Journalism vs. Blogging?

As someone who is not very privy to the internet, I had never visited a news blog prior to being assigned reading from Brian Carroll's Writing for Digital Media. Honestly, if I had been shown a news blog before reading the chapter on personal publishing, I might not have noticed that it wasn't a professional source. Blogs like The Politico, Pressthink, and Talking Points Memo look remarkably like notable sources of journalism to an untrained eye. However, Carroll makes a valid point that journalism and blogging need not be mutually exclusive.

One of the major critiques of blogging is that there is not enough objectivity or accountability in their reporting. Jonathan Klein, a former executive vice president of CBS news, claimed that "you couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances [of professional journalists] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing." While that concern is valid, what about the various pressures that professional news sources are under? Wouldn't a news corporation like CBS be under more pressure to sensationalize stories to receive high ratings and please their advertisers? That can affect the objectivity and accountability of reporting as well.

The fact is that these days, bloggers can be journalists, and journalists can be bloggers, by virtue of the fact that original reporting can be delivered both professionally and unprofessionally. The same goes for opinion and commentary--it is not limited to either sphere. Blogs can even be called a form of journalism if they deliver original reporting that has been verified, and if it is delivered with speed and transparency. Also, news blogs that fixate on opinion and commentary are inextricably linked to journalism because they rely on journalists to provide them with topics and issues to comment on. Blogging and Journalism, rather than being at odds with one another, have become interdependent.

Verification, Headlines, and Hypertext

Over the years, objectivity has become the obsession of the journalistic world. Every magazine, newspaper, and news channel is eager to present themselves as fair and balanced. In their article "Journalism of Verification," Kovach and Rosensteil explicate what objectivity should mean for the modern journalist. They would argue that "fairness and balance take on a new meaning. Rather than high principles, they are really techniques--devices--to help guide journalists in the development and verification of their accounts." Their argument is valid, because no journalist can truly be unbiased. People come with opinions--opinions that affect the way they search for evidence, the way they ask questions, the way they report what they have found. Verification is important because it helps "journalists to develop a consistent method of testing information--a transparent approach to evidences--precisely so that personal and cultural biases would not undermine the accuracy of their work."

Kovach and Rosenteil included five steps of Verification:

1. Never add anything that was not there.

2. Never deceive the audience.

3. Be transparent as possible about your methods.

4. Rely on your own original reporting.

5. Exercise humility. 

In my opinion, all of these fall under the overarching umbrella of transparency. It is not only vital for a journalist to be transparent about their methods, but also any potential biases, mistakes, or misunderstandings that could come from their work. Humility would closely trail transparency, because being transparent, human error is a reality of all work.

In Brian Carroll's book Writing for Digital Media, he discusses the concept of headlines and hypertext, both of which infuriate me to no end. Headlines and hypertext validate people who chose to scan articles rather than engage them, which is detrimental to the journalistic field. If journalists are required to write inverted-pyramid style articles that are broken up by section in order to keep readers attention, they are doing so instead of being given free reign to delve into the depths of an issue as they chose, or truly expand on the circumstances at hand. Even further, chunking these articles into small manageable paragraphs and then headlining them accordingly allows people to skip over what they don't want to read, or skip to what they do. This method is not encouraging people to be thoughtful about the issues or giving them a fully rounded mindset.

Also, news websites such as BBC, CNN, and World News all provide long headlines for articles that give viewers the gist of the story without even having to read it. For example, a few headlines from BBC today read:

-Netanyahu Set Back in Israel Poll

-European Transaction Tax Agreed

-Attacks in Nigeria Leave 23 Dead

This style of writing for digital media is not doing the population any favors, as it once again enables readers to be informed, but not knowledgable about the troubles facing our world.