BloggerCon II Weblog - Celebrating the art and science of weblogs, April 17 at Harvard Law School.

Comments on Jay Rosen's article

Posted by dwiner@cyber.law.harvard.edu, 1/20/05 at 5:34:27 PM.

Jay's article 

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/01/15/berk_pprd.html

Notes 

Is Jay saying that journalists have finally accepted blogs, at least in a limited way?

This article is relative to Jay's experience with blogs, which started in (year?)...

In 2001, we saw first-hand how the blogs covered the bombing of the WTC, in real-time, in ways that television and print news organizations couldn't. Back then it became clear to many in the blogosphere that our roles were complementary, not the replacement that most professional blog stories posited and then disposed of. You won't find many bloggers proclaiming that we were going to do what the pros are and were doing. You may find bloggers (such as myself) getting fed up with the way they were doing what they do, and of course we're not the only ones.

Maybe we should all watch some television news at this conference, as a group, and comment on it the way we do at home with friends and families. I can't believe the pros among us are satisfied with what they see. These are actors on TV nowadays, not news people. The reporting is superficial, not satisfying.

I don't think the unsettled feeling that pros have has much to do with blogs. If there weren't blogs, things would be in heavy transition anyway.

Key points in response 

People expect more information these days, think about ten years ago, you're going to Chicago, you might be able to find out what the weather there was yesterday, but you wouldn't get a forecast, or any local news, what's playing at the theaters, or send an email to a friend you haven't seen in years to see if they're around.

How blogs related to professional journalists, the most interesting way imho is that we're the people you quote, now free to communicate directly with people seeking the information, without going through intermediaries. The intermediaries remove information, even inverting it. The theory that reporters are wise arbiters of information they get from experts is quaint, but let's get real, that's not what happens. (The Mark Cuban example in Jay's piece.)

Don't be surprised that blogs are here, and they're not going away any more than laser printers are going away. It's part of the inexorable decrease in price of communication technology, a function of Moore's Law. They're no more a fad than publishing itself. (Jay's departure point #1.)

I started blogging because reporters in my domain were reporting conventional wisdom and not facts. I had to go direct or fail. In the end were were not able to overcome the CW, but instead created a new kind of communication, the weblog, and its adjuncts, RSS and now podcasting.

Naturally, professionals report through their lens, their point of view. To them, the question is whether or not blogs threaten their livelihood. But there are many other points of view, and most people who are not reporters, honestly don't care if your profession continues, any more than you care if mine does. That's just the way the world works.

Further we should consider whether any professional reporter is qualified to report on citizen journalism and weblogs, because clearly every reporter has a conflict of interest in this matter, whether or not disclosed, that's too big for them to get over. Take everything your read from professionals with a grain of salt, esp if the question the piece raises is if blogs will replace journalism (all too often they conclude not). That the pros don't see this conflict says something about the power of perspective, humans see what they expect to see, you have to work to factor out your expectations, it's hard, very very hard.

Jay comes at the world through his filters. I realized how different his filters are when I asked him to lead a discussion at BloggerCon II to try to define journalism. Instead Jay asked if blogging is journalism, answered the question himself (no) and went on from there. This is okay with me, I hire great discussion leaders (and pay them nothing) and whatever they want to do -- that's what we do. Later, when trying to figure out what happened, I had a minor epiphany -- of course Jay, since is the chairman of a journalism department in a university named in the publishing capital of the world, he has to see things that way. Now my backround is very different, see me as being on the other side of the screen, someone with an idea he wants to get out. At some point I don't care how it gets out, if the pros are in the way, do what you have to do to get through. Key point: We can't overcome our filters. That's the very most basic premise of blogging.

Jay doesn't talk about blogs as a research vehicle, I can ask a question on Scripting News, and if it's in the sweet spot of the expertise of the people who read my blog I may get the answer within five minutes. I can state a problem with virtually any server software, or ask for a recommendation on a minivan, and get immediate informed and intelligent advice.

Philip Greenspun has a philosophy about his blogging that I share. We're all writing for the search engines, and therefore for each other. By simply creating a web record of information we come across we're making the human race smarter. Sometimes, in fact most of the time, that's the reason I post.

Conclusions 

I agree bloggers vs journalists is over, because it was never on. Had journalists simply reported the facts, and not cared about conventional wisdom, had they been willing to challenge each other, compete for the most accurate angle, it seems blogging might never have been invented.

On the other hand, inexpensive electronic publishing was a foregone conclusion. Moore's Law is inexorable. You don't need to know any more to predict most of what's happened and will happen in this space.

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