February 24, 2003

On Journalism

What makes a journalist? Donald Sensing explores that question in this worthwhile piece of commentary today, in response to an exchange between Sensing and two Nashville radio hosts over weblogging and journalistic "accountability." I wholeheartedly agree with every word Rev. Sensing writes.

Here's a few of them:

Karlen was very bothered that (heaven forfend!) non-journalists are able to go onto the internet and write whatever they want to with no accountability! Please pass the smelling salts, I might faint. Personally, I remember this thing called the First Amendment, which I don't think applies only to journalists. When other people exercise it, it doesn't offend me.

There are at least two pertinent facts here: Journalism is a job, not a profession. In fact, I have extensive formal journalism training, and I can tell you that there is no particular skill to it that is particularly difficult or unobtainable by average people. There is no "accountability" of journalists in any meaningful sense. There is no equivalent of a bar exam for journalists. There is no licensing procedure for journalists. There is no minimum education level required, nor any particular special kind of training at all. Fill out an employment application, get hired at minimum wage or better, and presto, you're a journalist. Or just take a pad and pencil, call some folks on the phone and do some interviews, and you're a journalist, too. Think not? Read on.

No one expects "Connie Chung Tonight" to be canceled or to change much any time soon. But executives say they are not dismissing questions about its future. Ms. Chung's predicament symbolizes a shift, even in the last month, in the network's thinking about its direction in a cable news world dominated by Fox News Channel, which is owned by the News Corporation. Generally, executives are coming to accept, if reluctantly, CNN's status as the No. 2 channel and are focusing on how to attract educated, more affluent viewers who attract premium advertisers.

It's not surprising they don't get it. Most mainstream journalists don't - and I say that as one who holds a journalism degree, and has spent more than 15 years doing journalism in various forms - newspapers, magazines and online. We're still early in this journalistic revolution, folks. You can't expect most radio, TV or print journalists who have spent their entire career learning, doing and perfecting top-down journalism to grasp the nature of the new grassroots journalism. Even a radio show like the one Sensing was on doesn't feature the voices of the common man - just an endless parade of elites from politics, business, government and religion. Weblogs provide a journalistic outlet for anyone. Don't like what you read in The Daily Fishwrapper or heard on the local radio talkathon? Start a blog and say so, then email the link to some well-trafficked blogs and hope someone refers traffic to you. Soon, you might be talking to a thousand people. Or 100,000. This naturally scares the bejeebers out of the "professionals" who like being in control of the "free flow" of ideas.

I practice the craft of journalism on a daily basis, in a variety of forms. Ever since November 2001, I've spent a lot of time learning and doing weblog-based journalism. I started this blog Nov. 30, 2001, as a companion to a weekly newspaper column I wrote for a small start-up traditional daily . The idea was to provide readers of that column with an online page of links to source material related to my columns, but it soon evolved into much more. I stopped writing the column almost a year ago. Today, the blog generates far more reader reaction and comment than the newspaper column ever did. I've had guest columns published in major newspapers - The Tennessean, and the Memphis Commercial-Appeal, with circulations well above 100,000, yet it is the weblog, not those columns, which have generated the most emails.

No media tool allows for more accountability and more-rapid correcting of error than weblogs. None. And blog articles - which, incidentally, tend to be commentary rather than straight news - are often better referenced than anything you'll read in your local daily. Bloggers won't just tell you what they think about something - they'll provide you links to the relevant source materials, and even links to other blogs that take a different point of view. Rev. Sensing quotes the SPJ "Code of Ethics" in its entirety - and links to it. What are the chances he would deliberately misquote it? Zero. He linked to it - you can read it for yourself. The Internet makes it easy to fact-check bloggers - which creates more pressure on bloggers to get their facts right.

Blogs most certainly correct errors faster than radio shows. Think about it - blogs by their very nature of linking to other blogs and being linked to by other blogs, have a form of built-in peer review. If Sensing's essay today stated something as a "fact" which was not, he'll be corrected on another blog. And he’ll probably note the correction on his site – or link to it. Good bloggers tend to point to other blogs that DISAGREE with them on some fact or analysis. There's a degree of openness to the exchange of ideas that enhances both the depth of the information and its credibility.

Compare that to a radio show - even a high-minded two-hour radio show dedicated to discussion of public issues. Once that radio show is in the can, it's permanent and unchangeable. Radio shows enshrine their errors and lack of knowledge forever on tape. Sure, sometimes a caller calls in and corrects an error, but not all callers get on the air, and not all errors are corrected. And on the show Sensing describes, they don't take calls - only emails and faxes, and then only some of those. I listen to the show almost every day and not a day goes by in which the show ends with some factual error made by a host or guest left uncorrected. That's not criticism - humans are imperfect beings, errors happen, and not all of them get corrected. But I haven't heard radio shows taking call-ins from other radio shows in order to dispute some fact or opinion. Blogs do that, in real-time, with extensive hyperlinks to other articles, documents and source materials they cite.

When's the last time you saw a footnote in a newspaper? When's the last time you were listening to talk radio and another talk radio host from a different show called in to correct an error? Never and never. Blogs do both.

Now, do as Sensing says: read on.