AspenPost, and for the obvious discomfort blogging gives journalists…
Cheers,