From Rebecca Townsend, who promises all entries will not be this long.
This Blog business has the potential to add a free-flow outlet for flexing the creativity muscles that may become atrophied during the rigid contraints of AP style and deadlines pressuring for production in the face of too much information to process.
Still, this is dangerous territory for journalists to transverse.
Say, as I was telling Alex today before class, I interview a chump. Or at least I think he's a chump - pompous, egotistical, demeaning. He could have valid info for my story and the bottom line is: that valid info is all that my audience needs to see. I may need to vent, but it is unprofessional and a source-killing act if I get online and, in the interest of full disclosure, tell the world my full, unedited view of the chump.
It may be interesting, but it may be self-interested chaf accomplishing nothing but wasted server space.
Hopefully we'll have the opportunity to revisit and further discuss this fear of polluting our objectivity and credibility by incorporating blogging into the journalist's daily load. On the flip side, my diary entries have been slacking, so this may render a cup or so of fresh-squeezed creative juices.
Now that I've got that pseudo disclaimer out of the way:
Reading through the ethics codes makes me appreciate even more the Journalists' Creed of Walter Williams, which always gets me fired up about carrying the torch forward. But at the same time it, as did the codes of the TV News Directors and the National Press Photography Association, places a heavy burden on all us practitioners in the sense that it seems corruption and misdirection is circling us at all times and it takes almost super-human clarity and care to avoid the pitfalls of poor journalism.
The TV directors did keep Williams' notion of the "public trust," which I find to be a simple and centering principle. I had to laugh when they said to avoid technological tools that "sensationalize events." Are their members the same people that direct most of the TV newscasts I've grown up watching? This is another subject perhaps we can revisit.
Regarding the "backpack journalism" issue: I'm interested to see how this shakes out.
Personally, I like the idea of cross training so I can move across and blend the various media, but the idea that cash-strapped news managers might view me as an easy way to cut staff and put more work on one person sickens me. The crazy nature of the business already makes it tough to spend a lot of time on any one project. If they keep expecting more and giving us less, they're gonna burn out a lot of their true talent and replacing it with eager, less experienced scabs, who, if they stick around long enough, may end up taking the same path as their predecessors.
I see the risk us convergers run of jacking all trades and mastering none, but at the same time, I see the potential for powerful team work where we can allow our individual strengths to shine while our team cohesiveness erases individual weakness.
Of course, teams involve trust, good humor, willingness to air and work through conflict and commitment. High turn-over, individual ambition and internal competition could impede the cooperation necessary for successful teamwork to thrive.
The Elements of Digital Storytelling site at the Minnesota School of Journalism was well done and some of the examples offered exciting application examples, particularly the new York Times' Tribal Underworld feature listed under the multimedia configuration tab of the Media element. Under the same tab, the Ardoyne Suicides started out to be interesting, but it petered out midway through, thus illustrating a weakness of storytelling in the digital world: If the technology fails, the story is lost.
One final note, yesterday's Romanesko had a link to an ominous opinion piece, "Is convergence the next media disaster?" The author, Edward Wasserman, the Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University, concluded with the following:
"The converged newsroom opens up huge, perplexing questions. So far they're being answered by the techies, the brand managers, the publishers, the marketers. When do we hear from the professional journalists? Where is their independent assessment of how these powerful new technologies can be used, not to plant the flag in cyberspace, not to reclaim market share, but to provide great, meaningful journalism?"
Haven't real journalists been addressing this question? I'd expect a Knight professor to know if they had, but maybe there are real dangers of ivory towers divorcing those ensconced within from the sweat and the noise of the world swirling around below.
