Week 11

Two weeks ago I blogged about the journalism v. blogging debate and this week after reading reviews for the new movie "State of Play," I got to thinking about it again.
I think that it is very telling of the relevance and newsworthiness of the changes going on in journalism that a movie was made about it and with so many A-lister actors and actresses (Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright Penn, and Helen Mirren).
From my review reading, I've found that Crowe plays a well-respected, veteran investigative reporter who is somewhat in professional competition with newbie young blogger McAdams. Crowe tries to teach her the ways of thorough old-school print journalism but McAdams is much to concerned with turning out copy every hour on the hour to heed his advice. With another 2009 relevancy twist, Mirren plays the fictional newspaper's editor, who is under constant pressure by the paper's new corporate owners to cut costs, re-design the all-important front page, and produce quick news rather than taking time to uncover not as obvious stories.
The film's storyline seems to have so much to do with the current crises in the newspaper world that, as a journalist, I cannot wait to see how the film plays them out.

Week 10

For this week's blog entry we were told to read "The Quality-Control Quandry" by Carl Sessions Strepp of the American Journal Review and discuss what we thought of the article. Basically Strepp's article went over what we all already know: Editing jobs are being cut significantly in newspapers everywhere. I feel like these cuts are just going along with the times. Jobs are being cut everywhere. We all know the stats on the newspaper industry, it only makes sense that more and more editors are being let go. By understanding and accepting this, I think now the most important thing for newspapers is to make-do as much as possible with the editors that remain; to do as thorough and as accurate job as much as possible.
I think that absolutely all copy should be edited by at least one person other than the reporter who wrote it before it is published in any way -- even if it's only going online. Just because immediacy and speed are crucial when it comes to internet news, I think that it is even more important to make sure that speedy news is reported without any silly typos. And even though there are not as many editors sitting around to proof stories for errors, a fewer number of editors is better than no editors at all.
The AJR article listed a few copy editing practices that are becoming more and more common during this time of transition which I found to be pretty spot-on. The most important one in my opinion is the reinforcement of the oftentimes neglected principle that writers should be better self-editors. I would take that a step further and say that writers should never be the only ones editing their story. I also think that the practices of "buddy editing," "previewing" and "back editing" can do wonders for places where the number of editors is plummeting.
I think the main idea that this article is trying to get across is to not get too worked up with the news of editor cut-backs, but to just step up to the plate and do better work in the first place,and to make-do with the editors that remain.

Week 9

Is blogging the new form of journalism? Should bloggers be held to the same standards as journalists?
While browsing YouTube, I came across this interesting video dealing with these exact questions. The man behind the webcast is Chris Pirillo, a 35-year-old man who has been participating in web conversations since 1992, when he started lockergnome.com as a "content publishing network." He now publishes personal blogs and lifecasts (webcasts dealing with various life topics and interesting how-to tidbits) to tens of thousands of viewers and is also a top subscribed partner on YouTube; in the past year he posted over 1,000 webcasts. He also does weekly live video segments for CNN.com where he gives "tech" advice to his savvy audience. Fun fact: When you search "Chris" on Google his site is listed first in the results.
So, after seeing his impressive resume, I was definitely interested in how Chris would answer these questions. To my surprise, he answered them quite closely to how I would answer them myself.
Chris and I agree that blogging is not the "new" form of journalism, and that bloggers mostly write out of passion or extreme interest on a topic. Also, bloggers and journalists are not one in the same because they are not held to the same standards. Although bloggers and journalists both write articles, posts, etc. of high content, journalists' work comes from a place of research and a blogger's work comes greatly from a place of personal thoughts, feelings and beliefs. Therefore, blogs are full of opinions, whereas journalism is meant to be unbiased. If a journalist misquotes or provides wrong information in a story, he or she is held responsible for that, a blogger does not hold that same responsibility because much of their work contains the research of actual journalists, so if the info is wrong, the journalist is to blame, not the blogger.
I suppose that the answers to these questions mainly depend on each individual's definition of journalists, bloggers, journalism and blogging. Based on my personal measures of these words, blogging is not the new form of journalism, it's more just a style of writing; and bloggers definitely shouldn't be held to the same standards as journalists because blogging is not journalism.

To check out Chris Pirillo's website full of blogs and webcasts on various topics, click here.