[Dean's World] Ron Coleman: Is the Internet replacing "journalism"?

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Posted by Ron Coleman:
Is the Internet replacing "journalism"?
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1154445116.shtml


   [1]Press Pass 

   [2]Nicholas Lemann writes in The New Yorker:

     Reportingâmeaning the tradition by which a member of a distinct
     occupational category gets to cross the usual bounds of geography
     and class, to go where important things are happening, to ask
     powerful people blunt and impertinent questions, and to report
     back, reliably and in plain language, to a general audienceâis a
     distinctive, fairly recent invention. It probably started in the
     United States, in the mid-nineteenth century, long after the
     Founders wrote the First Amendment. It has spreadâand it continues
     to spreadâaround the world. It is a powerful social tool, because
     it provides citizens with an independent source of information
     about the state and other holders of power. It sounds obvious, but
     reporting requires reporters. They donât have to be priests or
     gatekeepers or even paid professionals; they just have to go out
     and do the work.The Internet is not unfriendly to reporting;
     potentially, it is the best reporting medium ever invented. A few
     places, like the site on Yahoo! operated by Kevin Sites,
     consistently offer good journalism that has a distinctly Internet,
     rather than repurposed, feeling. To keep pushing in that direction,
     though, requires that we hold up original reporting as a virtue and
     use the Internet to find new ways of presenting fresh
     materialâwhich, inescapably, will wind up being produced by people
     who do that full time, not âcitizensâ with day jobs.

     Journalism is not in a period of maximal self-confidence right now,
     and the Internetâs cheerleaders are practically laboratory
     specimens of maximal self-confidence. They have got the rhetorical
     upper hand; traditional journalists answering their challenges
     often sound either clueless or cowed and apologetic. As of now,
     though, there is not much relation between claims for the
     possibilities inherent in journalist-free journalism and what the
     people engaged in that pursuit are actually producing. As
     journalism moves to the Internet, the main project ought to be
     moving reporters there, not stripping them away.

   I thought journalism, as Glenn Reynolds says, was something you do,
   not something you are? Well, calm down. Lemann did say journalists
   were a distinct class, yes, but he also said the way one becomes a
   member of that class is by doing journalism -- not having a degree or
   a press pass.

   I think he's right, and that his argument is right, too. By and large,
   the Internet -- including blogs -- reacts to stories and the way
   full-time journalists tell them. But very little important news is
   broken or even routinely reported on the Internet. I don't think it
   will be soon, either. The MSM deserves to be teased, pilloried even,
   but rumors of its demise are quite premature. Yet the function of
   [3]media blogging is a very useful one, and bloggers have nothing to
   be embarrassed about in the regard. Keeping the mainstream media,
   which have a sunk and valuable investment in the equipment and staff
   to report news, honest is the epitome of freedom of the press.

   And... one more thing. That sunk investment is worth a lot, but one
   thing it doesn't do any more is provide a monopoly for the one thing
   that used to really matter: The ability to publish. That means that,
   eventually, Internet-based publications can, and really will, compete
   with the legacy press in reporting and breaking stories. And there's
   no better way to keep the media honest than that.

References

   Visible links
   1. http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060807fa_fact1
   2. http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060807fa_fact1
   3. http://www.likelihoodofconfusion.com/wp-admin/www.mediabloggers.com

   Hidden links:
   4. http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060807fa_fact1