Journalisms biggest Achilles Heel is its insistence on the concept of quality journalism and the idea that normal people care and especially care enough to pay for it.
Let's not forget that fundamentally, journalism is little more than verified gossip (Have you heard that the UN Secretary is involved in a scandal) and its primary value is not in how it's written but the revelation of the piece of information in itself.
Sure we have investigative journalism, but most people aren't going to pay for that.
So at the end of the day, the only people who really care about journalism are journalists themselves.
The biggest change in journalism IMO is that it's finally become clear that the postmodernist was correct.
Context and perspective define truth. And so all transparency in journalism will ever do is attract the people who already agree with the context and perspective of the individual journalist as loyal readers.
What you describe is reporting, or perhaps creative non-fiction writing. Whatever you want to call it, it's not journalism.
The problem is simple: the definition of the word journalism has become kicked, bent, dented and corrupted. And no one questions it. Certainly the "journalist" don't.
Yanking tweets off Twitter - as if someone or some bot hasn't said somwthing at one time or another - is considered journalism. Having a blog (somehow) makes you a journalist. Positioning yourself as a serious and respectable journalist but then covering NYE in NYC's Time's Square - hello Anderson Cooper - is completely acceptable. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Most of what gets passed off as jounalism barely qualifies as appropriate for a grade school newspaper.
Journalism is a verb. It's what you do in the pursuit of the perfection of your craft (i.e., The Truth). It's not where you work. It's not that your work is published on the internet. No, excuse me for repeating this, journalism is a verb.
I describe both journalism and reporting. Reporting is (plane went down) journalism is all the perspectives put around it to create a story that is more than the simple generic observation.
Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that impacts society to at least some degree. The word applies to the occupation (professional or not), the methods of gathering information, and the organizing literary styles. Journalistic media include: print, television, radio, Internet, and, in the past, newsreels.
So you're quoting Wikipedia to reference the definition of journalism? The irony of that is, for me, beyond imagination. Thanks for the laugh. Put another way...you're joking, right?
Would you use the term doctor and x-ray tech interchangeably?
Well if you want something else that says the same here is another link. If you don't think that fits with your own ideas then I am sorry I can't help you.
"Journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information. It is also the product of these activities."
If you can get over your own arrogance I would be more than willing to engage in a discussion with you about what journalism is and isn't. But it does require actual arguments no just snarky comments.
Reporting and journalism are not the say thing. They are not synonyms. Yet, in a very Orwellian sort of way, that's how they are used. It's so effective that you are pushing back against me for stating the obvious. If that's what you consider arrogance then yes, we're done here. I can't help you. You're been sucked into the void.
How about we try this? Watch the BBC World News. Watch the French sponsored news. Heck you can even watch RT.
Then watch the non-local news of any of the major USA networks. Pay attention not only to how the work is done, but also the stories and topics covered or not. Notice too the substance vs fluff/noise ratio.
1) There is no case to argue. Obviously, I am stating the obvious. The fact that you believe otherwise proves my point. This is, half-assed hacking reporting is not journalism. Maybe you're confused because what you've been told, and you've been buying into the hacks' spin that they're doing journalism
2) "NBC News announces Hoda Kotb..." That leaves me speechless. Laughing, but otherwise words cannot express how perfect this is for this discussion.
I already provided you with links and explained the difference. That you still insist without providing anything but thruther rhetorics really says it all.
I don't want to waste my evening debating with som Alex Jones clones. I can go to infowars if I want the "mainstream media is lying to you" speech.
We generally perceive peer-reviewed science as being capable of approaching objectivity. Why can this not be true for the reporting of events as they occur as well?
The goal of science is for experiments to be repeatable. If I were to build a copy of the LHC under my house, presumably I would be able to verify any of CERN's results.
But I can't verify anything in journalism. If two reporters watched something happen and their accounts differ, who is right? No one knows, and both will be accused of bias.
Funnily enough, by at least one scientific definition of wet, water is very, very not wet. Water has an extremely low wettability, and in fact will even wet most other liquids.
I always find that phrase when used as an example of common sense funny in that regard.
"Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that impacts society to at least some degree. The word applies to the occupation (professional or not), the methods of gathering information, and the organizing literary styles. Journalistic media include: print, television, radio, Internet, and, in the past, newsreels."
With journalism (and propaganda) truth and falsehood are not as important as what you leave in and what you leave out and how you present it.
When it comes to propaganda it is always better to deceive people with truth than with lies because lies can be disproven. The art lies in framing snippets of truth in the correct way, leaving larger truths out, to achieve your desired goal of perception manipulation.
Objective journalism can be just as powerful as a tool of deception as it is as a tool of enlightenment.
"Plane goes down" is to some extent objectively true (disregarding philosophy for a while here) but reporting on it becomes highly subjective as the journalist in order to add more than the basic observation will be biased on what they choose to describe the event.
If that was so, there wouldn't be such a thing as the replication crisis.
Some scientific fields, math and physics, are pretty objective , but those that have been wide political interests or have fallen to post-modernism do not.
Saying they have fallen to postmodernism implies that that is somehow wrong. I think a more precise interpretation is that we live in a post-modern world where there is no objective truth and that this rubs a lot of people the wrong way because they don't want it to be a question of interpretation.
The good news is that we don't need objective truth to establish solid models.
> Let's not forget that fundamentally, journalism is little more than verified gossip
No it's not. "California Wildfire Spreads" and "USA Withdraws from Paris Agreement" are not gossip. Sure, the NYTimes will report gossip from anonymous trump aides, but that's not most journalism.
> Journalisms biggest Achilles Heel is its insistence on the concept of quality journalism
This sounds to me like "Truth is hard! Let's give up."
Failing at quality journalism is better than succeeding at cynical, schlock journalism. The former harms society.
"No it's not. "California Wildfire Spreads" and "USA Withdraws from Paris Agreement" are not gossip."
I didn't write it was just gossip. Read again.
"This sounds to me like "Truth is hard! Let's give up." Failing at quality journalism is better than succeeding at cynical, schlock journalism. The former harms society."
You aren't harming society any less if you treat perspectives as if it's objective truth.
The other people who care are the people getting gossiped about.
I don’t think it’s coincidental that WSJ columnists and editorial board hacks are suddenly yakking about this topic on Twitter, at least as it pertains to The NY Times.
The public wants what the public gets. It's not the lack of a market. It's a lack of pride and effort on the part of the Fourth Estate to fulfill its duty to the democracy.
Put another way, why be a legit journalist when you can put in half the effort to be a hack and get paid nearly as well.
Not at all. The public wants what the public gets translates to: if you stop feeding the public shite they'll want that as well. So to say "there's no market" is not at all accurate.
If you need a reference look at Top 40 radio. It's on. It plays. The masses consume it. If you swappes out any 10 songs for example - which btw naturally happens - no one would notice. They wouldn't change the station.
The "there's no market" excuse was created by the media to cover their lazy asses. The Truth is they can't even analyze themselves. How are they going to properly serve the rest of us?
In the context of the concept of The Fourth Estate there is no choice. A _journalist's_ obligation is to seek The Truth and info the masses. Period.
The fact that there's excessive noise is no excuse for journalists giving up their standards and joining the noise - at which point they are no longer journalists.
Cost is not the issue. Availability and "brand reputation" is. Fox News can pass itself off as "news" because CNN and MSNBC are just as substanceless. What well know entity can we point to and say "now _that_ is journalism"?
Blaming the public for the lazy media is well...um...lazy. And clear indication of a lack of understanding if the responsibilities that come along with the right of a free press. The press has shunned their responsibilities. But that's the public's fault? Um...no!
Journalism is a lot of things. Seeking the truth might be a goal for some journalists but the be all end all definition of journalism it certainly aint.
Furthermore making truth the only way to define journalism basically render it non-existing as there is no objective way to define "The Truth". On top of that even if we interpret "seeking the truth" liberally you still end up agreeing with what I wrote as seeking is not the same as finding and thuse we are back to it just being interpretations.
You are proving my point and is in fact one of those who keep discussion journalism as something with some higher goal than what people want to pay for.
Again the market has spoken it doesn't care about your version of "high quality".
It's no ones fault it's just how it is and you just can't get to terms with that. That's a 'you' problem, nothing else.
We have what, six major news orgs in the USA (3 networks + CNN, MSNBC and Fox). And a handful of semi-relevant newspapers and magazines.
And aside from political leaning there is no difference between them. I take it you think that's because it's wise to swim in a red ocean? Because they are all chasing the same market? That doesn't make any sense.
I get it, not every outlet can be The Economist. But to call the fluff yacked out by (say) Newsweek journalism is pure fantasy.
In a democracy The Fouth Estate has certain responsibilities. These are responibilites that exist beyond the restriction of "market." To confuse this with commodity reporting is, at best, naive.
Again, I'll point you to Top 40 radio. There are a fair number of times where uniqueness - and dare I say quality - rises to the top. More importantly ulimately they accept and embrace what's there. The dial doesn't move.
I'll also point you to cable TV vs "traditional" TV. Game of Thrones, Sapranos, Walking Dead, etc., etc. The market went for that.
Star Wars was shunned and not expected to be what it became.
You're blaming the market and there's minimal - if any - opportunity for the market shows it wants otherwise. Instead we get "me too" reporting being passed off as journalism. And you believe this LCD approach is market driven. God bless you.
All this would be comical if the healthiness of The Fourth Estate wasn't so important. As it is, I'm having to convince someone of decent pedigree that journalism and reporting isn't the same thing. They are not. Cats are not dogs either.
I said SEEK the truth. That doesn't mean you'll attain it. But a journalist still seeks it. Why? Because that is journalism.
A reporter on the other hand parrots the press release spin that's fed to them. They gladly roll over and play stupid. They don't seek. They regurgitate. They do softball interviews. They skip the real questions. They can't be bothered. They also, because it's cool and prestigious call themselves journalists.
These reporters aren't real journalists any more than the bagels at Dunkin Donuts are really bagels.
I didn't say anything about "high quality." I'm do here. Have a nice day.
Yes, you did which as I said becomes meaningless statement which proves my point that journalism IS just perspectives regardless of intent. So thanks for proving my point.
> Journalism's biggest strength is its insistence on the concept of quality journalism and the idea that normal people care and especially care enough to pay for it.
I hardly think that you have identified journalism's biggest achilles heel.
Journalism as a business and the journalists who work within it, by and large, do not insist on the concept of quality journalism, or think that most people care, let alone that they care enough to pay for it.
If they did then they would mainly be producing meticulously researched and in depth content with no advertising and paywalls as default.
While this does exist, it is the periphery of journalism. The mainstream within the industry being the concept of presenting news as team sports to capture market segments for advertisers.
Also, context and perspective do not define truth. Logically, the whole truth regarding an event must contain the perspectives and contexts relating to it, rather than being defined by them.
I don't know, in the UK the discussions about the future of journalism centre more around press regulation and what are the acceptable limits of tabloid excess.
The discussion about the future of journalism is based on the idea of quality journalism and the fact that in order for journalism and medias to survive quality needs to be improved.
That's the same in the UK, the US or Denmark for that matter as all of them are struggling with the same issues.
or maybe you only hang out with tabloid journalists?
Do any search on google about journalism and the future of journalism and the majority discussion isn't about regulation or tabloid (tabloid is way to popular to be under danger)
I have been involved in several newspaper projects both one trying to be extreme high quality and one which was supposed to be free.
Regulation have never been a serious discussion point when it comes to discussing journalism, so yes perhaps we do hang out with different journalists.
Only two of them are tabloid. The rest are broadsheet and telly.
In the UK, regulation is a serious discussion point when discussing journalism, both from the perspective of things like the tabloid phone hacking and also from the perspective of restrictions placed on broadsheet reporting, e.g. the Trafigura super-injunction.
Also, what role were you taking in the newspaper projects you were involved with?
One I was responsible for advertising and digital strategy.
The other I helped create the entire newspaper both when it came to design and the content as one of my partners were lead investor in it.
They both failed for two different reasons, Despite the general love for the first newspaper and it's content (think International Herald Tribune) not enough wanted to pay for it.
The other was an attempt to establish a free danish national omnibus newspaper which failed because of problems with distribution.
I have also been advising a few online journalistic magazines. One of them is doing really well by following a donation model ala the one used on brainpickings.org.
Regulation is always a discussion but it's not the discussion that journalist normally discusses when they discuss journalism as tabloids aren't the only types of newspapers there are so I would still question the idea that regulation is really the core discussion when it comes to journalism.
Let's not forget that fundamentally, journalism is little more than verified gossip (Have you heard that the UN Secretary is involved in a scandal) and its primary value is not in how it's written but the revelation of the piece of information in itself.
Sure we have investigative journalism, but most people aren't going to pay for that.
So at the end of the day, the only people who really care about journalism are journalists themselves.
The biggest change in journalism IMO is that it's finally become clear that the postmodernist was correct.
Context and perspective define truth. And so all transparency in journalism will ever do is attract the people who already agree with the context and perspective of the individual journalist as loyal readers.
Helping journalism it wont.