Dan Gillmor points to an incendiary post by Paul Conley, who declares, "you cannot train someone to be part of a culture" and "there's no room for Web newbies." Conley is writing about B2B (trade) journalism, but presumably the same position might be taken in regard to general journalism.
After Charlie Gibson's excellent handling of the New Hampshire primary debates Saturday night my hopes for television journalism were temporarily raised, but watching the coverage over the last two days has restored my cynicism. The cable networks may have temporarily pushed aside the likes of O'Reilly and Dobbs, but I still feel like I'm watching coverage of Britney Spears or Anna Nicole.
Aaron Smith at Pew muses about the effect YouTube is having in the presidential primary race as Barack Obama's powerful Iowa caucuses speech is relayed around the Internet:
As newspapers fade from their historical role in covering world events, we're left with an unhealthy dependency on the newsgathering and news judgment of television networks. Writing for MIT's Technology Review, former NBC reporter John Hockenberry shreds any notion we might have that the networks are up to the task.
A particularly telling vignette:
MediaNews is adding comments to its newspaper articles, but they're outsourced to Topix.net, which is not only providing technology but community management.
Journalism organizations are factories.
I don't mean the manufacturing and distribution process of newspapers (printing), but rather the way news is handled. It's shuttled along a Henry Ford assembly line through reporter through copy desk (subeditors to you Brits), handled by a series of specialists, processed by automated machinery, combined, reorganized and shot out the door as a unitary product, whether it's print or online.
All journalism has political implications, and we're seeing that play out in the citizen media space.
Kevin Anderson describes how Google/YouTube has muzzled Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas, who has been posting videos of torture and official violence in Egypt.
