There's already all sorts of comments and Trackbacks for a post Jay Rosen made to his blog, PressThink. I've never met him but he sounds like a smart guy and he knows a lot about my job. That's because he runs New York University's journalism school.
Now, I've read his post but I've not read the Trackbacks or the comments yet. I'd thought I'd shoot first and read questions later, so to speak.
The post in question is titled “What's Radical About the Weblog Form in Journalism?” and it's a top 10 list that presents some of his observations about the relationship between blogs and journalism. This is a hot topic these days. Actually, it seems to be one of those topics that arrived with the popularity of blogs and now, like Sheridan Whiteside, won't ever leave and is taking over the joint.
I wish this debate would end becuase it obscures a more important issue: What is journalism and how does it serve its audience?
But first let's dispense with the idea of framing a discussion that compares, as Rosen's list does, blogs to journalism. Recognizing that definitions for both the term blog and the term journalism are still under debate, it seems to me that the term blog describes a form; the term journalism describes a process or a system. Of course, blogs can be part of a system we call journalism and, just as obviously, not all blogs are part of that system. (Nor do all bloggers want to be journalists.)
Yet people want to argue that blogs will upend or revolutionize journalism and mainstream journalists argue that blogging isn't Real Journalism. They do this, I think, because the output of the blog form and the journalism process are similar — that is: A reader or viewer learns something new about the world as a result of exposure to both. And so bloggers and journalists believe they are all working on the same thing. They are not. Or not always.
Now, I'm not an academic — I'm a working journalist who returns to work Monday after a month off — and I'm still trying to solidify these thoughts but the system or process of journalism includes several things that are independent of the form of output (the form of output could be newspaper articles printed on newsprint, broadcast journalism distributed on the Internet or, yes, blogs): Here are just three characteristics of the system that is journalism:
- A contract or an understanding between reader and journalist about how the bills are paid. I think most consumers of journalism have a good idea how the bills are paid at The Globe and Mail — through the sale of ads. My salary is paid by my paper and does not normally rise or fall depending on what we say about a particular advertiser. (I can't stress the importance of this enough. A reader needs to know who's paying the bills. It's a key factor in a reader's ability to determine the validity of the news that is presented to hime or her. )
- A reader has some sense of the instititional existence of the process. In other words, the reader need not be worried that if I, the journalist, disappear tomorrow, that the contract we have will end. You can argue with me on this one but I believe it becomes journalism when you have a system in place to ensure that whatever information you're in the business of providing keeps on being provided in my absence. You may accuse of me saying that journalism must exist within an institution and I would say, yes, that's what I'm saying I'm guess. Now the tricky part: What do we mean when we say institution? What are an institution's defining characteristics in this context?
- With journalism, a reader can count on some regularity. This, too, is a key point and key part of the contract between journalist and consumer. While journalists may write sporadically, the system works to a deadline — be it once a year or once an hour. We promise to say something at a certain time on a certain date and our readers start to look for and count on that that regularity. Journalists do this becuase it enhances our validity and says to our readers that journalism is what we have committed ourselves to doing.
There are more characteristics of this system called journalism. You may know of some and I'd encourage you to post some comments. I can feel them and intuit them, but it's tough to precisely codify them (particularly between changing the diapers of a very active two-year-old and the feedings of the newborn that is the reason I'm on holiday in the middle of October.)
Perhaps most importantly, the whole “are blogs journalism” debate is about the control of journalism and I don't see enough journalists facing up to this question honestly. Many journalists and many critics of journalists want to control who is allowed to call themselves a journalists. On some journalism listservs I belong to, a perennial topic revolves around whether Canadian journalists ought to form a professional organization like doctors or lawyers and set standards for admittance and all that. I'm dead set against such an idea or any other idea the prevents anyone from doing whatever it is he or she thinks is journalism. I say, if you think what you're doing is journalism, go ahead and call yourself a journalist. Mind you, I don't have to agree that you're a journalist and you don't have to agree that I'm one. But, if you want to be a journalist, knock yourself out and be one.
Journalism is to important to the functioning of a democratic society to seal it off, license it, and prevent anyone from becoming a practitioner.
So let's stop asking if blogs are journalism. Instead, let's start blogging and talking about real important things. Like, when are the Toronto Maple Leafs actually going to win a game?