Blogs are an important editorial innovation that must be embraced by the news industry, according to Guardian Unlimited‘s assistant editor Neil McIntosh.
I assume he meant that the news industry needs to catch up with the fast paced world of the blogosphere, where news is often read and dissected on line several days before the main stream media catch on.
They can scarcely have been more behind the times than today, when Henry Deedes who is now the Editor of the Independent’s effort at blogging, managed to run a story that was a magnificent eight months behind the blogosphere. The Old Man would turn in his grave.
The story originated in PR Week, on 18th July 2008, and I tipped off Anorak (with my old ‘Carmen’ hat on) the same morning. Anorak ran the story the same day. 18th July 2008.
Today, 8 months later, Henry finally gets to the finishing line. No wonder the dead tree press and its blogging efforts are dying on their feet.
Anna is the landlady of the Raccoon Arms. She lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France and still takes a keen interest in British politics.
{ 12 comments }
Who wants a newspaper these days? We can watch the news on our phones whilst making our way to work. ie. Thos of us who still have work to go to!
Bloggers may be invited onto the TV sofas more and more over the next couple of years ………… and then they will just sit at home doing their own versions of events on a web-cam.
Yippee! No more reading the same side of a story in the Guardian and the Telegraph! No more editors telling us the World according to them. And no more moguls running the whole caboodle.
No wonder the likes of Jacqui Shtrumpet-Schmidt are trying to change the laws sooner rather than later. Good grief! They don’t want free-thinking individuals talking to other free-thinking individuals about things we are never meant to find about.
I suppose we will just have to see how the Freedom of Information Act stuff pans out now. No doubt there will be more amendments …………. just to ensure that we don’t find out any information that could put individuals and the nation at risk!
Yep! …………. I am going to start preparing for when we do our own Raccoons version of Newsnight and What the Papers Used to Say.
I will be the one wearing too much eye-shadow and smoking a cigarette.
But perhaps we should ask ourselves if blogging is merely a fast food alternative to a nutritious meal cooked by experts.
Fair point Janes, but do you not think the ‘news’ should be less than eight months old?
It gives the professional journalist’s time for their editors to form an opinion for them.
Good point Janes ……….. Beautifully put. However …………. if all the staple foodstuffs are there such as the carbs and proteins …………. we can always get the vitamins and minerals from a bit of extra veg on the side and have the choice of saying no to the fries and mayo.
As blogging becomes more mainstream and film-based …………. we will be able to get our news straight from the streets where it is happening, from the mouths of those that the news is happening to …………… And make our own minds up as to whether we believe them or not.
I only have to look at people like Mandy and Gordie to be able to sum up what they are really thinking ……….. and don’t really need somebody else to do a post-mortem on it for me.
I think we live in an age now where we all know the difference between a freedom-fighter and a terrorist without sending reporters out into the deserts to bring us ‘both sides’ of the story.
But I do know what you mean. A friend of mine has just been given the heave-ho from a major newspaper group and she is scared that she will have to do ………….. a less vocational job …………… as she puts it.
AR, yes, news by its very definition should be new but it should also be true and accurate. It’s very easy to slag off the journalists but, like demonstrators, journalists are not all bad and in mainstream media they are controlled, to a degree anyway. Like fast food, blogging has an immediacy which appeals to the masses but it is debatable whether it does the masses any good.
Blogging is a true definition of journalism in that it adheres to the very essence of the word “daily”. “The Acta Diurna, a handwritten bulletin, was put up daily in the Forum, the main public square in ancient Rome, and was the world’s first newspaper.” To most it is no surprise that papers are in decline. People should remind themselves that it is not the journalist that should be objective but the reader. When picking up a paper or reading a blog one first has to remind oneself “this is fiction based on fact” the truth is in there but wrapped, like a blanket, in assumption, subjectivity, falsehood and commercial and political agenda.
The reason, to some extent, that newspapers and radio stations fail to pick up on the “big” stories (by which I mean interesting to the largest number of people or contentious enough to divide people) is they are run by a narrow demographic. Individuals that have been elevated to the position of editor have been moulded by their experiences and employment history into following a narrow news spectrum, what they find interesting doesn’t necessarily interest the rest of us. Combine this with the relative lack of space in a newspaper, compared with the internet, and you have a handgun to the blogoshere’s carpet bomb. The internet is able to support as many threads as there are ideas; a newspaper is not. Papers and stations have to pick one or two main stories whereas the users/bloggers of the internet can select the news they feel is important and spread it through links and blogs, which is what makes big net stories. The mainstream media features news selected by the few, fed to the many. The internet is far more democratic in that everyone casts a vote for what interests them.
Why it took the supposed blogging editor of The Independent so long to publish a story which is no longer news in any way, shape or form is beyond me.
Surely, you are not suggesting that journalists and professional journalism is dead?
One of the most valuable things about the internet and blogging is that a different democracy exists. No longer can the professional media men and women make comment and expect some dignified and agreeable response. Matt Seaton at the Guardian just doesn’t seem to be able to cope with the bloggers on CiF. Moderators are overwhelmed by the dramatic use of satire and hyperbole and, frankly, they don’t understand. The Independent here imply that they are grudgingly accepting the bloggers world but only showing pale cogniscance of its credibility. Bloggers are not necessarily sharing the views and morals of the ‘journos world’ and so can and do let rip in all sorts of style. Journos just can’t cope and see bloggers as a threat to their position in the grand scheme of things. Possibly theu are a threat, but I don’t think bloggers care about that either. There’s something truly refreshing to be able to comment, in a style or with a verve, that today’s journalists can’t HACK!!!!
You sound really hacked off with journalists Blink!
I believe the biggest threat posed to journalists by bloggers is that the audience of mainstream media rarely, if ever, has the opportunity to engage in discourse with those who professionally report the news. As a result, journalists, even the intelligent ones, are often under the impression that their news selection and slant is regarded as gospel by their audience.
Blogging and other forms of citizen journalism have shown this is not necessarily the case and as a result, journalists and perhaps more importantly, media owners, are becoming worried; their powerful hold on the dissemination of information is under threat. This, coupled with the current financial crisis, is affecting every aspect of media from the Indonesian loggers to Rupert Murdoch.
Press Gazette to fold.
Press Gazette To Close
http://www.iaindale.blogspot.com/
Iain Dale 9:43 PM
Sad news from the world of magazines – the Press Gazette is to cease publishing after a troubled 43 year history. It had been rescued from administration in 2006 but when it transformed itself from a weekly newspaper to a monthly magazine last year it lost its voice. I’m terribly sorry for those who have worked so hard to keep it on the road. Their only consolation is that I don’t think there is much else they could have done. The market just wasn’t there. Full story HERE.
The suggestion is that the Press Gazette will continue online but, according to Greenslade in the Media Guardian, it will be difficult for them to produce news when all the journalists have been given the boot. He also says it’s a pity someone can’t step in and save the magazine, again.