Saturday, October 17, 2009

Why is Journalism a Profession?

In Bernard Lunn's recent article, Journalism 2.0: Don't Throw Out the Baby, he described bloggers as "passionate experts first and journalists second."

Lunn then goes on to list the aspects of journalism that he deems important, including a desire for truth, humility, skepticism and independence from commercial interests. His list echoes concepts expressed in the Pew Research Center's Principles of Journalism.

Why aren't journalism principles, which are essentially synonymous with critical thinking, being imbibed by our culture and education system already?

Lunn describes an expert that thinks critically. This implies that experts are qualified to be journalists, i.e., authoritative bloggers. Of course, these experts may have to adjust their presentation to accommodate differences in audiences. Still, experts must apply the same, if not a greater degree of critical thinking as journalists, otherwise they would not be experts.

Which forces me to ask: why is journalism a profession?

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

'Create content for people to love'

From New media virtual interview No. 2 via @macloo

What's the best way for media companies to move from a print first to a web first mentality?

... when it comes to the print-first vs. web-first shift, it's actually not rocket surgery. You have to take some of your staff and give it the mission of doing incremental, breaking news on the Web. And then you have to get your key newsroom people, and I'm talking managing editors, city editors, sports editors, and you've got to make the success of the website part of their mission. If you do those two things, you're going to wind up producing news in a different workflow and it's going to work.

Most places want to treat this as a training issue and a systems issue, and don't get me wrong. Both are important. But it's really a trust and accountability issue. Unless your top leaders are actually accountable for the success of your Web efforts, they're going to be sabotaging or at least undermining them. It's just too easy for them to give the Web lip service, and then stick to doing the same old thing. And employees aren't stupid. They see that, and they just wait out most 'web-first' initiatives.

... unless your top management is accountable for its success, and by that I mean that their salaries and bonuses are tied to it, it's not going to change. This is a cultural challenge masquerading as a technical problem.

Create content for people to love, not for people to encounter in this zipless, bloodless, view-from-nowhere mass-media fantasy world that we created in the 20th century.