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November 28, 2005

Helping a student

I teach a course in news editing (big stretch) at Southern Connecticut State University. A student of mine went on to complete an internship here at the Connecticut Post. This week she contacted me asking for insight for a paper. The questions made me think pretty deeply about what we do as journalists.

Do you think that some bloggers can be considered journalists? Can blogging be considered journalism?

For me, the more relevant question is whether a journalist can be considered a blogger. (If you've read my crappy blog, you'll know what I mean.) Your question is tricker. I suspect when radio and, later, TV appeared on the scene, there were those among the wire and newspaper journalists of the world who raised similar questions. Ultimately, radio and TV expanded the notion of what we call journalism because they could do things the existing media could not. I think the blogosphere will prove similar in the long run.

The Internet is a new medium and people are still figuring out how best to put it to use. Blogs are an even newer phenomenon; I'm not sure I even heard the word until three or four years ago and I'm still trying to figure out exactly what it means. (Are news aggregators like Fark and online tabloids like The Drudge Report blogs, strictly speaking?) It'll be a lot easier to figure out how blogging fits into the concept of journalism once everybody agrees on exactly what it is -- and more importantly, what it isn't.

All of which is a cheap way of dodging your question. Here's how Merriam-Webster defines "journalism":

1. a : the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media
b: the public press
c : an academic study concerned with the collection and editing of news or the management of a news medium
2. a : writing designed for publication in a newspaper or magazine
b : writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation
c : writing designed to appeal to current popular taste or public interest

Blogging meets many of these criteria, and since there is no medium that satisfies all of them, it's fair to say blogging -- however you define it -- falls within the wider definition of journalism. The purist in me wants to point out that a "journalist" is literally, one who keeps journals. In that case, blogging is journalism in its most rarified form.

But here we're talking about Journalism, not journalism. Journalists (capital "J") write for the public good, sacrificing their personal shibboleths for some sort of objective ideal. Bloggers, in contrast, often do little more than repackage Journalists' work and add a subjective spin. Or they simply comment on Journalism itself, without contributing anything new. Either way, I think blogging contributes to the greater public understanding. I don't believe my blog is Journalism, strictly speaking. But I hope that it fills a gap in the public's understanding of what appears in the Connecticut Post. Or, at least, it would if anybody read it.

Do any of the blogs on the Post web site get edited by anybody else by the bloggers themlseves?

For the time being, the blogs on the Connecticut Post Web site are unedited, although I suspect the Webmaster reads 'em pretty faithfully. We bloggers also read each other's posts, and I suspect that any post that violated the organizational norms for decency or exposure to libel would quickly be deleted.

Any controversial blogging instances that you might share with me ?

I haven't run into controversy (but I'm working on it). I'm always aware of the potential for it. As a journalist and blogger, I have to adhere to certain boundaries to avoid jeopardizing my credibility as a journalist. I may feel strongly that Mayor A is a total nincompoop or that Governor B is a living saint, but I could easily wind up writing about either one. My work as a journalist has far less credibility if I'm wearing my allegiances on my sleeve. (This has been a problem in the national media lately: Two of the country's most powerful news organizations, Fox News and the New York Times, both lack credibility among a significant percentage of the population due to the belief that they are biased.)

Posted by edcrowder on 11:57 PM | Comments (1677)

November 15, 2005

Talkin' turkey

It’s a challenge to find new and interesting ways to cover the holidays every year.

It seems there are ever fewer people in the United States who need a newspaper to inform them that they’re supposed to eat poultry with relatives on Thanksgiving, or to encourage them to go shopping the next day. They don't need to be told that Dec. 25 is the day to unwrap the presents under the tree, or that they’re supposed to get pie-eyed on champagne a week later as they coax a ball down from a tower.

Even if our internal calendars aren’t up to the task of keeping track of all these dates, legions of retailers spend the period roughly from Labor Day on jackhammering these dates into our heads. Bound by tradition, we newspaper folk can’t help but to add to this advertising blitz by devoting truckloads of newsprint to the same subject.

When I was a rookie reporter on one Connecticut newspaper’s business desk, I was asked to head down to a local mall the day after Thanksgiving. I was to write a story conveying a sense of the frenzied mobs scheduled to be storming the place right about then. The economists were predicting a banner retail season, and our advertisers, no doubt, would not have been displeased if we were to encourage people in the belief that this was a year for people to spend as if their reputations as dutiful consumers hung in the balance.

I won’t say it wasn’t busy at the mall when I visited. It was. But what I wrote — an honest appraisal — apparently didn't convey the sense of frenzy my higher-ups were after. They were thinking, Times Square on Millennium Eve. Valencia on Las Fallas. The Champs de Elysee, Aug. 19, 1944. Etc.

My version was more like the DMV at 10:30 on a Thursday morning.

After poring over the story for a second or two, my editor asked if I could make it "a little more dramatic, perhaps?"

I told him that's the way things had been when I visited the mall, and I wasn't about to change the story to say anything different.

But perhaps, my editor persisted, I could add a few details about how cars were prowling the parking lot, searching in vain for spaces. Or about the frantic crowds at the cash registers.

I replied that no mosh pits had formed at the checkout lines I'd observed, and there had, in fact, been parking spaces aplenty for any shoppers industrious enough to walk a few hundred feet to the entrance.

In the end, my editor ended up grabbing the story away from me and adding in details of a shopping frenzy like few others, cribbing details he'd seen reported with wide-eyed hystrionics on the TV news, accompanied by tightly-focused shots of flocks of shoppers. Judging by my editor's snarled commentary, my stock had dropped somewhat in the newsroom.

As I skulked, a more experienced reporter pulled me aside and offered the following advice, which I have carried with me ever since:

“Y’know,” he said, sotto voce, “sometimes when they ask for a blue dog, you just gotta find a dog and paint it blue.”

In this newsroom, as I mentioned earlier, the main challenge is simply keeping things fresh.

Last year around Thanksgiving I cranked out a story about what American Indians thought about the holiday, which they supposedly played such a key role in creating. (They view it about the same way your average Pole might view a holiday commemorating that country's "liberation" by Stalin.)

This year I’m hard pressed. Who knows, maybe a local PETA chapter will raid Gozzi’s Turkey Farm and bail me out.

So I put the question to you, dear reader: What can I write about the holidays that hasn’t been said already?

Posted by edcrowder on 7:58 PM | Comments (1)